Antisemitism: The Power of Myth - Rumors, Lies, and the Media
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When Adolf Hitler came to power in the 1930s,
he used "the blood libel" and other myths to justify the Holocaust.
Julius Streicher, a staunch member of the Nazi party and the publisher
of the magazine Der Stürmer, gave life to those charges. In article
after article, he printed lurid tales of ritual murders and claimed
that "the Jews" were responsible. After the Holocaust, an international
tribunal put Streicher on trial for turning neighbor against neighbor.
Unlike other Nazi defendants, he was not a government official nor did
he set government policy or carry out government orders. His only
weapons were words. Yet he was found guilty. The court held him
responsible for "inciting of the population to abuse, maltreat, and
slay their fellow citizens." The judges warned that stirring up
"passion, hate, violence, and destruction among the people themselves
aims at breaking the moral backbone even of those the invader chooses
to spare."
Despite the warning, the same lies that Streicher published in the
1930s and 1940s are being circulated today. "In the thirties,
[Secretary of State] Cordell Hull complained of print and radio that a
lie went half way round the world before truth had time to put its
trousers on," observes British publisher Harold Evans. "Nowadays it has
been to Mars and back before anyone is half awake."
The continued spread of old myths, including "the blood libel," raises
questions about the responsibilities of journalists and others in the
media to their audiences. How do reporters and editors choose which
stories to tell? How do they decide how those stories will be told?
What obligation do they have to verify rumors, debunk lies, and
challenge stereotypes?
On October 28, 2000, Al-Ahram, a popular Egyptian
newspaper, published an article titled "A Jewish Matza Made from Arab
Blood." The article made the outrageous claim that Jews in Israel were
killing Arab children so that their blood could be used to make
unleavened bread for Passover. In the spring of 2002, a newspaper in
Saudi Arabia devoted two issues to similar claims-this time that Jews
murder Christian and Muslim children so that they can use their blood
in preparing for the Jewish holidays of Purim and Passover.
In the summer of 2002, the French charged the editor of the Egyptian
newspaper and the newspaper itself with distributing materials that
promote hatred and antisemitic violence-a serious crime in France. An
Associated Press report noted:
Al-Ahram, one of Egypt's main dailies, said its government-appointed editor-in-chief, Ibrahim Nafie, received the French summons earlier this week over an article the paper published nearly two years ago. The article repeated centuries-old anti-Semitic myths that Jews use Christian blood in their rites.
The Egyptian press, much of it controlled by or close to the government, often has been accused of stepping over the line from criticism of Israeli policies to attacks on Jews and Judaism.
Nafie devoted almost an entire page of Al-Ahram's daily Arabic edition and a shorter column in his weekly English edition to his defense yesterday.
Marc Levy, a lawyer for the Paris-based International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, said the group had considered filing a complaint when the article was found on Al-Ahram's website in 2000. He said the article was later removed from the Web site, but that French investigators pursued the case after finding that 1,100 copies of the newspaper containing the article had been distributed in France.
French law forbids the "incitement of hatred and anti-Semitic violence."
Nafie said the Oct. 28, 2000, article was based on 19th-century legal and historical records of reports a rabbi in Syria killed a priest and used his blood for a holiday pie. The article Nafie wrote linked the tale to criticism of present-day Israeli policies toward Palestinians.
Nafie described the article in detail in his Arabic commentary but did not refer to it in the English edition, which is aimed mainly at foreigners.
The court case "can be considered a form of ideological terrorism and a way to cripple freedom of the press in Egypt and the Arab world," Nafie wrote.
Levy said the article was "shocking" because it implied that Israel's army today was carrying out ritual murders of Palestinians.
"It is offensive to truth and peace," Levy said.1
Although the Associated Press article describes the blood libel as a "centuries-old anti-Semitic myth," it relates without comments or explanations Nafie's claim that his article is "based on 19th-century legal and historical records of reports a rabbi in Syria killed a priest and used his blood for a holiday pie." Many other news outlets take a similar approach. In an editorial, Judith Apter Klinghoffer, a professor of international relations at Rutgers University, argues that it might have been more enlightening if reporters had provided the following historical context:The weird charge that Jews (who may not even eat rare meat) murder non-Jewish children to obtain blood for the making of matzot for Passover ...reached the Islamic world in 1840. That year, the Capuchin order of monks charged that Jews had kidnapped and murdered two men to use their blood in Passover matzoh. Under torture, two "witnesses" named several prominent Damascus Jews as the killers. The accused were arrested, tortured and sentenced to death. Local officials then seized 63 Jewish children to compel others to reveal where the blood was hidden.
In Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Muslim relations with Dhimmis (Jews and Christians), quotes a letter sent by Secretary of State John Forsyth to U.S. Consul John Gliddon in Alexandria on August 14, 1840:
Sir: - In common with all civilized nations, the people of the United States have learned with horror, the atrocious crimes imputed to the Jews of Damascus, the cruelties of which [the Jews] have been the victims. The President [Martin Van Buren] fully participates in the public feeling, and he cannot refrain from expressing equal surprise and pain, that in this advanced age, such unnatural practices should be ascribed to any portion of the religious world, and such barbarous measures be resorted to, in order to compel the confession of imputed guilt; the offenses of which these unfortunate people are charged, resembles too much those which, in less enlightened times, were made the pretexts of fanatical prosecution or mercenary extortion, to permit a doubt that they are equally unfounded....
The Damascus affair, Bat Ye'or explains, exploded during negotiations conducted by the Quadruple Alliance (England, Prussia, Russia and Austria) to evict France's man, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, from Syria. By November, the Egyptian army had left Syria and the Sultan ordered the liberation of the Jewish prisoners. The Ottoman Sultan also issued a declaration that the blood libel had "not the least foundation in truth" and that hence Jews "shall possess the same advantages and enjoy the same privileges" as his other subjects, especially the free exercise of their religion. Blood libels were hurled in other places throughout the decade, including in Jerusalem in May 1850.
In 1983, in the wake of the Lebanon war, Syrian Defense Minister Field Marshal Mustafa Tlas revived this most vicious anti-Semitic canard in a book entitled The Matza of Zion. Tlas told Der Spiegel [a German magazine] that the accusation was valid and that his book is "an historical study ... based on documents from France, Vienna and the American University in Beirut." The American ambassador in Damascus tried to meet with Tlas to protest the publication of the book, but was rebuffed. During a three-day congress to combat "religious intolerance," held in Geneva in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate regaled the audience with a diatribe filled with references to the 1840 Damascus blood libel.2
Why don't magazines like Der Spiegel or news services like the Associated Press place inflammatory charges in an historical context? Why don't reporters challenge sources like the ones Nafie or Tlas use? Such questions trouble British publisher Harold Evans. In a speech, he explained how he has tried to track down the sources of the rumor that 4,000 Jews stayed home from their jobs at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001 and what he learned from his investigation. After tracing the rumor to a website called InformationTimes.com, "an independent news and information service" in Washington, he asked the editor in chief, Syed Adeeb, for proof that the rumor was true and was told the source was Al Manar, a TV station in Lebanon. When Evans asked if Adeeb had "any qualms about relying on Al Manar because it was a mouthpiece for the terrorist group Hezbollah, which exists ‘to stage an effective psychological warfare with the Zionist enemy,' Adeeb's reply was: ‘Well, it is a very popular station.'" When Evans noted that there were Jews who died in the towers, Adeeb conceded that one or two might have died, but he found it sinister that nobody could tell him just how many.In his book Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11, journalist Thomas L. Friedman relates a story told to him by a Pakistani friend about that same rumor. Friedman writes that his friend's children told him that they had heard from their classmates at their private school in Islamabad, Pakistan, that 4,000 Jews were supposedly warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on September 11. Friedman continues:
My Pakistani friend, a thoughtful and decent man, told me he sat his kids down and explained to them why this could not possibly have been true. Who would have a master list of all the employees from hundreds of different companies located in the World Trade Center? And how would you identify who was Jewish on such short notice and then get all their home phone numbers and call them all on the night before September 11 and not have one of them call the police or wonder that something suspicious was going on? And how could you warn four thousand people not to go to work and have not one of them, not one, be identified afterward by name? It didn't make any sense.
My Pakistani friend told me his kids listened and seemed to understand and went back to school with that message. A week later, though, he got word from the school that the views of his children were out of step with those of the rest of their classmates and that he needed to tell them to stop challenging the story that four thousand Jews were warned not to go to work; otherwise his kids would be ostracized.3
Connections
Julius Streicher was found guilty of turning neighbor against neighbor. What message did the judges hope his conviction would send to others eager to stir up hatred in similar ways?
Nafie views the charges against his newspaper as "a form of ideological terrorism and a way to cripple freedom of the press in Egypt and the Arab world." What is "ideological terrorism"? By pressing charges, are the French violating Nafie's right to express his views in public? Does freedom of the press include the right of newspapers and other media to spread lies? Does it include the right to incite hatred?
