The Tsunami that Wasn't by Manfred Gerstenfeld

The world financial crisis is said to be monumental, yet where is the wave of Anti-Semitism that was supposed to follow in its wake? An analysis of the world hatred market can explain where the Anti-Semitic merchandise has disappeared to.

In the early days of the world financial crisis, Jewish journalists already wrote that the blame would be attributed to Jews in the tradition of Anti-Semitism, as they pointed out that Jews were always identified with money. The fact that the principal partners of the Lehmann Brothers Bank, that the American government allowed to collapse, were Jewish had not gone unnoticed. Many other Jewish names will be associated with the crisis, the journalists anticipated. In a private conversation one journalist presented a more sophisticated line of reasoning, according to which the financial world that is unintelligible to the "average" observer presents the perfect opportunity to blame the Jews for anything that goes wrong in the system. After all, Jews had been blamed so many times in the past for disasters whose source was unclear, that apparently it was clearly their fault again.

Actually, while the financial crisis is undoubtedly gigantic in its extent, the Anti-Semitism that has followed it remains limited principally to the world of Internet blogging. The 'Anti Defamation League' has reported a "dramatic rise in the number of Anti-Semitic comments in Internet chats dealing with Finance and Economics". The novelty here is the spreading of these expressions to the financial blogs; neo-Nazi websites, that are Anti-Semitic or Anti-Israeli are, after all, always on the lookout for every opportunity to connect their hate messages with mainstream current events and, in the nature of things, exploited the present opportunity to blame the Jews.

The false charge that won especially great attention on the Internet was the claim that the Jewish directors of Lehmann Brothers transferred 400 billion dollars to Israel during the month prior to their collapse, when the approaching crash was clearly seen. For those who are not economists, all large numbers seem more or less the same. The absurdity of this nonsense is that if the bank had had liquidity to that extent it would not have failed. There is also no possibility that the banking system in Israel would be able to absorb such gigantic sums of money or even sums much smaller than the amount mentioned.

The person who added fat to the Anti-Semitic fire was the spokesman of Hamas, Fawzi Barhoum, who said the crisis was the result of "inferior management and organization of a deplorable banking system that was founded and controlled by the Jewish lobby". But, Barhoum and the likes of him, Arab propaganda merchants of hatred, who threw the blame for the financial crisis on the Jews, remained virtually isolated.

The Old Merchandise

So how then do we explain the Anti-Semitic Tsunami that didn't happen following the financial earthquake? There are those who believe it will still happen and therefore it would be better to continue being wary. Others maintain that Anti-Semitism has disappeared or is waning in western society. Like the groups who held on to the belief that the earth is flat, this claim is their Jewish equivalent and the adherents to this view see the absence of any extreme Anti-Semitism, at this time, as further proof of what they believe.

The more logical explanation of the tidal wave that didn't happen is different. We are living in a post-modern society that is characterized by fragmenting. For two thousand years, the central foundation on which Anti-Semitism was based was that Jews, and now the State of Israel as well, represent absolute evil. The motifs of the three streams of Anti-Semitism – the religious, the ethnic and the Anti-Zionist – are similar: the Jews aim to control the world (that is to say, to acquire money and power), they are blood thirsty (especially for the blood of children), and they are sub-human. But, in recent years, the motifs have fragmented into countless sub-topics and so have the supporters of Anti-Semitism become fragmented, unlike in Hitler's day, when there was a single dominant Anti-Semitic power in the world.

To use economic terms, there is now a huge market place of providers of Anti-Semitism and this market place is very diverse. A new product – like the Anti-Semitic propaganda related to the financial crisis – must compete with the 'old stock' on the shelves of the market of hatred of the Jews. Most of the manufacturers of hatred direct their propaganda against the State of Israel; those who target the Jews with their merchandise are largely of secondary importance. The Anti-Semitic propaganda related to the financial crisis has not succeeded in conquering a large segment of the market of hatred, because it is directed principally against the Jews and less so against Israel.

Manfred Gerstenfeld has published many books on Anti-Semitism, the last of which is Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews (2008)