Reckoning with the Muslim World’s Loathing of Israeli Jews

The key imbalances that explain the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict

There are two ways to try to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict.

You can go down the historic list of events, following the recriminations and reprisals, thus getting lost in the weeds and the propaganda.

Alternatively, and more helpfully, you can try to see the forest for the trees, to recognize what’s hiding in plain sight in the Middle East.

In fact, the second, holistic approach should be used to interpret the findings of the first, more analytical one.

What, then, is the undeniable essence of the conflict? What are the key facts that help explain the entire postwar history of Israel and the Arab world?

There are two key asymmetries:

• First, many Arabs simply hate Jews, and they’ve hated them even before the formation of modern Israel, having acquired that hatred from the horse’s mouth, as it were, that is from the Nazis themselves.
• Second, postwar Jews in Israel have always been vastly outnumbered by Arabs in the surrounding countries of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq, and by the Persians in Iran. Even the population of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank rivals that of Jews in Israel. Yet Israel punches far above its weight class.

We need to understand the causes of that hatred, then, and the implications of Israel’s relative puniness and superpower status to make sense, for example, of Hamas’ 2023 pogrom in Gaza and of the region’s recent history.

Muslim hatred of Jews

The anti-Judaism begins in the Arab world with the Quran which brims with contempt and curses for everyone who rejects Islam, including Jews. Some of that early hatred was inherited from Christianity, in which hostility toward Jews goes back to the New Testament’s scapegoating of them for the Romans’ crucifixion of Jesus.

But as the historian Bernard Lewis points out, Christians demonized Jews, attributing “cosmic evil” to them, whereas early Muslims followed “pagans” in merely ridiculing Jews.

Instead of promoting Jews to the status of would-be planet-conquerors, in the manner of later, deranged conspiracy theorists, the pagan “tendency was rather to ridicule the Jews for their faceless, formless god in the clouds and for such absurd and barbarous customs as circumcision, the rejection of pig-meat, and, most absurd of all, the Sabbath. Several Greek and Roman authors noted that because of this comic practice the Jews were wasting one-seventh of their lives.”

Still, in the nineteenth century, Muslims joined Christians in perpetrating the canard of the “blood libel,” accusing Jews of killing children to use their blood in religious rituals. In 1840, for instance, there was the Damascus affair, in which officials seized several Jews and tortured them for allegedly killing a friar and his Muslim servant to use their blood to bake matzo for Passover.

The Arabic translation of the fabricated Protocols of Elder Zion in around 1927 exacerbated Arabs’ demonization of Jews, as did the rabid conspiracy theories of the influential Sunni Islamic scholar Rashid Rida (1865–1935 CE) who linked Jews to Freemasons and to the Western banking system. Islamic Studies Professor Uriya Shavit says that according to Rida, the Jews “dominated the Freemasons, who concealed their ultimate goal of establishing a religious Jewish state and who had brought down the religious governments in Europe, Russia, and Turkey, where Islamic law had been replaced with an atheist government that sought to eliminate Islam.”

But as the political scientist Matthias Küntzel explains, Arabic condescension towards Jews turned into white-hot hatred mainly under the auspices of the Nazis. The “decisive transfer” of the European model of anti-Judaism to the Muslim world

took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda. Important to this process were the Arabic-language service broadcast by the German shortwave transmitter in Zeesen between 1939 and 1945, and the role of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was the first to translate European anti-Semitism into an Islamic context. Although Islamism is an independent, anti-Semitic, antimodern mass movement, its main early promoters — the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti and the Qassamites in Palestine — were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist government.

Indeed, Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine ended up cooperating with the Nazis in the war.

And the hatred of Jews in the Muslim world has only grown since the outcome of WWII. According to the Anti-defamation League’s Global 100 survey of “antisemitism” (a misnomer meaning anti-Judaism), in 2014 hostility towards Jews was at 74% in the Muslim world, meaning that 74% of respondents to a survey in that region answered the questions in a mostly anti-Jewish manner.

They affirmed, for example, that “Jews have too much power in the business world and in financial markets,” “Jews have too much control over global affairs and media,” “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust,” “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind,” “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” or that “People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.”

There’s no need for surveys, however, to determine the sentiment towards Jews in the Muslim world since the history of terrorism there speaks volumes.

The history of hatred’s violent expressions

No sooner had the UN ordered in 1947 that Palestine be divided into Jewish and Palestinian regions, than Arabs started physically attacking Jews in Palestine. Jews retaliated and right after they declared independence, when British forces withdrew, Egypt launched an aerial assault on Tel Aviv, joined by Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. In the ensuing war, Jews won control of more land than the UN had allotted them, which is why Palestinians call this War of Independence for Israel the “Nakba,” the “Catastrophe.”