After World War II, France passed a law banning the "incitement of hatred and anti-Semitic violence." In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Does that mean that individuals in the United States have the right to incite hatred? To spread falsehoods? Find out how U.S. courts have set limits on free speech.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported on the suit filed against the editor of Al-Ahram in a French court in a story dated August 1, 2002 (emphasis added):
[The] article cited an incident which occurred in 1840 and was first reported by the French orientalist Charles Laurand in his book "The Murder of Father Toma and His Servant Ibrahim Amara"... He cites two Greek witnesses who said the French priest was kidnapped by Jews, killed and had his bones ground and his blood brewed to be used in cooking a matzo, the Jewish unleavened bread traditionally eaten during Passover.
After complaints from readers, the BBC revised the article to read as follows (emphasis added):
[The] article cited an allegation by a 19th century French author, Charles Laurand, that a French priest and his servant had been killed by Jews in Damascus. He claimed that their bones and blood had been used to cook a matzo, the Jewish unleavened bread traditionally eaten during Passover.4
How do the changes alter the meaning of the paragraph? How do they affect its accuracy? What sentence was omitted from the revised version? What effect does the omission have on the story? What changes if any would you have suggested the BBC make? What changes if any would you have made to the Associated Press story? If readers cannot rely on the media to challenge lies and avoid half-truths, how can we as citizens make informed judgments? What does Friedman's story suggest about how citizens might begin to do so? What does the story suggest about the dangers of remaining silent? How important are retractions like the one made by the BBC? Do they work?What responsibilities do journalists have to check the accuracy of stories they publish? To provide evidence in support of allegations? How does the Internet complicate that process?
How did President Martin Van Buren define his "universe of obligation" and that of the American people in 1840? What effect did his stand have in making Jews feel welcome in the United States? What part do leaders play in creating a society that values and protects the rights of every citizen?
In an article entitled, "The Arabs and Anti-Semitism," published on December 14, 2001 in the London Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, columnist Hazem Saghiyah argues, "Anti-Semitism in Europe was a popular belief that started from the bottom up. In contrast, in Arab/Muslim [countries] it often descends from the top down." What is the differences between "top-down" antisemitism and "bottom-up" antisemitism? How does that difference affect the responses of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders?
What is the moral of the story Thomas Friedman's Pakistani friend told? What does it suggest about the dangers of an antisemitism that comes from the "top down"?
In November, 2000, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to publicly condemn the spread of the "blood libel" and other antisemtic propaganda in the Egyptian press. The article published on October 28, 2000, in Al-Ahram particularly outraged the group. Mubarak never responded to their request. What message was he sending to Egyptians? To Jews? To the world at large? In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the government controls the press. Political leaders have a say in what is published and what is not. What are the dangers in a state-controlled media?
Professor Judith Apter Klinghoffer and many others regard Holocaust denial as a form of antisemitism. In writing about antisemitism in the Middle East, she notes:
Some Arabs engage in Holocaust denial. Indeed, French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy became a darling of the Arab media. A convention of Holocaust deniers was planned to take place in Beirut in 2001. Other Arabs assert that the Jews got what they deserved. An April 18, 2001 editorial in the Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar declared: "Thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory, who, on behalf of the Palestinians revenged in advance the most vile criminals on the face of the Earth. Although we do have a complaint against him, for his revenge on them was not enough."5
The Holocaust happened within living memory. It is one of the most documented events in history-documented by not only the victims and bystanders but also the perpetrators. Why would someone deny a fact? Why would a newspaper give space to someone who insists on doing so? Under international pressure, the convention in Beirut was canceled. However, newspapers, magazines, and TV programs in the region continue to publicize claims that the Holocaust did not happen. Based on your knowledge of other myths, what effect might such unchallenged claims have on ordinary people? What responsibilities does the media have to print the truth?
1"French Court, Egyptian Spar over Anti-Semitic Article," by the Associated Press. The Boston Globe, August 2, 2002., p. A25.
2"Blood Libel" by Judith Apter Klinghoffer. History News Network. April 8, 2002. http://hnn.us/articles/664.html
3Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 by Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2002, pp. 318-319.
4http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/not_in_website/syndication/monitoring/
5"Blood Libel" by Judith Apter Klinghoffer. History News Network. April 8, 2002. http://hnn.us/articles/664.html
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