Antisemitism – an infectious disease ?

By Eli E. Lasch

The last year saw three events:  the Intifada, the Conference against Racism in Durban and the Act of Terrorism on the 11th of September.

All of them were basically irrational and all involve Moslems.

The intifada started soon after Camp David, when Israel was ready to make more concessions than ever before.

The conference in Durban was hijacked by the Moslems, who tried to change it into an irrational expression of hate, not only against Israel but against the Jewish people as a whole, a pure and unmitigated antisemitism of the worse kind. This is something new in the Arab World.

Finally the Act of terrorism in New York and Washington, which does not really make any sense. An expression of pure and extreme hatred against the U.S. and against Israel. a deed to which nobody has up till now  laid a  claim, which everybody denies. Tentacles of evil out of the deep and unknown dark. Only one thing seems clear: the perpetretators seem to be Moslem, the so called Islamists..

Does there exist any connection apart from the expression of a most profound hate?

Why am I then constantly reminded of the nineteen thirties?

In a research whích I am conducting at present about possible causes of the Holocaust and about antisemitism as a phenomenon which has accompanied the Jewish people since antiquity, I have finally come to the conclusion, that most explanations advanced so far do not fully explain the facts. Could it be, as claimed by many Jewish mystics, that there exist deeper roots, which have their origin in the occult? Some karmic group which exists since the most ancient of times?

Or, to speak as a medical practitioner, could antisemitism be viewed as a disease caused by a kind of virus  carried by mankind? A virus which is normally quiescent, or at maximum endemic, but which has all the potential of changing into an epidemic form when the time is right? A spiritual kind of virus which manifests itself by causing aggression, fear and chaos directed specifically against people of Jewish origin. A virus which causes people to behave in a paranoid, irrational way. An emotion which in Germany was called „Judenhass“ – an irrational hatred of Jews as Jews and in Arabic  is found in the formula „Itbach el jahud“ – butcher the Jews wherever you find them, a cry which I myself have heard a few times.

Not the Israelis but the Jews.

Is there possibly a connection between the three events and  the Nazi movement of the nineteen thirties?

The answer seems to be positive, as in all the three instances the places attacked were those with big Jewish conglomerations.

It was after the attack on the Trading Center in New York that things clicked in my mind. There is one thing which the U.S and Germany before 1933 have in common – a big Jewish community which closely cooperates with other nationalities to advance mutual tolerance and enlightment. To help people in the pursuit of freedom and justice...

If we go back to Germany we have just to be reminded of a few names which changed our world: Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Gustav Mahler, Max Reinhardt and many many more. All were assimilated Jews and all cooperated closely with their surroundings. Even the most famous Foreign Minister of the Weimar Republic, Walther Rathenau was Jewish.

This is also true for the United States, the biggest conglomeration  of Jewish life being New York, and, which makes it worse, supports the Jewish State.

This is also the basic aim of the State of Israel, the only country in the Arab Middle East which has democracy and freedom of speech, even for its enemies. The only country with an impartial judicial system, to which even Palestinians have access. The only country which has a strong movement for human rights. Are those not exactly the  reasons the Arab world is not ready to accept it?

But the Arab world had never known the kind of eliminatory  Antisemitism which was rife in Europe and which reached its climax during the holocaust.

The virus of the National Socialism has by now infected the Moslem world. Its carriers were all those people who, after world war II have found refuge in those countries.

The great mistake is hating the perpetrators of evil. It is as if I, being a medical doctor, would hate the patients who are sick. But a cure may be painful, and from time to time you need surgery

I do not hate the Islam or the  Arabs . I was after all their doctor for many years. But I do hate (and fear) fundamentalism in any form and think that it has to be eradicated. Like any other pathogenic organism. And like pathogenic organisms it will only attack the weak. So the next step would be to build up the resistance of those people. Again, not by prayers but by doing, by helping them to build up a healthy economy. I did it by helping people to save their children

If the free world will not eradicate it now, it will learn to regret it. Let us remember that the present approach of liberalism and looking for the enemy within us is considered by  those people as a sign of weakness, exactly as Adolph Hitler did. Why did he hate the Jews? Because they originated and furthered the idea of “love thy fellowmen as thyself”? In his eyes this was a typical sign of weakness

And the solution? Exactly as I propagated in my book: First eradicate the disease and then Heal thy Enemy, or should the way be the opposite?