Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

July 13, 2023

The Dire Effects of the Third Reich’s Export of Anti-Semitism to the Middle East

Jew-hatred was a cause, not a consequence, of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In his book Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism, and the Middle East, Matthias Küntzel argues that the Third Reich’s efforts to export anti-Jewish propaganda to the Arab world went far beyond the famous meeting between Hitler and the mufti of Jerusalem, or hate-filled radio broadcasts in 1941 Baghdad. One key piece of evidence he considers is a pamphlet titled Islam and Judaism, which employs such phrases as “free of Jews”—an evident borrowing from the German Judenfrei, a term popular with the Nazis:

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