A better understanding of the demonization process requires classifying the major forms of hatred promotion. Verbal demonization consists of two broad categories, false statements and distorted arguments. Pictorial demonization, of which cartoons are only one aspect, is another component of the broad array of hate-mongering. A further component is calls for action, the most extreme cases of which incite genocidal violence. Another component of demonization consists of actions taken against Israel and the Jews.

Lies are a conceptually simple form of false statements. In Christian religious anti-Semitism, the main factual lie was that “the Jews killed the son of God.” Van der Horst stresses that the accusation that the Jews were responsible for the murder of Jesus could not be true, as the Jews in Roman times had no power to kill anyone. “Everything we know from other sources tells us that Pilate was thoroughly unscrupulous and ruthless. The idea that he would save a person from capital punishment because he thought him innocent is not historical and almost ridiculous.”1

Like so many lies, this one also developed further. It brought with it the claim that all Jews throughout the generations were responsible for an act that their forefathers had not committed. Yet the New Testament asserts that Christians should “turn the other cheek” when attacked.2

During the Vatican II Council in 1965, the Catholic Church repudiated the claim that all Jews are responsible for deicide. However, some Christians continue to perpetuate this lie. The long history of the deicide charge and its murderous consequences illustrate how anti-Semitic lies are generated and how dangerous they can be for Jews.

One should add here that the concept that individuals can be held responsi- ble for what their ancestors did—and in this specific case had not done—many generations earlier profoundly undermines the legal and moral functioning of any society. It is an immoral concept. In a democracy, people can only be held responsible for their own acts, not those of their ancestors.

What the concept of holding people responsible for their ancestors’ crimes could mean can be illustrated with contemporary examples. German anti- Semitism did not disappear with the country’s capitulation in May 1945. Sigmar Gabriel, current chairman of the German Socialist Party and deputy chancellor of Germany, has gone public about his father. He said that he was an extreme Nazi, continued to be one after the war ended, and tried to educate his son in that direction.3 Even though Gabriel opposed his father, one wonders whether something has remained of that part of his youth. When he visited Hebron, he wrote on his Facebook page that Israeli apartheid can be seen there.4 After that visit he remained silent, however, about the similarity between the Nazi Party’s promotion of genocide of the Jews and that of the Islamo-Nazis of Hamas.

Former German President Richard von Weizsäcker incites against Israel today. One cannot see that separately from the attitude of his father, Ernst von Weizsäcker, who was sentenced as a Nazi war criminal.5 Nor can one view the fact that 51 percent of Germans think Israel behaves like a Nazi state in detachment from the crimes of their ancestors.6 Criminalizing Israel helps minimize the guilt of their ancestor generation.

Holocaust Denial

One extreme contemporary anti-Semitic lie is Holocaust denial. This falsehood’s underlying aim is to present the Jews as extreme villains. Here anti-Semites claim that Jews invented a huge mass murder of their own people by a third party, the Nazis and their allies, which never took place. In this way, the lie continues, the Jews positioned themselves as major victims so as to gain sympathy. This is one of the newer motifs of anti-Semitism. It developed almost immediately after World War II, mainly, though not exclusively, in France. Among its early proponents were the fascist Maurice Bardèche and Paul Rassinier, who had been a communist before the war, later became a socialist, and had been a member of the French Resistance. In subsequent years French Holocaust-denial activities often centered on Robert Faurisson, a former literature professor at Lyon University.7

Holocaust denial is one facet of contemporary anti-Semitism whose methodology, including motifs used by the perpetrators, their motivations, and its mode of propagation, has been analyzed in detail. This was done, for instance, by American historian Deborah Lipstadt in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.8

In her analysis of Faurisson, Lipstadt wrote that he regularly creates facts where none exist and dismisses as false any information inconsistent with his preconceived conclusions. He asserts, for example, that the German army was given “draconian” orders not to participate in “excesses” against civilians, including the Jews; consequently the mass murders of the Jews could not have happened. In making his argument, Faurisson simply ignores the activities of the Einsatzgruppen, the units responsible for killing vast numbers of Jews.9

As Nazis became the symbol of all evil in postwar society, their postwar sympa- thizers had to falsify history and claim that the Nazis were not so malevolent. In its most extreme form, this became the precursor to Holocaust denial.

Nowadays Holocaust denial is widespread in the Muslim world yet continues to occur elsewhere also in mainstream society. In 2009, the major Norwegian TV2 channel broadcast an interview of more than a quarter-hour with convicted British Holocaust denier David Irving.10 The journalist who interviewed him displayed little knowledge of the topics discussed.

More Lies

Many of the anti-Semitic motifs described in the previous chapter are based on factual lies. Jews do not use Christian blood in any of their matzo or other rituals. On the contrary, Judaism strictly forbids the consumption of blood, even of animals. Israelis do not kill Palestinians to reuse their organs. Israel did not enter Gaza in the Cast Lead campaign to kill women and children as claimed by the Hamas-supporting Norwegian doctors Gilbert and Fosse. According to much research, Israeli soldiers did not kill the Palestinian child Muhammad al-Dura. Jews do not aim to control the world. Unlike Christianity and Islam, Juda- ism does not seek to convert nonbelievers, which is a precondition for a religion or ideology if it wants to achieve global dominance. In fact, it is rather difficult to become Jewish since conversion requirements are strict. Jews did not poison wells in Europe during the Middle Ages. Jews are not pigs and monkeys or other animals. The lies about Jews are manifold.

Lies as an Instrument of Propaganda in the Arab World

Lies in the Muslim world form a category in themselves. Israeli political scientist Michael Widlanski explains:

Palestinian leaders have developed ambiguous messages as strategic weapons to disarm, demoralize and deceive foes while gaining third-party support. They use duplicitous statements for different audiences in the tradition of taqiyya— the art of dissimulation. This is an Islam-approved application of lying to defeat enemies. When conversing in English they may sound peace-loving. Yet they simultaneously broadcast bellicose messages to Arabs in Arabic.

This method of destructive ambiguity was practiced already by the pre-war Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al Husseini. He was heavily involved in spreading false messages about Jews “trying to conquer the Temple Mount” in the early 1920’s and later in propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis. Fatah leaders, particularly Yasser Arafat and Mahmud Abbas, follow in Husseini’s footsteps using ambiguity.11

Nadav Shragai, an Israeli journalist specializing in the history of the Palestin- ian-Israeli conflict regarding Jerusalem, says, “At the beginning of this century, Yasser Arafat publicly claimed that there was never a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount. Yet before 1967, Muslim sources going back centuries affirmed the existence of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount.”12

This falsehood is part of a much broader structure of lies purporting that the Jewish people have no link to the Land of Israel. The Arab League’s efforts to block the planned UNESCO exhibit in January 2014 on “Jews and the Holy Land” can be considered part of this approach. After various protests against the cancellation, the exhibit was rescheduled for June 2014.13

Accusations

A second category of false statements are unsubstantiated accusations. The line between lies and invented accusations is often very thin.

In his press conference on November 27, 1967, then-French President Charles de Gaulle made a much-publicized remark, calling the Jews “an elitist and domineering people.” Th s is often considered the post-Holocaust reintroduction of anti-Semitism at the highest levels of mainstream European democratic society. By breaking a postwar taboo, de Gaulle paved the way for other European politicians who would go much further in later years.14

In 2003, then-senior Labour MP Tam Dalyell claimed that a Jewish cabal of Zionists in the United States and Britain was driving their governments into war against Syria.15

An extreme false accusation, particularly widespread in Europe, has already been mentioned: “Israel behaves toward the Palestinians as the Nazis behaved toward the Jews.” The same goes for the related accusation: “Israel conducts a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”

One type of accusation is labeling a person negatively. For instance, during the Protective Edge campaign Erdogan said that Israeli politician Ayelet Shaked had the same mentality as Hitler because she claimed that the Palestinian people were Israel’s enemy.16 Less than a week later he accused Israel of having “surpassed Hitler in barbarism.”17

A South African example gives a combination of an accusation and label- ing. The African National Congress in South Africa also compared Israel and the Nazis in a statement written by the party’s deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte, who asserted, “The State of Israel has turned the occupied territories of Palestine into permanent death camps.”18

Venezuela also compared Israel to the Nazis in Protective Edge. President Nicolas Maduro claimed that Israel had “initiated a higher phase of its policy of genocide and extermination with the ground invasion of Palestinian territory, killing innocent men, women, girls and boys.”19

Israel as an Apartheid State

After the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, the “Israel is an apartheid state” lie was popularized. Israeli international-law expert Robbie Sabel notes that in South Africa under white rule, “the black population was segregated, discriminated against, and had no voting rights in general elections. It could also not participate in the government.”

