Stand for Israel

U.S. ambassador to Belgium and long-time Obama aid Howard Gutman addressed the Jewish Conference on Anti-Semitism in Europe last Wednesday. In his speech, the ambassador made a distinction between “traditional” anti-Semitism – a baseless racial hatred of Jewish people – and Muslim anti-Semitism, which he described as a mere outgrowth of the “ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” According to Gutman’s logic, Muslim hatred of Jews is merely a reaction to Israeli aggression towards Arabs.

The ambassador’s claim is historically false. There is a longstanding tradition of intolerance and Jew-hatred in Islamic countries. Jews in the Middle East, along with Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities, have suffered greatly in Muslim-majority countries since the emergence of Islam.

In fact, Omar, the successor of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, sanctioned the persecution of dhimmis, or non-Muslims, in his Charter of Omar, which defined the laws that governed the lives of dhimmis living in Muslim lands. Among the many restrictions of the Charter: Jews were forced to wear a yellow badge (blue for Christians), non-Muslims were not allowed to practice their religion publicly, and were not allowed to own horses since horses were deemed noble.

Non-Muslims were also required to pay special taxes which served as a reminder of their inferiority, as the Koran states (9:29) “Fight against those who believe not in Allah…until they pay the tribute regularly with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” The implementation of these policies was carried out with varying degrees of cruelty and inflexibility depending on the ruler at the time.

The effect of this persecution is illustrated in the history of Yemen. The Yemenite Jewish community was once a respected part of Yemenite society. But successive Muslim leaders treated Yemen’s Jews with cruelty. At times synagogues were burned to the ground and Jews were forced to convert. At the turn of the 20^th century a law was enforced in which fatherless Jewish children under thirteen were torn away from their mothers to be raised in Muslim homes. This law, according to historian S.D. Goitein, “more than anything else impelled the Yemenite Jews to quit that country,” and seek refuge in the fledgling Jewish state.

A memo written by the British vice-consul to Iraq, Wilkie Young, in 1909 is also telling. In it, Young described the attitude of the Muslims in Iraq towards their Jewish and Christian neighbors as that of a “master towards slaves whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as the keep their place,” adding that “any sign of pretension to equality [by Jews and Christians] is promptly repressed.”

These are just two of the many historical examples. The U.S. ambassador’s suggestion that Islamic anti-Semitism is purely a result of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians overlooks the historical roots of Muslim Jew-hatred, and excuses those that plot against Jews worldwide by placing the blame on the victim.