Thus, there was no Palestinian sympathy for Jews even directly after the Holocaust. These Arabs cared more about their land than about the Zionist solution to the Jewish plight — because Arabs have historically hated Jews.

In 1967 Israel responded to Syria’s bombardment of its villages, by shooting down six Syrian fighter jets. Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt and a “staunch Pan-Arab nationalist”

mobilized his forces near the Sinai border, dismissing the UN force there, and he again sought to blockade Elat. In May 1967 Egypt signed a mutual defense pact with Jordan.

Israel answered this apparent Arab rush to war by staging a sudden air assault, destroying Egypt’s air force on the ground. The Israeli victory on the ground was also overwhelming. Israeli units drove back Syrian forces from the Golan Heights, took control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and drove Jordanian forces from the West Bank. Importantly, the Israelis were left in sole control of Jerusalem.

That was the Six-Day War.

Besides the Yom Kippur War with Egypt and Syria in 1973, and a couple of wars with Lebanon, there were two Palestinian intifadas, or popular uprisings “aimed at ending Israel’s occupation of those territories and creating an independent Palestinian state.” The second uprising subsided by 2005 and ended with the Palestinian Authority losing support “amid charges of widespread corruption. Many Palestinians now turned to Hamas, which won the 2006 legislative elections and took power by force in Gaza in 2007.”

Hamas’ charter calls for Israel’s complete destruction, justifying this with all the conspiratorial, demonizing tropes, paraphrasing Rashid Rida in saying, “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

The long peace process between Israel and Palestine was sabotaged by hardliners on both sides, who threatened violence at the prospect of any concession to the enemy. Indeed, Hamas’s charter makes this explicit: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” Again, “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion.”

Israel has its Jewish hardliners, too, such as the settlers who shrink Palestinian territories, the extremist who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for signing the Oslo Accords in 1995, and the Orthodox Jews who supported PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s illiberal initiatives to disempower Israel’s judiciary, which left the country blindsided by Hamas’s 2023 pogrom.

Even so, compared to the Arab world and its dictatorships, Israel is pragmatic, not bloodthirsty in its use of violence, in its holding of territory, and in its negotiation of peace treaties.

The asymmetries in size and prosperity

This takes us to the second key asymmetry, beginning with the obvious difference in physical size between Israel and its Muslim neighbours. As of this writing, in 2023, the Jewish population of Israel is around 7 million. Population of Egypt: 109 million. Jordan: 11 million. Lebanon: 5.6 million. Saudi Arabia: 36 million. Syria: 21 million. Iran: 88 million. Palestine: 5 million.

Thus, given the widespread demonization and hatred of Jews in the Muslim world, how have Jews managed to stay physically in Israel? That is, at some point since WWII, why haven’t hordes of Muslims driven Israel’s Jews into the Mediterranean Sea?

Here’s the only reason: it’s because Israel’s Jewish society overall is liberal and pragmatic, not dogmatically theocratic, which has enabled Israel to partner with the world’s premier superpower, the United States. The US backs Israel militarily, and Israel’s free markets and scientific expertise have likely equipped the country with nuclear weapons. Despite its puny size, Israel is a superpower in the Middle East.

If the animosity were mutual, and Jews loathed Muslims as much as Muslims loathe them, Israel would have declared holy war on the Muslim world, firing up the Evangelical Christians in the US and forcing Washington to defend Israel in eliminating the palpable threat to the existence of a Jewish state. Israel would have nuked its neighbours just as surely as Iran, Syria, or Hamas would annihilate Israel if they had the military capability to do so.

Or Jews would be jubilant in the streets of Israel whenever reports came of collateral damage in their retaliatory strikes against Islamist terrorists. “The more dead Muslim children the better,” you’d hear Israelis saying all the time with tears of joy streaming down their cheeks.

But in the Middle East that psychotic wishing for mass murder happens only in the Muslim world, and the reason for the difference is clear: Most Israeli Jews don’t hate Muslims because those Jews have places to go and things to do. Israel’s a thriving, powerful country with a booming technology sector to manage. Its culture is secular, modern, and classically liberal, which means Jewish Israelis are too busy enjoying their liberties to waste their energy on a deranged fantasy of bringing death to all Arab civilians. On top of that, most Jews are effectively secular humanists so they respect everyone’s human rights.