He contrasts that with Israel’s reality:

Israel is a multi-racial and also a multi-colored society. It has free elections with universal voting rights. Its judiciary is independent and enjoys high international standing. Jews comprise 80% of the population. Arabs, mainly Muslims but also Druze and Christians, are the largest minority. Like all other minori- ties, they actively participate in the political process. Incitement to racism in Israel is a criminal offense.

Sabel added:

Since Israel became independent in 1948, there have always been Arab parlia- mentarians. There have been Arab cabinet ministers and deputy speakers of the Knesset. There are Arab judges on various courts including the Supreme Court. There are many Arab doctors in hospitals, as well as heads of departments. There are Arab university professors. Many Arab students study at all Israeli universities. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has Arab ambassadors and other diplomats. There are Arabs among senior army and police officers and so on. This reality is radically different from the 1948 to 1994 white South African Apartheid regime.20

Benjamin Pogrund’s book Drawing Fire has the subtitle Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel. The author, a journalist with left-wing views, is critical of Israel and gives only minor attention to the Islamo-Nazi genocidal character of the largest Palestinian party Hamas. Nevertheless, he says in a personal note in the book:

I was treated for stomach cancer at one of Israel’s leading hospitals, Hadassah Mt Scopus in Jerusalem. The surgeon (he was the head surgeon) was Jewish, the anesthetist was Arab. The doctors and nurses who cared for me were Jews and Arabs. During four and a half weeks as a patient, I watched Arab and Jewish patients get the same devoted treatment. A year or so later, the head surgeon retired; he was replaced by a doctor who is an Arab. Since then, I’ve been in hospital clinics and emergency rooms. Everything is the same for everyone. Israel is like apartheid South Africa? Ridiculous.21

Yet there is one Western country where apartheid apparently exists. After the January 2015 murders, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that in parts of France there is “territorial, social and ethnic apartheid.”22

Accusations about the Future

A tool of verbal demonization that is extremely difficult to combat is that of accusations about future actions for which there are no indications. These are far more difficult to contest than lies, for instance.

One example of such an accusation about the future is that Israel intends to destroy the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount.23 Shragai says this canard is disseminated by leading Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim groups and individuals. “Haj Amin al Husseini, the pre-war Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was the first to promote this slander in the 1920s. It was part of the vast anti-Semitic activities of this ally of Hitler.”

Shragai adds, “The ‘Al Aksa is in danger’ lie has expanded greatly since 1967. It is propagated by official Iranian sources—Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, etc. Akrama Sabri, former Mufti of Jerusalem appointed by the Palestinian Author- ity is another leading disseminator of the Al-Aksa libel.”24

Another accusation about future actions to be undertaken by Israel was made by German Nobel Prize in Literature winner Günther Grass. He claimed in a hate poem—without providing any proof—that Israel is aiming to commit genocide against the Iranian people with nuclear bombs. This poem was pub- lished by major European dailies including the German Süddeutsche Zeitung,25 the Italian La Repubblica,26 the British Guardian,27 the Spanish El País,28 the Danish Politiken,29 and the Norwegian Aftenposten.30 Such extensive publica- tion is so unusual for a poem that it can only be explained by the anti-Israeli attitudes of the papers’ editors.31

Another unfounded accusation about the future was made by former French right-wing Prime Minister François Fillon. In 2014, he claimed that Israel is a threat to world peace. He formulated this fabrication by saying that Israel constitutes such a threat because it has not helped create a Palestinian state.32

Exaggerations

A submotif of false statements is exaggeration. One major case concerned Palestinian and other propagandists’ claims about the number of Palestinian casualties resulting from Israel’s military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002. This intervention followed the suicide bombing by a Hamas terrorist disguised as a woman in the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover Eve. Thirty people were killed and 140 injured.33

During the subsequent battle in the Jenin refugee camp, approximately fifty-five Palestinians were killed—mainly armed fighters—as well as twenty- three Israeli soldiers. Yet several Palestinian leaders, including spokesman Saeb Erekat, told the press that the number of Palestinians killed was ten or more times the actual figure. Erekat also asserted that the camp had been totally destroyed; later it could be seen that the fighting had only affected a small part of the area.34

In 2014, Erekat produced a new variant on the same motif. He claimed that in the fighting between Israel and Hamas only 4 percent of the Palestinians killed were militants.35 The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorist Information Center examined the list of Palestinian names and concluded that 52 percent of those killed were militants.36

False Arguments

The use of lies, false accusations, and exaggerations as tools of demonization can be easily understood. Another type of hate propaganda, the use of false arguments, is far more opaque. These fallacies are based on distorted reasoning where the arguments presented do not support the conclusion drawn from them.

The three major categories of fallacies are emotional, ethical, and logical ones. These groups in turn have various subcategories.

One category of emotional fallacies is that of bandwagon effects. This means that people agree with the person making a statement because all others supposedly do. This can occur because of intimidation, fear, wanting to belong to a group, or opportunism. An example of the latter occurs when the most prominent scholars in an academic department are anti-Israeli. Junior scholars may consider that they will not advance without showing similar sentiments. They may then convince themselves that these are their true feelings.

It is difficult to prove the bandwagon opportunism. One suspects that various politicians take anti-Israeli positions because after their national career they look for postings at the United Nations. Another variant is that politicians take anti-Israeli positions so as to fall in line with their party.

Scare tactics are another example of emotional fallacies. An attempt is made to frighten people by threatening them with consequences of their action or inaction that are untrue, far from what may indeed happen, or by no means as harmful as they are purported to be. During the renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Israel that a third intifada might break out if it made no concessions to the Palestin- ians. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon responded by saying Israel would “conduct things wisely, without worrying about threats of whether or not there will be a third intifada.”37

Sentimental Appeals

A major subcategory of emotional fallacies is sentimental appeals.

These are primarily based on feelings of pity and support for the poor.38 Through sentimental appeals, the presenter aims to convince his audience to adopt his position by using emotional manipulation. Appealing to the audience’s emotions distracts from the facts and sound logic.

Henry Silverman defi es the fallacy of appealing to pity as consisting “of emotionally-charged images or language intended to evoke sympathy and manipulate an audience into adopting a partisan view or supporting an interest group.”39

A prominent example of sentimental appeals is that “the Palestinians are weak, hence they are victims and Israel is to blame for their condition.” The Palestinians have become super-victims and often can do no wrong in the eyes of many of their Western supporters.40 These supporters frequently even look away from Hamas’s genocidal intentions.

Much sentimental appeal was used when Israel acted against the Gaza flotilla. The flotilla was misrepresented as a humanitarian aid effort. Lies and false arguments intermingled. In actuality the Turkish Mavi Marmara, the largest ship by far, did not carry any humanitarian aid, and neither did two of the others. Some of the goods transported were for military purposes. Other items of the “aid” included pharmaceuticals that had already expired.

Furthermore, seven of the nine people killed on the Mavi Marmara were filmed expressing their desire to die as martyrs before setting sail. Under inter- national law Israel had the right to impose a blockade on Gaza and thus to stop the ships from reaching their destination. Many of the worldwide reactions to the flotilla were thus a great victory of the sentimental Palestinian appeal over the legal rights of Israel.41

How Westerners Indirectly Promote Killing of Palestinian Civilians

It was, however, during the 2014 Protective Edge campaign that the sentimental-appeals fallacy became particularly evident. Governments knew that Hamas was making an effort to maximize the deaths of children and civilians by firing rockets from places in close proximity to them. Yet these governments reprimanded Israel for the allegedly high number of civilian deaths among the population in Gaza.

