There is no disagreement over the increasing evil of worldwide antisemitic phenomena especially now it has been associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This new wave of antisemitism focuses on the charge that Jews, or Zionists, or the State of Israel are responsible for the pandemic or benefit from it. Jewish world conspiracies to a large extent have been replaced by Zionist conspiracies, but antisemitism is central to conspiracy theory. Israel is characterized by Islamists as the COVID-1948 virus. The pandemic is linked to the immigration of Jews into the area before the creation of Israel and the war initiated by Arab states in 1948.
Accompanying this charge are fantasies of Jewish conspiracies of evil or for world domination, similar to the medieval blood libels or the Tsarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The new conspiracy theories have learned from previous theories in addition to new fantasies such as the equivalence of Zionism and Nazism.
Antisemites in the past have blamed Jews for causing disasters, plagues, economic crises, and now anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists have linked Jews to the pandemic. Just two of them may be mentioned. Best-selling author David Icke, asserts that blood drinking Jewish reptilian humanoids secretly control the world, that Israel is exploiting the pandemic to test its technology, and that “Rothschild Zionists” were leaders of the reptilian conspiracy. Piers Corbyn, brother of the former leader of the Labour Party has distributed literature comparing COVID-19 vaccines to Auschwitz.
In view of the persistence of the COVID-19 virus, a recent British report has ominous overtones. It calls for the Government to tackle urgently a resurgence with the antivaccination movement, it warns that 27 of the leading anti-vaccination networks on Facebook and Twitter hosted antisemitism in 79% of their posts. Exposing the level of antisemitism amongst the anti-vaccine movement is of the utmost importance.
What is disquieting is that antisemitism is not confined to the rhetoric or the behavior of certifiable lunatics or disturbed individuals like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sixth president of Iran who told the world that 2,000 Zionists want to rule the Universe, or extremists like Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam leader, or both left and right wing extremists, or biased members of U.S. Congress, but is prominent in mainstream institutions with more or less normal people, even leftists with their professed belief in equality and anti-racism, and opposition to systematic discrimination.
Image: The Investigative Project on Terrorism