The unholy union of the two asymmetries

Yet as much as the above tracks some causes of Muslim hatred of Jews, we still haven’t gotten to the bottom of it. Only with the combination of the two asymmetries does the psychological basis become clear. Many Muslims hate Jews because they resent the success of Israel. They’re jealous of Israeli Jews’ wealth and happiness, and of Jews’ prominence in world affairs.

Above all, tens of millions of Muslims evidently fear the theological implications of this persistence of a Jewish state. It’s not just that many Arabs would like to regain control of the holy places in Israel. No, it’s that the outsized success of such a relatively small population of Jews, right in the heart of the Muslim world makes Allah look weak. Israeli Jews’ power and happiness shame Islam itself. The Muslim’s love of God, then, is liable to turn into hatred of the primary threat against the Muslim religion, the threat being the modernity that Israel’s secular liberalism represents.

This fear of Islam’s inadequacy in the modern period must have been stirred by the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, and by the rank poverty and oppression in many Muslim lands.

Israel’s Human Development Index’s global ranking is 22, right behind the US’s ranking of 21. Egypt’s is 97, Syria’s is 150, Lebanon’s is 112, Iran’s is 76, Iraq’s is 121, and Palestine’s is 106. This index “considers the health, education, income and living conditions in a given country to provide a measure of human development which is comparable between countries and over time.”

(Mind you, this index abstracts from issues of the distribution of goods within each country, measuring only the potential human development that could be achieved if there were no social inequality. Adjusting for the inequality, Israel’s global ranking is 29, Egypt’s is 100, Iraq’s is 93, Palestine’s is 88, and Iran’s is 56.)

A third of Saudi Arabia’s population probably lives in abject poverty, meaning on less than 4 USD per day. The amount of people in Egypt who are just as poor is over 73%. Syria: over 88%. Iran: almost 18%. Jordan: over 16%. Palestine: over 22%. And in Israel, it’s just 2.47%.

Granted, some of that poverty is due to the war-torn status of much of the Muslim world, and to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and interference with Gaza. But why are Muslim countries so violent, and why have the Palestinian territories been occupied or interfered with over the years? Hint: it’s not because Israeli Jews are evil.

Moreover, women and LGBT folks are much freer in Israel than they are in the Muslim world. In Israel you’re free to criticize Judaism and the Israeli government. In the Muslim world you can be imprisoned or executed for expressing the equivalent doubts.

Of course, Muslims in the Middle East say they’re proud of their religion and of their homeland. But actions often speak louder than words. Muslim militants routinely target Israeli civilians, bombing Israel indiscriminately, and even committing suicide in the process. They do so not just because they’re no match for Israel’s military, but because they loathe all Jews.

Meanwhile, Israelis retaliate, often causing collateral damage in the civilian Muslim population, and that happens not because Israel wants to kill civilians, but because its military’s targets use civilians as human shields to help them win the propaganda war. And if Israel didn’t retaliate, and allowed the Muslim world to keep killing Jews in Israel, that would dwindle Israel’s already small population, making the state of Israel pointless.

Case study: a bombed hospital in Gaza

As if to illustrate my point shortly after I wrote the above, and while Israel had been blockading and bombing Gaza as it was preparing to invade it to wipe out Hamas in retaliation for the pogrom, reports came of a hospital bombing in Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians.

Fuelled by misinformation and propaganda on social media, the Arab world immediately blamed Israel, and protested in the streets of Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, and Tunisia. “Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq issued statements condemning Israel and accusing its military of bombing the hospital.” Jordan cancelled its summit with President Biden.

Meanwhile, Israel took some time to gather the evidence, and contended that the bombing of the hospital wasn’t caused by an Israeli missile, but by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket. The crater left at the impact site is tiny compared to the crater normally left by an Israeli bomb, and the buildings and vehicles at the site are intact and mainly just scorched, which indicates the damage was caused by the igniting of the rocket’s leftover fuel. Israel even released intercepts of Hamas fighters acknowledging that their side had inadvertently fired the rocket that landed near the hospital. And the US government has agreed with Israel’s assessment.

Days after the blast, the NY Times reported that

as new evidence contradicting the Hamas claim has emerged, the Gazan authorities have changed their story about the blast. Spokespeople have released death tolls varying from 500 to 833, before settling on 471.

The Hamas-run health ministry has also declined to release further details about those 471 victims, and all traces of the munition have seemingly vanished from the site of the blast, making it impossible to assess its provenance. Raising further questions about Hamas’s claims, the impact site turned out to be the hospital parking lot, and not the hospital itself.