These Westerners are actually assisting the terrorist organization by using rhetoric that seeks to morally equate the two sides or posits Israel as solely responsible for all Palestinian deaths. The Palestinian civilian deaths, including children, result largely from the fact that Hamas deliberately fires rockets at Israeli civilians from heavily populated areas with a high concentration of children. Israel cannot allow itself to be fired at without reacting. Hamas does not care about civilian deaths among Gaza’s population. Those foreigners who condemn Israel for firing back at Hamas and killing civilians in the process are also unpaid consultants to Hamas. Their condemnations imply that the more civilians and children are put at risk, the more they will die, and the more Israel will be condemned, rather than Hamas, for their deaths.42

Some Journalists Tell the Truth

During Protective Edge, Hamas frequently intimidated foreign reporters in Gaza. Nevertheless, a number of media reports clarified that Hamas was firing from near the heavily-populated areas where the reporters were broadcasting.

Sreenivasan Jain of India’s NDTV reported that Hamas was launching rockets from a heavily-populated area in Gaza across from two hotels with international patrons. In his words: “But just as we reported the devastating consequences of Israel’s offensive on Gaza’s civilians, it is equally important to report on how Hamas places those very civilians at risk by firing rockets deep from the heart of civilian zones.” The team intentionally filed the report after they left Gaza because “Hamas has not taken very kindly to any reporting of its rockets being fired.”43

Aishi Zidan of Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat daily reported that a Hamas rocket was fired from the parking lot of Shifa Hospital, which she reported was full of women and children injured by Israeli attacks.44

A Hamas rocket was also fired from behind Maha Abu al-Kas, an Arab- language reporter for France 24 news. Also reporting from a city street, she discussed civilian casualties, supply shortages in Gazan hospitals, and dangers posed to journalists by Israeli air strikes, before her report was interrupted by a Hamas rocket fired from directly behind her.45

Ethical  Fallacies

Ethical fallacies involve attributing false authority to a person, or anyone sharing that person’s thoughts, when he or she asks an audience “to agree with an assertion based simply on his or her character or the authority of another person or institution who may not be fully qualified to offer that assertion.”46 An example of ethical fallacies is claiming that Israel is at fault because the UN General Assembly has condemned it. Such condemnations only signify that the Arab and Muslim states have so much weight in the Assembly that they can impose their opinion in the voting.

Another subcategory of ethical fallacies is dogmatism, where discussion is precluded because of the weight of the opinion of the presenter. Yet another aspect is offering personal authority as proof.

Logical Fallacies

One subcategory of logical fallacies is the inversion of cause and results; alternatively, an event can occur after another without being caused by it. Silverman cites the example of a Reuters story that paints a black picture of the Gazan economy and living conditions, particularly mentioning poverty rates,47 while falsely portraying Israel as the culprit.48

Other logical fallacies include the application of double standards, the use of false moral equivalence, and scapegoating. Below we will discuss how some of these fallacies are used against Israel.

Double Standards

Cambridge Dictionaries Online defines a “double standard” succinctly: “A rule or standard of good behavior which, unfairly, some people are expected to follow or achieve but other people are not.”49

The use of different standards for Jews compared to others has been a major tool of discrimination at the heart of anti-Semitic activities and incitement over many centuries. This was often the case, for instance, when Jews were confined to live in certain parts of a city, were not free to wear the clothes they wanted to wear, and could not work in most professions. Double standards against them thus profoundly affected most aspects of their lives. This discrimination of Jews was frequently accompanied by their demonization.

The FRA definition of anti-Semitism distinguishes “regular” criticism of Israel from anti-Semitic expressions against it. It recognizes the anti-Semitic character of double standards, noting that it is an anti-Semitic act to apply double standards against Israel by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.50 One wonders, however, why dif- ferent standards should be applied for assessing democratic countries versus nondemocratic countries. That in itself seems to be a double standard.

The reactions to the Protective Edge campaign produced a slew of double standards. Just one case occurred when Secretary of State John Kerry said that Israel could do more to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.51 If one were to investigate U.S. attitudes toward causing civilian casualties in Afghanistan, for instance, it would emerge that Kerry’s remark was misplaced and out of order. His spokesperson Jen Psaki reiterated his request of Israel. Also UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius requested Israel to do more to prevent civilian casualties.52

It is rare that an official of an institution admits the existence of double standards against Israel. One such occasion occurred in December 2014 when Jacques De Maio, head of the International Red Cross in Israel and the Palestin- ian areas, said, “Why is there so much more focus on Israel than on Syria [and] other places where many more civilians are dying? . . . In other ongoing wars, more civilians die in one week than in Israeli wars in a full year.”53

Categories of Double Standards

The number of instances where double standards are applied against Israel is almost unlimited. To demonstrate the various aspects of this phenomenon, one can offer examples from various categories of double standards used against Israel as compared to other countries. It should be noted that as far as calls for boycotts are concerned, for instance, the use of false arguments is combined with appeals for actions against Israel.

One category of double standards applied against Israel is biased declarations or prejudiced reporting. Such declarations or reporting can come from the United Nations and other international organizations, governments, parlia- ments, church leaders, media, trade unions, NGOs, academic bodies, various institutions, as well as individuals.

A major case of biased declarations concerned the condemnations by many countries of the killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin by Israel in 2004. The flurry of positive international reactions to the killing of Bin Laden by the U.S. army in 2011 could have provided Israel with a major opportunity to demonstrate double standards applied against it by so many in the Western world and elsewhere. All one had to do was compare the reactions of various important leaders and institutions to this assassination with those after the killing of Sheikh Yassin. This terrorist leader was directly responsible for many lethal attacks on Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings.54

The United Nations’ declarations in these two cases well illustrate this bias. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters, “The death of Osama Bin Laden, announced by President Obama last night, is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism.”55 After the killing of Sheikh Yassin, then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had said, “I do condemn the targeted assassination of Sheikh Yassin and the others who died with him. Such actions are not only contrary to international law, but they do not do anything to help the search for a peaceful solution.”56

After the Bin Laden killing, leaders of the European Council and the European Commission stated that his death “made the world a safer place and showed that terrorist attacks do not remain unpunished.”57 Following the Yassin killing, then-EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said, “This type of action does not contribute at all to create the conditions of peace. This is very, very bad news for the peace process. The policy of the European Union has been consistent condemnation of extra-judicial killing.”58 Many other European politicians who had condemned the targeted killing by the Israel Defense Forces praised the Americans for killing Bin Laden.

Then-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the killing of Sheikh Yassin “unacceptable” and “unjustified.” The official spokesman of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the “unlawful attack” and observed, “We have repeatedly made clear our opposition to Israel’s use of targeted killings and assassinations.” British Prime Minister David Cameron congratulated President Obama on the success of the Bin Laden assassination. Cameron saw it as a massive step forward in the fight against extremist terrorism. Former Prime Minister Blair also welcomed Bin Laden’s demise.59

Omissions

A second type of double standards, and probably their most frequent subcategory, is the omission of relevant information. One way to omit is by deleting context. For instance, media may not or barely mention the thousands of terrorist rockets fired into Israeli population centers that eventually forced Israel’s army to enter Gaza in the 2008-2009 Cast Lead military campaign. That same media may then place much emphasis on Israel’s military actions against Hamas.

Thomas Friedman of The New York Times disclosed—many years later— that Western correspondents stationed in Beirut before 1982 did not write at all about the well-known corruption of the PLO leadership there. He also noted that these correspondents judged the PLO with much more largesse than they did with the Phalangists, Israelis, or Americans.60 One major reason was that they had to stay on good terms with the PLO; otherwise, when their foreign editor arrived, he would not be granted the much-coveted interview with Yasser Arafat.61

Disproportional  Behavior

A third category of double standards involves disproportional behavior. One example occurs when the media report in detail on negative news about Israel and barely mention far more extreme negative news about Arab or Muslim states. NGO Monitor has exposed how Human Rights Watch (HRW) uses dis- proportional behavior to demonize Israel in its publications. In 2008, NGO Monitor carried out a quantitative analysis of HRW’s publications. It found that this NGO portrayed Israel as the second worst abuser of human rights in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia, but ahead of Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. In that year, HRW condemned Israel for violations of “Human Rights Law,” “Humanitarian Law,” or “International Humanitarian Law” 33 times compared to 13 citations for the Palestinians, 6 for Hizbullah, and 5 for Egypt. NGO Monitor pointed out that HRW placed Israel on a par with Sudan, and with leaders of former Yugoslavia, Congo, and Uganda during that year.62

Interference in Israel’s Internal Affairs

A fourth type of the use of double standards is interference in Israel’s internal affairs. An example is a resolution unanimously adopted by the German parliament after the Gaza flotilla incident in 2010. It claimed that Israel’s action did not “serve the political and security interests of Israel.”

