Anti-Semitism

This post discusses anti-Semitism, and only tangentially touches economics.  Anti-Semitism is an intellectually and morally bankrupt but enduring institution.  Carol Gould, writing for Pajamasmedia.com in "Major UK Muslim Group Wallows in Anti-Semitism," describes the virulent anti-Semitism of the Mulsim Public Affairs Committee of the UK.  I am not surprised that a Muslim group dislikes Israeli policy, but I am dismayed at how that dislike grows to hate and bleeds into animosity for Jews everywhere.  Its contagion infects non-Muslims, with whom they interact, dimming their perception of reality.  Gould describes hate-filled, anti-Semitic speakers at an event designed to celebrate peace "whipped up" hate and the cross contamination of hate between cultures.  I have maintained her links.

In December 2005 I decided to attend the Global Peace and Unity Event at the Excel Centre in Canary Wharf because it had been touted as a celebration of Islamic culture and food. What greeted me was a giant hall filled with some very angry young Muslims being whipped up by Micahel Mansfield QC, George Galloway MP, former Taliban hostage-turned-Islamist-activist Yvonne Ridley, and the retired cricketer Imran Khan. Keep in mind that this rally, sponsored by Western Union, the Metropolitan Police, and Emirates Airlines, occurred just five months after London’s Islamic terrorist attacks.

Ira Stoll, writing for the Wall Street Journal in "Anti-Semitism and the Economic Crisis," is also concerned about a rising infestation of anti-Semitism in the United States as well as abroad.  He writes,

There are ample indicators of current anti-Semitic attitudes. A poll conducted recently in Europe by the Anti-Defamation League found 74% of Spaniards believe Jews "have too much power in international financial markets," while 67% of Hungarians believe Jews "have too much power in the business world." Here in America, the Web site of National Journal is hosting an "expert blog" by former CIA official Michael Scheuer, now a professor at Georgetown, complaining of a "fifth column of pro-Israel U.S. citizens" who are "unquestionably enemies of America's republican experiment." And over at Yahoo! Finance, the message board discussing Goldman Sachs is rife with comments about "Jew pigs" and the "Zionist Federal Reserve."

Although I do not associate Jews with capitalism, and if I did, it would make me think more highly of them, others do and to them the association isn't good. 

In "The Road to Serfdom," Hayek wrote, "In Germany and Austria the Jew had come to be regarded as the representative of Capitalism." Thus, the response in those countries, National Socialism, was an attack on both capitalism and the Jews.

The current rise in hatred may have a foundation in economic crisis.

The causes of the First Crusade, in which thousands of Jews were murdered, are still being debated, but some historians link it to famine and a poor harvest in 1095. As for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the foremost historian of its causes, Benzion Netanyahu (the father of Israel's new prime minister), writes of the desire of the persecutors "to get rid of their debts by getting rid of their creditors." More generally, he writes, "it is an iron-clad rule in the history of group relations: the majority's toleration of every minority lessens with the worsening of the majority's condition."

After noting the forces aligned against Jews, including a nation, Iran, building a nuclear arsenal while threatening to annihilate Israel, Stoll concludes,

It may yet be that the Jews escape the current economic crisis having only lost fortunes. But if not, there will have been no lack of warning about the threat. When Jews gather Wednesday night for the Passover Seder, we will recite the words from the Hagadah, the book that relays the Israelite exodus from slavery in Egypt: "In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us." This year, they will resonate all the more ominously.