BREAKING NEWS

German newspaper uses Nazi language to blame Israel for Palestinian terrorism

BERLIN – An article in the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) has been accused of mimicking Nazi rhetoric by placing the blame for Palestinian terrorism squarely on Israel’s shoulders.
Titled, “Israel suffers for its cycle of revenge,” an article last week by the newspaper’s Israel-based correspondent, Peter Münch, quoted from an interview with Said Zidani, a Palestinian philosophy professor at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, in which he said Palestinians murder Israelis not only out of “desperation but [as] an act of resistance...”
According to the article, Zidani’s remarks did not amount to justifying the violence.
Experts on anti-Semitism thought differently.
“Such headlines project classical anti-Jewish stereotypes onto the Jewish state,” Prof. Monika Schwarz-Friesel told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. Schwarz-Friesel has made an exhaustive study of anti-Semitic language in Germany. The SZ article uses emotional, anti-Jewish language from the Hitler movement to influence its readers, she said.
“The stereotype of Jewish revenge/vengefulness is an age-old Judeophobia concept that was articulated by the National Socialists,” she said. Schwarz-Friesel cited the infamous 1943 Posen speeches of SS head Heinrich Himmler calling for the extermination of European Jews. In addition to his call to murder all Jewish adults, Himmler urged the elimination of Jewish children to prevent them from seeking vengeance.