German former Social Democrat parliamentarian Gerd Weisskirchen, a leading anti-Semitism expert, wondered how the Bundestag could possibly decide what serves the interests of Israeli security. And even if it did, how could it make such a decision without an intensive dialogue with the Israeli Knesset?63

Discriminatory Acts

A fifth category of double standards is discriminatory acts against Israel. These may overlap with the earlier-mentioned category of biased declarations. Already a decade ago Cotler referred to the United Nations as a paradigm of double standards practiced against Israel. He said, “Despite the killing fields throughout the world, the UN Security Council sat from March to May 2002 in almost continuous sessions discussing a non-existent massacre in Jenin.”64 Another type of discrimination that manifests double standards against Israel is the promotion of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS). One example among many is that of the Norwegian state pension fund, which divested from shares of some Israeli companies while retaining the shares of a number of highly unethical companies from other countries in its portfolio.65

Double Standards in Applying International Law

A sixth category concerns double standards in applying international law. International lawyer Meir Rosenne, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and France, said, “There are two types of international law. One is applied to Israel, the other to all other states. This comes to the fore when one looks at the way Israel is treated in international institutions . . .”

Rosenne mentions as a typical example the 2004 International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Israeli security fence. “In its judgment The Hague court decided that the inherent right of self-defense is enforced only if one is confronted by a state. If this were true, that would mean that whatever the United States undertakes against Al-Qaeda is illegal. This cannot be considered self- defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter because Al-Qaeda is not a state.”6

Humanitarian  Racism

The earlier-mentioned “humanitarian racism” is yet another category of double standards. This is one of the least recognized forms of racism. As already stated, it can be defined as attributing reduced responsibility to people of certain ethnic or national groups for their criminal acts and intentions. People who engage in humanitarian racism judge misbehavior and crime differently according to the color and power rank of those who commit them. White people are held to different standards of responsibility than people of color, for example.67 And Israelis are blamed for whatever measures they take to defend themselves. Humanitarian racism is sometimes combined with demonization. In 1984, Swedish Deputy Foreign Minister Pierre Schori, a Social Democrat, visited Israel. He praised Arafat and his “flexible policy,” claiming in an article that “the terrorist acts of the PLO were ‘meaningless,’ while Israel’s retaliatory acts were ‘despicable acts of terrorism.’”68

Thus the double standards used against Israel appear in a large number of fields and have permeated many aspects of Western society. The application of such double standards against Israel has a cumulative effect of demonization and a slow buildup of support for its delegitimization.

Some European politicians admit that European countries use double standards against Israel. One of these is former Dutch Foreign Minister Uriel Rosenthal. He says about the UN Human Rights Council, “The attacks on Israel have been beneficial to countries such as Iran, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and until 2011 also Syria. Unfortunately several European countries also participate in the application of double standards.”69

That is tantamount to admitting that these countries commit anti-Semitic acts against Israel according to the FRA definition of anti-Semitism.

To better expose the bias, comparative studies should be made of the statements of leading European politicians concerning Israel and other countries in similar situations. A prime candidate to be investigated is Catherine Ashton, the previous high representative for foreign affairs and security policy of the European Union.

This author has analyzed many more examples of double standards in a lengthy essay on this subject.70

False Moral Equivalence

Another common type of distorted argument is false moral equivalence, a misuse of comparisons. It is the fallacious claim that there is no moral difference between two acts of greatly varying character. It is often employed to stress similarities between two evils of greatly differing magnitude. Sometimes one of the elements of the comparison is not evil, while the other is.

False moral equivalence should not be confused with moral relativism. The latter may be used to justify atrocities because they are acceptable in a specific culture’s value system, or in certain periods of history. Moral relativism is frequently employed to whitewash atrocities and racism in non-democractic societies, including Muslim ones.

Frequently, moral relativists posit colonialism, the age of globalization, the end of the Cold War, the rise of secularism, and the perceived cultural and imperial hegemony of the West over Muslim society as reasons for the rise of Islamist terror in the past twenty years. By using these factors as justifications for global terror, moral relativists rationalize the intended mass killings of civilians.71

False moral equivalence was also used in 1961 by Adolf Eichmann during his trial in Jerusalem. He claimed that there were no basic differences between the Allied and Axis powers during World War II. Judge Benjamin Halevi re- sponded to Eichmann during the trial by stating:

You have often compared the extermination of the Jews with the bombing raids on German cities and you compared the murder of Jewish women and children with the death of German women in aerial bombardments. Surely it must be clear to you that there is a basic distinction between these two things. On the one hand the bombing is used as an instrument of forcing the enemy to surrender. Just as the Germans tried to force the British to surrender by their bombing. In that case it is a war objective to bring an armed enemy to his knees. On the other hand, when you take unarmed Jewish men, women, and children from their homes, hand them over to the Gestapo, and then send them to Aus- chwitz for extermination it is an entirely different thing, is it not?72

False moral equivalence is used against Israel in many cases. It can be broken down into several categories. Some examples are categorized below. A number have already been discussed, such as Israel as a “Nazi state” and Israel as an “apartheid state.”

Zionism and Racism

“Zionism is racism” is an example of false moral equivalence; it was initially promulgated to further a political agenda. There was little mention of Zionism, the ethnonationalist movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland, as being a racist ideology until the mid-1960s. The singling out of Zionism as a form of racism was a device created by the Soviet Union to justify its refusal to condemn anti-Semitism. Soviet leaders felt that condemning anti- Semitism would anger its Arab-world allies.

This political strategy initially was used in the 1960s to try and expel Israel from the United Nations. When it failed, the Soviet Union, its satellite states, and Arab allies instead succeeded in passing UN Resolution 3379 in 1975.73 It determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.”74 This resolution remained in place until the General Assembly officially revoked it in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union.75

The notion of Zionism as a racist ideology remains very popular in the Arab world. Particularly, Arab anti-Semitic cartoons have propagated this false moral equivalence, often using stereotypical depictions of greedy, hook-nosed Jews. In one 2001 cartoon from the Lebanese Daily Star, a Hassidic Jew is pic- tured urinating on the world, wearing a cape that says “Racism.” According to Kotek, “The Lebanese [cartoonist] Stavro Jabra identifies the true cause of the evils of the world—arrogance and Jewish racism.”76

In Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly, a “quasi-governmental daily newspaper, cartoonist Gomaa is attacking Judaism: a rabbi incites racism with one of the stone tablets of the law.” This tablet, meant to resemble the Ten Commandments, merely says “racism.”77

Zionism and Colonialism/Imperialism

 Related to the abusive comparison of “Zionism is racism” is another statement of false moral equivalence: that Israel represents a colonial power in the Middle East. Proponents of this theory argue that Zionism, like colonialism and im- perialism, justifies the colonization of people of color in their own land by white people, who then rule the entire population and exploit their resources. Landes exposed the hypocrisy of this false moral equivalence on his website The Augean Stables. He pointed out the benign nature of Zionist settlement in Ottoman and British Palestine, which sharply contrasted with the imperial aspirations of European powers at the time:

Behind this rather blandly stated remark lies the path to a real assessment of Israeli “colonialism” and “imperialism.” All other colonial projects (e.g., Spanish in Latin America, British in South Africa, French in Algeria), occurred in the wake of a conquest. The only way that the new colonists could make claims to the land was by conquest, by (at best) driving away the inhabitants, and establishing overwhelming military superiority. Political power came from victory in war. In so behaving, the European imperialist-colonialists conformed to the international norms of millennia.