Indeed, regarding those alleged hundreds of civilian deaths at the hospital, how could the death toll have been so high from a bomb blast that occurred outside buildings that were hardly damaged, let alone levelled? Wouldn’t there had to have been hundreds of people milling around in the parking lot that evening? Also, those reports came from Hamas, the perpetrators of the pogrom against Israel. So, you know…

Days earlier, the NY Times had sensationalized the story, though, by reporting breathlessly Hamas’s claim that hundreds were killed in an “Israeli strike” on the hospital. That Times story showed a picture of a levelled building that had nothing to do with the hospital.

Now, all militaries lie, and truth is the first casualty of war. But it’s obvious that the Arab world’s reaction to this incident hasn’t been rational. On the contrary, its reaction has been the result of what I’ve been talking about: unalloyed, racist hatred of Jews. These Muslims will protest in the streets if you disrespect their religion by drawing a satirical cartoon of their prophet. They’ll even murder the cartoonists.

Evidently, the ideal mental state for too many Muslims in the Middle East isn’t critical thinking but ecstatic faith in a higher power to which they long to submit. Consequently, they’re vulnerable to being exploited by dictatorial governments that approximate that higher power for them.

Where’s the famous Islamic humility needed for these unconditional supporters of Palestine to recognize they may have erred in blaming Israel for the Gazan hospital bombing? By kneeling in prayer, for example, Muslims make a show of humility in demonstrating their submissiveness to Allah. But if you think you’re aligned with the greatest power in existence, perhaps that conceit can go to your head; indeed, if you think you’re on that most winning of teams, maybe you’ll assume you can do whatever you like with the losers and infidels. So, for many Muslims, when the honour of their deity is at stake, as it is 24/7 for them, they’re liable to ignore or to downplay any troubling piece of evidence.

The pragmatic, secular mindset of most Israeli Jews couldn’t be more different, which again explains why Israel is the superpower in the region, despite its smaller size.

Seeing the forest rather than the trees

Most of the Muslim world doesn’t want a Jewish state to exist in its midst, whereas the only reason Israelis are concerned about their Muslim neighbours is because of the latter’s culture of toxic loathing and scapegoating of Jews.

Recall that Jews have never been especially interested in proselytizing. They don’t want to convert the world to Judaism, so they don’t see foreign religious practices as affronts to their dignity. And Israel prospers because of its modern liberalism and its alliance with America, having nothing to fear from economic competition with the Muslim world.

Israel’s only fear is existential, which is why it can’t afford to stray from its pragmatism. If it’s to survive, Israel needs to be downright Machiavellian in defending itself against the virulent racism of the surrounding Arab countries.

Granted, Netanyahu has been too clever by half, in dividing Palestinians by covertly supporting Hamas and disempowering the Palestinian Authority, a ploy which seems to have backfired. Still, only the power inequality has enabled Israel to exist since the modern country’s founding. Muslim theocracies both hamper those countries’ economic prospects and foment demonization of non-Muslims.

Thus, when leftists respond to Hamas’s 2023 pogrom by blaming Israel in kneejerk fashion for its “illegal” occupation of Palestine, we should sneer at this accusation’s cluelessness. As if impotent international law could save Israel from the wrath of its Muslim neighbours who think all Jews are demon spawn!

Or the United Nations will condemn Israel’s retaliation for some Islamist terrorist incident by saying Israel’s response is “disproportionate,” as if Israel’s critics were trying to one-up the Shakespearean stereotype of Jews in allowing only for the appropriate “pound of flesh.” No more and no less, only an eye for an eye — as though this were a technocratic exercise in bean-counting, rather than a decades-long cold war with existential stakes for the small, surrounded state of Israel.

Yes, Israel has contributed to its conflict with the Arab world, such as by making life harder for Palestinians by building settlements to cut them off from each other, and by ruthlessly retaliating against terrorist acts, inevitably causing collateral damage in the process. It’s no accident that non-psychopathic soldiers often suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: every single military act in war is inherently a barbarity, whereas soldiers are expected to go back to being civil in peacetime.

But Israel’s main contribution to the conflict has been to continue to exist even as such a relatively tiny population of thriving, modern, powerful Jews in the middle of the Muslim world, giving the lie to the Islamic conceit that Allah rewards Muslim faith. That’s what a great many Muslims can’t tolerate, and it’s why they stoop to hatred and to committing, supporting, or celebrating savage acts of violence against Jewish civilians rather than just accepting the peace offer of recognizing the rights of two states in their midst, one being largely Jewish.

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