Islamophobia and Antisemitism: Holocaust Revisionism in Germany

by Benjamin Weinthal
The debate has been raging for weeks in the major German media about whether anti-Semitism can be compared with Islamophobia. Advocates of the parallel see a mirror image of hate. Wolfgang Benz, the controversial Director of the Berlin Center for Research on Anti-Semitism , ignited the debate in early January , and argues that "The fury of the new enemies of Islam parallels the older rage of anti-Semites against the Jews." Benz's credibility has taken a beating, however, after it was disclosed in late January that he honored his Nazi doctoral supervisor, an energetic ideologue of the Hitler movement.
Yet the affinity for the anti-Semitism-equals-Islamophobia equation still has a devoted mainstream following. On the other hand, critics of the parallel see a playing down
of lethal anti-Semitism, a marginalization of the Holocaust, and an excuse to justify radical Islamic terror. The debate carries enormous currency in this country, largely because Germany employed eliminationist anti-Semitism to obliterate European Jewry. The marriage between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is part of a larger trend of obfuscation. As was previously argued by Professor Dovid Katz in the Guardian the efforts to conflate the Holocaust—the end result of revolutionary anti-Semitism—with the former Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe, is a form of historical obfuscationBenz and his journalistic fans fail to see that their defense of Islamophobia insulates political Islam against sharp criticism and creates political obfuscation. The term Islamophobia" emerged from the Islamic Republic of Iran following the revolution in 1979 and was introduced as a response to international criticism of such practices as the forcing of women to wear headscarves, persecution of gays and other violators of "Islamic morality."By lumping anti-Semitism with Islamophobia, the proponents have put the issue of their motivation in the public eye. The Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex neatly captured the state of post-Holocaust anti-Semitism with his sharp sarcasm: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” That helps to explain the drive to water down the crimes of the Shoah by pooh-poohing the murderous nature of anti-Semitism.
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