The Zionist project of colonization worked in a markedly different manner. Rather than arrive as zero-sum military victors, the Zionists arrived as positive- sum neighbors. Granted they had no ability to conquer, and granted they built up their defenses against predatory attacks from both Arabs and Bedouin inhabitants of the land, but they nonetheless made peace with most of those who dwelled there by offering the benefits of civil society: hard productive work made everyone better off.78

Zionism and Fascism

Another variant is the false moral equivalence of “Zionism is fascism.” When speaking at the Fifth Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Vienna in February 2013, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated, “Just like Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it becomes unavoidable that Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity.”79

This statement was criticized by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan- yahu. Netanyahu’s office released this response to Erdogan’s speech: “This is a dark and mendacious statement the likes of which we thought had passed from the world.” Erdogan did not retract his comments even after the international pressure, and he did not issue an apology.80

Kerry said, “Obviously we disagree with that, we find it objectionable.”81 A statement from the UN secretary-general’s office said, “The secretary-general heard the prime minister’s speech through an interpreter. If the comment about Zionism was interpreted correctly, then it was not only wrong but contradicts the very principles on which the Alliance of Civilizations is based.”82

The Holocaust and the Nakba

The Holocaust and the Nakba have often been compared in public discourse by Muslim inciters and their allies, but also by others. The two historical events are not equals and cannot be compared. The Nakba was a direct result of the Palestinians’ refusal to accept the UN partition resolution and the subsequent Arab-initiated war in Palestine. The Holocaust was a genocide of industrial extermination planned and executed by Germany and its many allies.

Meir Litvak and Esther Webman explore the construct of the Nakba as the equivalent of the Holocaust. Like the false moral equivalence of Zionism as racism, the equivalence of the Holocaust and the Nakba was a Palestinian strategic political maneuver: “The Nakba, epitomizing the Palestinian suffering, was being reconstructed as a founding myth in the Palestinian national identity, fulfilling, wittingly or unwittingly, a similar role to that of the Holocaust, the epitome of Jewish suffering, in Israeli society.”83

In an interview to Haaretz after a visit to Israel, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “The West was consumed with guilt and regret toward Israel because of the Holocaust, as it should be. But who pays the penance? The penance is being paid by the Arabs, by the Palestinians.”84

Robert Rozett, Tutu’s museum guide and director of the Yad Vashem Library, replied in the same newspaper:

Certainly it is the Jews who paid for the Holocaust with the blood of some six million innocent victims—not the perpetrators, not the bystanders and not Arabs in Palestine or anywhere else. Saying that the Palestinians are paying for the Holocaust falsely presupposes that the Jewish tie to the Land of Israel became significant only in the wake of the Nazi attempt to eradicate the Jews. It overlooks the ancient and ceaseless connection of the Jewish people to Is- rael, and the modern Zionist enterprise that returned an exiled people to their ancestral home.85

French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Algeria in 2007. In the town of Constantine, while lecturing to students, he said, “I appeal to progressive Islam to recognize the right of the people of Israel who have suffered so much to live freely. I appeal to the people of Israel not to inflict on the Palestinian people the same injustice that they have suffered for so many centuries.”86

Murders and Accidental Deaths

Another category of false moral equivalence implies that the intentional murder of innocent civilians is equal to the unintentional and accidental deaths of civilians in targeted assassinations. It is often used to claim a fallacious analogy between Israeli military operations intended to target terrorists only and premeditated, cold-blooded murder.

In March 2012, Ashton compared deaths of innocent people inflicted by serial killers and brutal dictators like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to accidental deaths of civilians due to Israeli actions in Gaza. In a speech to Palestinian youth in Brussels, she said, “When we think about what happened today in Toulouse, we remember what happened in Norway last year, we know what is happening in Syria, and we see what is happening in Gaza and other places—we remember young people and children who lose their lives.”

The then Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni responded, “There is no similarity between an act of hatred or a leader killing members of his nation and a country fighting terror, even if civilians are harmed.”87

During the Protective Edge campaign Ashton’s office once again morally equated Israel and Hamas. Speaking on behalf of Ashton, Italian Foreign Af- fairs Under-Secretary Benedetto Della Vedova condemned “the indiscriminate launching of rockets towards Israel by militant groups in the Gaza Strip,” adding that “the Union deplores the growing number of civilian victims coming from the Israeli military operation.”88 In this statement he not only failed to specify that these militant groups were terror groups as designated by the EU, his own organization,89 but also did not mention that terrorist rockets from Gaza indiscriminately target Israeli civilian population centers.90

Another example of this category of false moral equivalence occurred when U.S. Secretary of State Kerry compared the three people killed in the 2013 Bos- ton Marathon bombing to the nine people killed on the Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla that attempted to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza in 2010.91 Kerry here mischaracterized the militants on the Mavi Marmara as innocent activ- ists and bystanders, like the truly innocent Boston Marathon victims killed by terrorists.92

Philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain notes:

If we could not distinguish between an accidental death resulting from a car accident and an intentional murder, our criminal justice system would fall apart. And if we cannot distinguish the killing of combatants from the intended targeting of peaceable civilians, we live in a world of moral nihilism. In such a world, everything reduces to the same shade of gray and we cannot make distinctions that help us take our political and moral bearings.93

Targeted Actions Against Terrorists and Intentional Killing of Civilians

The November 16, 2012 front page of the print edition of The New York Times also used visual manipulation to convey moral equivalence between a killed Palestinian terrorist and a murdered Israeli civilian. This cover story displays two photographs of equal size, both from funerals. The first photo is of the Gaza City funeral of Ahmed al-Jabari, a Hamas military commander killed by an Israeli airstrike at the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense. The second image is of the funeral of Mina Scharf, the first Israeli civilian killed by a Hamas rocket during this operation.

Writing about Jabari’s and Scharf ’s respective backgrounds, Tablet Magazine’s Adam Chandler demonstrates the unjustness of this comparison in an editorial:

Jabari was killed for being a Hamas strongman, who directed terror activity for a decade and was one of the central figures in the planning of the Gilad Shalit kidnapping. Beneath his picture is the picture of the body of Mina Scharf, a 25-year-old mother of three, who worked for Chabad in New Delhi, India and who was one of three civilians killed when a Hamas rocket struck a residential building in Kiryat Malachi.94

In a Huffington Post opinion piece on the same topic, American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris asks, “In the same spirit, would equal and abutting space have been given to photos of the funerals of Osama Bin Laden and one of his victims?”95

In October 2001, Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi was assassinated by Palestinian terrorists. Danish Foreign Minister Mogens Lykketoft who later would become the leader of the Danish Socialists, said on television that there was no difference between this assassination and Israel’s targeted killing of terrorists.96

During the Protective Edge campaign the European Council released a document stating their conclusions about the escalating conflict in Gaza. Throughout their conclusions, Israel and Hamas are called the “parties” to the conflict, and Hamas is never called a terrorist organization even though the EU added Hamas to its “blacklist” of terrorist organizations in 2003.97

The document concludes with the sentence: “Israelis and Palestinians need to make the strategic choice of peace in order to allow their future generations to live lives freed from past conflicts and to enjoy the stability, security, and prosperity which they are currently being denied.”98 By using the term Palestin- ians, the EU goes a step further by not mentioning Hamas.

Kidnapping Soldiers Versus Imprisoning Terrorists

The public debate after the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit fostered a further category of false moral equivalence: its supposed analogy with imprisoned Palestinian terrorists.

In October 2011, at the time of the exchange of Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian detainees including 280 convicted of planning and perpetrating terror attacks, the expression “prisoner exchange” was used frequently. One organization that spoke of a prisoner swap was Amnesty International. In their press release titled “Israel-Hamas prisoner swap casts harsh light on detention practices of all sides,” Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director, stated, “This deal will bring relief to Gilad Shalit and his family after an ordeal that has lasted more than five years. Many Palestinian families will feel a similar sense of relief today when they are reunited with their relatives, many of whom have spent decades under harsh conditions in Israeli detention.”

In this same publication, one of the few released by Amnesty International about Shalit, and only at the time of his release, twelve paragraphs of the seventeen-paragraph text are about conditions in Israeli prisons for Palestinian detainees.99

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz deconstructed these and similar arguments:

Every single prisoner held by Israel has judicial review available to him or her and some have won release. Every one of them has access to Red Cross visitation, can communicate with family, and has a known whereabout. Kidnapped Israeli soldiers on the other hand are kept incommunicado by criminal elements, are routinely tortured, often murdered, (as occurred recently) and have no access to the Red Cross or judicial review. Moreover, the prisoners being held by Israel are terrorists—that is, unlawful combatants. Many are murderers who have been convicted and sentenced in accordance with due process. The “women” and “children” are guilty of having murdered or attempted to murder innocent babies and other non-combatants. The soldiers who were kidnapped are lawful combatants subject to prisoner of war status.

