Hamid Dabashi, a professor at Columbia University, writes in Al Jazeera that Muslims and Jews should work together to fight antisemitism.
Sounds reasonable. right?
But this is a smokescreen for Dabashi to to spew his own hate - to claim that Zionism is an ally of antisemitism, that Israel is a colonialist state beholden to European powers while at the same time the Europeans want to export all Jews to Israel, and other hateful nonsense that appears to actually justify modern Muslim Jew-hatred.
For example:
The Zionists claim that the establishment of the state of Israel is to protect Jews against persecution. This is a false claim. The establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine, where Jews have always lived alongside Muslims and Christians, was a European colonial project and as such has exacerbated the terror coming towards the Jews.Meaning, Muslims who killed Jewish immigrants were justified because it is all Europe's fault.
Let's back up to how Dabashi describes contemporary European antisemitism:
The numbers are staggering and Europe-wide. "Antisemitism is rising sharply across Europe, experts have said," according to a recent report by the Guardian, "as France reported a 74 percent increase in the number of offences against Jews last year and Germany said the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks had surged by more than 60 percent". The article further says: "The figures confirm the results of three recent Europe-wide surveys showing Jewish people feel at greater risk, and are experiencing markedly more aggression, amid a generalized increase in racist hate speech and violence in a significantly coarser, more polarized political environment."
The deep roots of anti-Semitism in Europe are widespread and murderous. From a prolonged history of pogroms to the Crusades to the horrors of the Holocaust, and a long and nasty history in between, European Jews have been the consistent subject of baseless slander, vicious defamation, malignant lies and rumours, wild and vilifying conspiracy theories, all resulting in massacres and ultimately genocide under Nazi Germany. In no other continent, country, or culture have Jews ever been so brutalised as they have been in Europe.
Although no other clime or continent is entirely immune to it, anti-Semitism is a specifically European disease, with European Christianity a main culprit in the carnage.
But look at all the recent attacks against Jews in Europe:
In 2012, in Toulouse, Mohamed Merah shoots dead four people, including three children, at a Jewish school.
In 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche attacks the Jewish Museum in central Brussels, killing two Israeli tourists, a French volunteer and a Belgian museum receptionist.
In 2015, gunman Amedy Coulibaly, claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group, takes hostages at a Jewish supermarket, killing four.
Also in 2015, Omar El-Hussein, a 22-year-old Dane of Palestinian origin, killed a Jewish volunteer security guard outside a synagogue and wounds two police officers.
In 2018, 85 year old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was savagely murdered by two men, one of whom shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he was killing her.
And these are just the major events. In Sweden, "pro-Palestinian" protesters have been heard saying they want a new intifada to kill the Jews and call Jews "apes and pigs."
They aren't Christian.
Dabashi deliberately erased every single major deadly incident of antisemitism in Europe in order to support his argument that all European antisemitism is Christian. The only mention of an actual attack was the murder of Ilan Halimi by a Muslim gang - but Dabashi just calls them a gang.
In other words, Dabashi - while pretending to be against antisemitism - is erasing rampant Muslim antisemitism in Europe, virtually the only flavor of antisemitism that has actually been killing Jews in Europe over the past decade.
Why does he do this? By mentioning Halimi's murder he shows that he is aware of the many deadly attacks against Jews by Muslims in Europe, so this cannot be an oversight. Dabashi wants to deliberately erase history to bolster his thesis that Muslims cannot be antisemitic and only European Christians can, Why?
The answer can be found in his vitriol against Zionism:
According to Dabashi, Zionism is so evil that Zionists have no moral authority - the implication that they have forfeited their very right to be considered human beings.
Today, anti-Semitism is real and Zionists are categorically unqualified even to detect, let alone to fight it. Jews are the victims, Zionists the beneficiaries of anti-Semitism. ...
To fight anti-Semitism, the fighter must have moral authority. As a racist apartheid state, Israel lacks that moral authority. As an ideology of racist occupation of Palestine, Zionism lacks that moral authority. As active, hardcore or liberal advocates of that ideology of land theft, occupation and incremental genocide of Palestinians, Zionists lack that moral authority.
Of course, Palestinian terror attacks towards "Zionists" in pizza shops and discos are justified because Zionists are immoral subhumans. But he is saying more than that by not mentioning any Muslim attacks against Jews in Europe. That deliberate omission can only be interpreted as a justification for the murder of Jews by Muslims.
The Muslims in Europe weren't attacking Jews bur fighting back against the evil of Zionism. That's why these attacks don't fall in the category of antisemitism - murdering a Holocaust survivor is the action of a freedom fighter. After all, statistically speaking, she was probably a Zionist.
The irony is that while Professor Dabashi says that Zionists cannot claim to be able to define antisemitism, he has proven in this very essay that he is supremely unqualified not only to speak about antisemitism but about any moral issue whatsoever.
Hamid Dabashi is a completely disgusting individual who whitewashes and justifies Muslims murdering Jews.