Dershowitz noted that Hamas or Hizbullah did not treat Israeli soldiers the way Israel treats its prisoners, because “they are terrorist organizations who do not operate within the rule of the law.”100

Legitimate Governments and Terrorists

When making statements about Israel and its terrorist enemies, officials from across the world have drawn false moral equivalence between actions by Israel’s legitimate government and those of terror organizations that are illegal according to international law. At the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, declarations by officials representing Russia, India, Turkey, and Sweden put Israel and Hamas on the same level.101

Prime Minister Erdogan told a gathering of the Eurasian Islamic Council, “Those who speak of Muslims and terror side-by-side are turning a blind eye when Muslims are massacred en masse.” He also said, “Those who turn a blind eye to discrimination toward Muslims in their own countries, are also closing their eyes to the savage massacre of innocent children in Gaza . . . Therefore, I say Israel is a terrorist state.”102

David Harris responded, “Erdogan has branded Israel a ‘terrorist state’ for having the audacity to defend itself against a group that seeks its destruction. He has vociferously denounced Israel’s use of military force, while never condemning the hundreds of missile attacks against Israel this year alone.”103 Erdogan’s extreme hypocrisy has become even clearer in view of the many murders committed by and in Muslim states, which have accelerated since the revolutions in a number of Arab countries in recent years.

Comparing Islamophobia with Anti-Semitism

In the Western world, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are often falsely presented as equal forms of discrimination. During his aforementioned visit to Algeria, President Sarkozy declared that nothing is more similar to an anti- Semite than an Islamophobe.104

Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia share a common element in that many Westerners reject the “other.” Yet the difference between these two types of fear and stereotyped discrimination is much greater than their similarity. Al- though both groups face adversity in modern Europe, the scope and styles of this persecution could not be more different. Anti-Semitism has its origins in many centuries of religious and ethnic hate propaganda. Islamophobia derives not only from perceived aggression but also from actual violence supported by many in the world of Islam in the name of religion.

In 2011, after the murders by Anders Breivik, Erna Solberg, then leader of the Conservative opposition and currently prime minister of Norway, gave an interview to the country’s largest paper Verdens Gang. She claimed that nowadays, Muslims in Norway are treated like the Jews were in the 1930s. Solberg gave as examples discrimination in the job market, non-admission to nightclubs, along with claims that they are not really Norwegians and are frequently asked where they came from originally. She added that many individual Muslims are held collectively responsible for the actions of all Muslims. Solberg implicitly admitted that her comparison was largely false by stat-  ing that Muslims today are not subject to brutal repression as Jews were in the 1930s. Solberg also conveniently ignored the fact that Norwegian authorities encourage Muslim participation in society. Muslims also play a significant role in Norwegian politics.

The Jewish journalist Mona Levin summed it up by noting, “Muslim-bashing is reprehensible and is neither made better nor worse by drawing parallels with Jewish history.”105 The chairman of the small Jewish community in Oslo, Ervin Kohn, reacted by asserting that Solberg’s inappropriate remarks about the Jews showed that she did not understand history. During the 1930s Jews were persecuted by states and were victims of racist laws, which is not the case with Muslims in Norway.

Islamophobia and Protective Edge

In some Western countries, the reactions to the Protective Edge campaign again brought the “Islamophobia equals anti-Semitism” issue to the fore. Jewish communities have played a part in allowing this. One of these is the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which issued a joint statement with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

British journalist and author Melanie Phillips analyzed this text and wrote:

The joint statement with the MCB condemned anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as if they were equivalent forms of bigotry . . . Islamophobia is a catch-all phrase used to demonize anyone who makes a legitimate criticism of Islam or Muslims. It is not irrational to fear the murder and terrorism perpetuated in the name of Islam; it is not bigoted to warn against the steady encroachment of Shari’a law or the connections between Islamic charities and terrorist money- laundering in London; it is not demonization to condemn Muslim attacks on women and girls or on freedom of speech. Yet all such opinions are damned as “Islamophobic” in order to silence them.106

In the Netherlands in September 2014, Jewish-community leaders, together with their Muslim and Christian counterparts, signed a joint declaration. One of the many problematic aspects was its statement that both “hatred of Jews and Islamophobia should not be tolerated.” It did not mention that a hugely disproportionate part of the aggression and incitement against Jews in the Netherlands originates from parts of the Dutch Muslim community.107

Condemnations

Frequent condemnations can be another form of demonization. More than ten years ago, Cotler said:

The United Nations General Assembly annually passes some 20 resolutions against Israel, as many as are passed against the rest of the international community combined. Again, the major human rights violators escape unscathed. While these decisions are not binding, they are important representations of the political culture of the international community.108

One might add that this situation has not changed very much over the past ten years.

The number of condemnations of Israel by individual countries is almost unlimited. The Gaza flotilla incident, for instance, which resulted from provo- cations by Turkish participants, drew many condemnations. The one from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation was part of its propaganda battle against Israel. Its statement said:

The OIC Group strongly condemns the illegal, brutal and provocative Israeli aggression carried out in international waters against the civilian convoy of ships that was carrying vital humanitarian aid to be delivered by hundreds of international peace and human rights activists to the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. The OIC Group also condemns in the strongest possible terms the killing and injury of several civilians by the Israeli military forces that attacked the Turkish vessel in the humanitarian convoy.109

Sweden also took an extreme anti-Israeli position after the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara. Immediately afterward, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt met the two Swedish flotilla activists in Istanbul, where he expressed his sympathy for them and their cause and condemned Israel.110 He also stated that Israel’s Palestinian policy was “catastrophic” and “leads to one problem after another.”111 One can indeed only regret that a detailed analysis of Ashton’s condemnations of Israel has never been made. If that had been the case, one could compare that to how often she has condemned the world’s major human rights violators.

Calls for Action

Part of the demonization process is carried out through public calls for acts against Israel and/or Jews. The most violent calls are those for genocide against Israel. The vast majority of these calls come from sizable parts of the Muslim world. Over the past decade, Iran has played a major role in this phenomenon. On October 26, 2005, Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the “World without Zionism” conference—which preceded the annual Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day established by Ayatollah Khomeini—at the Interior Ministry in Tehran. He stated:

Imam [Khomeini] said: “This regime that is occupying Quds must be eliminated from the pages of history.” This sentence is very wise . . . Today, [Israel] seeks, satanically and deceitfully, to gain control of the front of war . . . If someone is under the pressure of hegemonic power [i.e., the West] and understands that something is wrong, or he is naive, or he is an egotist and his hedonism leads him to recognize the Zionist regime, he should know that he will burn in the fire of the Islamic Ummah [nation] . . . Oh dear people, look at this global arena. By whom are we confronted? We must understand the depth of the disgrace imposed on us by the enemy, until our holy hatred expands continuously and strikes like a wave.

Other speakers at the event were terrorist leaders Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Khaled Mashal of Hamas, now living in Qatar. Before his statement, Ahmadinejad told the hundreds of students present to shout the slogan “Death to Israel!”112

Inciting to terror is another form of verbal aggression. Another type of call for action involves boycotts, divestment, or sanctions (BDS). All of these have a strong demonizing character.

Acts Against Israel

The most violent acts against Israel are usually accompanied by verbal demonization. The military campaigns, the suicide and other terror attacks gain, often though not always, support from the Arab propaganda war.

British anti-Semitism expert Michael Whine noted that a change has taken place in the nature of terrorist threats against Jewish communities:

Many terrorist groups that target Jews are rooted in political ideologies that incorporate anti-Semitism into their world view. Neo-Nazi groups, for example, adhere to the view that Jews are racially inferior and conspire to destroy the white race. Islamist terrorists of both Shiite and Sunni varieties believe that Jews are morally inferior and conspire to undermine and destroy Islam. Leftist terrorist groups that have targeted Jews have often conflated anti-Semitism with their anti-American and anti-capitalist viewpoints. The belief in a Jewish or Zionist conspiracy is common to the ideologies that drive most terrorist groups that target Jews and Israel. The idea that Jews, Zionism or Israel are preventing the creation of a new, better world for all is also common across different extremist ideologies.

He added:

Terrorist threats to Jews in the twenty-first century come in the main from three directions: the global jihad movement (i.e., Al-Qaeda and its affiliates and followers); Iran and its surrogates; and neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Far-left and anarchist groups carried out many terrorist attacks against Jewish communities in the 1970s and 1980s. Although some residual groups of this type remain in Germany, Italy, Greece, and Latin America, there is now less financial backing or training available for them than there was from the Soviet bloc before its implosion. Consequently, the terror threat from this quarter is currently low.113

Anti-Israeli demonstrations are another type of action that includes delegitimization. A substantial number of them are accompanied by anti-Jewish violence and anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli incitement. Shouts of “Death to the Jews” or “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” are heard in some of them.

BDS

The boycott campaigns against Israel must be seen in a much wider context. In the past, boycotts of different natures against other governments have not been very successful. Yet making a lasting impact is not necessarily the major aim of the boycotters. The accompanying publicity is often far more important to them as a goal.

There is another important aspect of boycotts. In complex and heavily integrated societies, the vulnerability of society increases all the time. Much more so than in the case of boycotts, this is evident from the murderous calls of the Islamic State movement. It asks supporters in the Western world to kill Westerners at random. If everybody is a potential victim, then protection for all becomes a huge problem.

In a context of general vulnerability, there is little the individual can do to protect himself. This was to a certain extent the case for Israelis during the intifadas; any Israeli could fall victim to murderous Palestinian attacks. Similarly, attacks abroad targeted Israelis at random.

The anti-Israeli Canadian Jewish author Naomi Klein admitted—while defaming Israel—that the anti-Israeli boycott is using double standards. She asserted, “The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.” Klein added, “Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?” Her answer: “Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.”114

This is a core case of anti-Semitism, as it singles out Israel and explains some of the instruments used in anti-Israelism and classic anti-Semitism. A key element of anti-Semitism is focusing one’s actions against Jews because they appear to be an easier target than others. Once one understands that, one sees it in many other situations involving Israel and the Jews. This also explains, in part, the phenomenon that the Jews are often the first to be attacked, but never the last. It also clarifies why Jews and Israel are indicators of the nature of many phenomena in both Muslim and Western societies.

The Chief Whip of the British Conservative Party, Michael Gove, said in a 2014 speech at the Holocaust Education Trust:

We need to speak out against this prejudice. We need to remind people that what began with a campaign against Jewish goods in the past ended with a campaign against Jewish lives. We need to spell out that this sort of prejudice starts with the Jews but never ends with the Jews. We need to stand united against hate. Now more than ever.

He continued: “We know that the jihadist terrorists responsible for horrific violence across the Middle East are targeting not just Jews and Israelis but all of us in the West.”

Gove summarized:

They hate Israel, and they wish to wipe out the Jewish people’s home, not because of what Israel does but because of what Israel is—free, democratic, liberal and western. We need to remind ourselves that defending Israel’s right to exist is defending our common humanity. Now more than ever.115

A similar argument to Klein’s was offered by the president of the American Studies Association (ASA), Curtis Marez. He did not dispute that many other countries, including some of those in Israel’s region, have a comparable or worse human rights record than Israel. He was reported to have said, however, that “One has to start somewhere.” He added that Palestinian civil-society groups had asked his organization to boycott Israel; no similar requests had been made by groups in other countries.116

The BDS movement has seen increasing successes in recent years. One should add that this is partly due to the lack of professional responses by the Israeli authorities.

Notes

1. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Pieter van der Horst, “The Origins of Christian Anti-Semitism,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 81, June 1, 2009.
2. Luke 6:29.
3. “SPD-Chef: Gabriel spricht über seinen Nazi-Vater,” Der Spiegel Online, January 11, 2011 (German).
4. “Israels Palästinenserpolitik: Gabriel erntet Kritik nach Apartheid-Vergleich,”
   Der Spiegel Online, March 15, 2012. (German)
5. https://wjewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Weizsaeker.html.  library.fes.de/pdf-files/do/07908-20110311.pdf.
6. Aribert Heyder, Julia Iser, and Peter Schmidt, “Israelkritik oder Antisemitis- mus? Meinungsbildung zwischen Öffentlichkeit, Medien und Tabus,” in Wilhelm Heitmeyer, , Deutsche Zustände (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 144ff (German).
7. Henry Rousso, Le dosssier de Lyon III: Le rapport sur le racisme et le négationn-
   isme à l’université Jean-Moulin (Paris: Fayard, 2004). (French)
8. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Free Press/Macmillan, 1993).
9. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Deborah Lipstadt, “Denial of the Holocaust and Immoral Equivalence,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 11, August 1, 200
10. youtube.com/watch?v=mkizDpl7x_E (part 1) (viewed June 2, 2009); www.youtube.com/watch?v=369WqEJ6ChA (part 2) (viewed June 2, 2009).
11. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Michael Widlanski, “Deceitful Palestinian Statements as Strategic Weapons,” Israel National News, September 23, 2013.
12. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Nadav Shragai, “Libel: Israel Intends to Destroy the Al-Aksa Mosque,” Israel National News, October 16, 2013.
13. JTA, “UNESCO sets date for contested Jews in Israel exhibit,” Haaretz, January 28,
14. http://wyoutube.com/watch?v=JA9nFQyRTdw (viewed July 14, 2014).
15. Fraser Nelson, “Anger over Dalyell’s ‘Jewish Cabal’ Slur,” The Scotsman, May 5, 200
16. Lahav Harkov, “Erdogan: ‘Ayelet Shaked has same mindset as Hitler,’” The Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2014.
17. Gulsan Solaker and Jonny Hogg, “Turkish PM Erdogan says Israel ‘surpasses Hitler in barbarism,’” Reuters, July 19, 2014.
18. Raphael Ahren, “South Africa’s ruling party compares Gaza op to Nazi crimes,”
    The Times of Israel, July 10, 2014.
19. “Venezuela condems Israeli ‘genocide’ and ‘extermination,’” Reuters, July 19, 2014.
20. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Robbie Sabel, “On the ‘Israel is an Apart- heid State’ Slander,” Israel National News, December 2, 2013.
21. Benjamin Pogrund, Drawing Fire (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 152.
22. Lilian Alemagna and Laura Breton, “Valls denonce un ‘apartheid territorial, social et ethnique’ en France,” Liberation, January 20, 2015 (French).
23. Nadav Shragai, The “Al-Aksa is in Danger” Libel: The History of a Lie (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2012).
24. Gerstenfeld, interview with Shragai.
25. Günther Grass, “Was gesagt werden muss,” Suddeutsde, April 10, 2012. (German)
26. Günter Grass, “Quello che deve essere detto,” La Repubblica, April 4, 2012 (Italian); Ugo Volli, “Poesia dedicata a Günter Grass”; Andrea Tarquini, “Una poesia contro Israele, l’ultima provocazione di Grass Le sue atomiche una minaccia”; Adriano Prosperi, “Se la storia viene capovolta in un brusio di responsabilità,” Informazione Corretta, April 4, 2012. (Italian)
27. Günter Grass, “What Must Be Said,” The Guardian, April 5, 2012.
28. Günter Grass, “Lo que hay que decir,” El País, April 4, 2012 (Spanish).
29. “Dokumentation: Læs Günter Grass’ digt,” Politiken, April 7, 2012 (Danish).
30. Günter Grass, “Det som må sies,” Aftenposten, April 8, 2012(Norwegian).
31. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Part-Time Anti-Semites,” Israel National News, April 23, 2012.
32. “Vote sur la “Palestine Fillon: ‘Israël menace la paix mondiale,’” Le Monde Juif, November 16, 2014 (French).
33. “Passover suicide bombing at Park Hotel in Netanya,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 27, 2002.
34. “Backgrounder: A Study in Palestinian Duplicity and Media Indifference,” CAM- ERA, August 1, 2002.
35. Tovah Lazaroff, “Erdan: Israel needs to unite against Palestinian delegitimiza- tion,” The Jerusalem Post, September 29, 2014.
36. “Examination of the names of Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge—Part Seven,” Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorist Information Center, December 1, 2014.
37. Ari Yashar, “Ya’alon to Kerry: Don’t Threaten Intifada,” Arutz Sheva, November 8, 2013.
38. Appeal to Poverty/Appeal to money. Aboucom. Retrieved from http://atheism. about.com/library/FAQs/skepticism/blfaq_fall_poverty.htm.
39. Henry Silverman, “How in 2010 Reuters engaged in anti-Israel propaganda,”Journal of Applied Business Research 27, 6 (November-December 2011).
40. Michael Labossiere. Fallacies. Fallacy Tutorial Pro 3.0. The Nizkor Project. Retrieved from www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies.
41. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “The Gaza Flotilla: Facts and Official Reactions,” Post- Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 102, September 15, 2010.
42. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Israel against the forces of sentimental appeal,” The Jerusalem Post, December 22, 2014.
43. Sreenivasan Jain, “How Hamas Assembles and Fires Rockets,” NDTV, August 5, 2014.
44. “Finnish reporter admits Gaza rockets launched from hospital,” The Jerusalem Post, August 2, 2014.
45. “Reporter in Gaza startled by Hamas rocket whizzing over her head,” The Jerusalem Post, August 3, 2014.
46. “Rhetorical Fallacies,” Undergraduate Writing Center, University of Texas at Austin, 2013.
47. “Gazans Want Marshall Plan, Israel Policy Falls Short,” Reuters, July 27, 2010.
48. Silverman, “How in 2010 Reuters engaged in anti-Israel propaganda.”
49. Cambridge Dictionaries  Online,  http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/brit- ish/double-standard.
50. Working Definition of anti-Semitism, The Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism (CFCA), http://antisorg.il/eng/Working%20definition%20of%20antisemitism.
51. Reuters and Matt Spetalnick, “U.S.: Israel can do more to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza,” Haaretz, July 18, 2014.
52. Reuters, “US, UN, France call on Israel to do more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza,” The Jerusalem Post, July 18, 2014.
53. Yonah Jeremy Bob, “ICRC: World holds Israel to legal double standards,” The Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2014.
54. For a more detailed analysis, see Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Bin Laden versus Yassin,” Ynetnews, March 5, 2011.
55. “U.N. chief Ban hails bin Laden death as ‘watershed,’” Reuters, May 2, 2011.
56. “World leaders condemn Yassin assassination,” The Sunday Times, March 22, 2004.
57. Lisa Bryant, “Europe Welcomes bin Laden’s Death,” Voice of America, May 2, 2011.
58. “World leaders condemn.”
59. Gerstenfeld, “Bin Laden.”
60. Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Anchor Books, Dou- bleday, 1990), 72-73.
61. Ibid.
62. “Examining Human Rights Watch in 2008: Double Standards and Post-Colonial Ideology,” NGO Monitor, January 13, 2009.
63. Gert Weisskirchen, “Anmassende Abgeordnete,” Jüedische Allgemeine, July 8, 2010. (German).
64. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Irwin Cotler, “Discrimination against Israel in the International Arena: Undermining the Cause of Human Rights at the United Nations,” in Europe’s Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today’s Anti-Semitism (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Yad Vashem, World Jewish Congress, 2003),
65. “Israel: Billionaire with settlement links targeted in divestment campaign,” www.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3758448930.
66. Meir Rosenne, personal communication, cited in Manfred Gerstenfeld, “European Politics: Double Standards toward Israel,” Jewish Political Studies Review 17, 3-4 (Fall 2005).
67. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Behind the Humanitarian Mask (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, 2008), 22-23.
68. Moshe Yegar, Neutral Policy—Theory versus Practice: Swedish-Israeli Relations (Jerusalem: Israel Council on Foreign Relations, 1993), 126-128.
69. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Uriel Rosenthal, “Nederland, Europa en Israel,” Aleh, February (Dutch)
70. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Double Standards for Israel,” Journal for the Study of An- tisemitism 4, 2 (2012): 613-638.
71. Steven Lukes, Moral Relativism (Big Ideas) (London: Profile Books, 2009).
72. Quoted in Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press, 2009), 105.
73. Dr. Yohanan Manor, “The 1975 ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution: The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of a Libel,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, May 2, 2010.
74. UN Resolution 3379 (XXX), United Nations, November
75. Manor, “1975 ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution.”
76. Joël Kotek, Cartoons and Extremism: Israel and the Jews in Arab and Western Media (Edgware, UK: Vallentine Mitchell, 2009), 41.
77. Ibid.
78. Richard Landes, “1948-2008 Part I: The Sad Story of the Nakba,” The Augean Stables, May 8, 2008.
79. “Erdogan: Zionism is a crime against humanity,” Ynetnews, February 28, 2013.
80. Selcan Hacaoglu and Nicole Gaouette, “UN Says Erdogan ‘Wrong’ to Link Zion- ism With Fascism,” Bloomberg, March 1, 2013.
81. Elad Benari, “Kerry Says Erdogan’s Comments are ‘Objectionable,’” Arutz Sheva, March 1, 2013.
82. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “Note to correspondents,” United Nations, March 1,
83. Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
84. Akiva Eldar, “Tutu to Haaretz: Arabs paying the price of the Holocaust,” Haaretz, August 28, 2009.
85. Robert Rozett, “An Open Letter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu,” Haaretz, September 4, 2009.
86. “Le discours prononcé à Constantine,” Algeria Watch, December 6, 2007 (French), http://www.algeria-watcorg/fr/article/pol/france/discours_sarkozy_constantine.htm.
87. “Israel to Ashton: Retract Toulouse-Gaza comparison,” The Jerusalem Post, March 20,2013.
88. “Debate: MEPs call for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” European Parliament, July 17, 2014.
89. “Freezing funds: list of terrorists and terrorist groups,” European Union.
90. “Israel’s protection and Hamas’ exploitation of civilians in Operation Protective Edge,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 24, 2014.
91. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “The Gaza Flotilla: Facts and Official Reactions,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, September 15, 2010.
92. JTA, “John Kerry Compares Gaza Flotilla and Boston Marathon Bombing Vic- tims,” Forward, April 23, 2013.
93. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2003),  ch. 1.
94. Adam Chandler, “The Times, The Guardian Misrepresent Conflict,” Tablet Magazine, November 16, 2012.
95. David Harris, “Israel and Hamas: Moral Clarity, Moral Fog, Moral Hypocrisy,”
    The Huffington Post, November 20, 2012.
96. Herb Keinon, “Danish FM: Ze’evi Murder Same as Targeted Killings,” The Jerusalem Post, October 19, 2001.
97. Anton La Guardia, “Hamas is added to EU’s blacklist of terror,” The Telegraph, September 12, 2003.
98. “European Council conclusions on external relations (Ukraine and Gaza),” Eu- ropean Council, July 16, 2014.
99. “Israel-Hamas prisoner swap casts harsh light on detention practices of all sides,” Amnesty International, October 18, 2011.
100. Alan Dershowitz, “The Anti-Israel Double Standard Watch,” The Huffington Post, July 14, 2006.
101. Harris, “Israel and Hamas.”
102. Emre Peker, “Turkey Labels Israel a ‘Terrorist State,’” The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2012.
103. Harris, “Israel and Hamas.”
104. “Discours de Nicolas Sarkozy à Alger,” Acom, December 3, 2007 (French), http://www.afrik.com/article13062.html.
105. Mona Levin, “Kan ikke sammenlignes,” Aftenposten, August 9, 2011 (Norwegian).
106. Melanie Phillips, “The False Equation of Jew-hatred and Islamophobia,” The Jerusalem Post, September 5,
107. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Dutch Jewish Leaders Sign a Damning Declaration,” Israel National News, September 4, 2014.
108. Gerstenfeld, interview with Cotler, 220.
109. “OIC Secretary General: Israeli Aggression on the Relief Convoy Heading for Gaza Is a Crime and Blatant Violation of All International Laws Norms and Standards,” Organization of Islamic Cooperation, May 31, 2010, www.oic-oci. org/topic_detail.asp?t_id=3833.
110. Mats Tunehag, “Iran’s Swedish Protector,” The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2010.
111. “Swede Bites Dog,” The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2010.
112. “Iranian President at Teheran Conference: ‘Very Soon, This Stain of Disgrace [Israel] Will Be Purged from the Center of the Islamic World—and This is Attainable,’” Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Special Dispatch Series, 1013, October 28, 2005.
113. Michael Whine, “Terrorist Incidents against Jewish Communities and Israeli Citizens Abroad, 1968-2010,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 108, July 1, 2011.
114. Naomi Klein, “Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction,” The Nation, January 26, 2009.
115. Rowena Mason, “Gove says boycott of Israeli goods is sign of ‘resurgent anti-semitism,’” The Guardian, September 9, 2014.
116. Lazar Berman, “Top US academic association decries Israel Boycott,” The Times of Israel, December 22, 2013.