Do “Dirty Jews” Cause Antisemitism?

The current alliance between Jewish anti-Zionists and non-Jewish antisemites has its precedents, as we are reminded by the statements made at a Jewish-Christian interfaith conference in London, one hundred years ago last week. Then and now, both camps agree that “bad” Jews are the reason for antisemitism.

One of the featured speakers at the November 1925 event was Claude Montefiore, co-founder of England’s Jewish anti-Zionist organization, the League of British Jews, and founding president of the World Union for Progressive [Reform] Judaism.

He expressed concern that “anti-Semitism had led and was still leading to horrible excesses in a good many countries of Europe at the present time.” In England, too, “there were manifestations of real anti-Semitic feeling.”

Montefiore’s solution? “Jews must not be too impatient and self-assertive.” And Jews must reject “Jewish nationalism,” which he said “was an evil and not unconnected with anti-Semitism.”

In other words, the Jews themselves were the cause of antisemitism.

The Rev. Thomas Walker, of Trinity Presbyterian Church, agreed. He told the conference that “uneasiness in the relations between Jew[s] and others was largely fostered by the distinctive habits and customs of Jews, and he suggested that they should do nothing to turn that uneasiness into definite antipathy.”

Rev. Walker’s solution? “A greater assimilation on the part of Jews to prevailing local standards in the matter of cleanliness.”

The Palestine Bulletin (forerunner of the Jerusalem Post) continued in its report of Rev. Walker’s remarks: “He deprecated the ostentatious display of wealth and the habit of Jews to herd together in one part of a city. They should set the fulfillment of duties before the demand for rights. It might lessen the growth of anti-Semitism if the Jew would study to be less successful.”

A century has passed, yet the notion that Jews are to blame for people hating them is still heard all too often. The difference is that today, the bigots focus on the Jewish state as the culprit.

In fact, even the repulsive language from 1925 about Jews being dirty (“in the matter of cleanliness”) continues to be heard, with only slight variations, in our own time.

Kaukab Siddique, a professor at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, used the phrase “dirty Jewish Zionist thug” to characterize a conservative pundit in 2015. The following year, a Harvard law student named Husam El-Qoulaq publicly confronted a left-of-center former Israeli cabinet minister, asking her why she was so “smelly.”

Anti-Israel protesters in Teaneck, New Jersey yelled “Gas them, you filthy Jews” and “Go run you dirty Jew b—-” at Jewish passersby in October 2023. A Muslim police officer in London, Ms. Talat “Ruby” Begum, ranted against “dirty Zionists” in a series of social media posts in 2024. Earlier this year, anti-Israel protesters in Brooklyn’s Boro Park neighborhood screamed at Jews that they were “filthy Zionist a———s.”

This past June, a Palestinian Authority judge, Abdallah Harb, appearing on official PA Television, asked Allah to “protect the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque from the impurity of the Jews, the filth of the Jews, and their defilement.”

Palestinian Media Watch points out that similar language is used frequently by PA officials, including PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who declared in an infamous speech that Jews “have no right to defile [the Al-Aqsa mosque] with their filthy feet.”

Related slurs by Palestinian Arab leaders include accusing Jews of spreading diseases such as AIDS and Covid-19, claims that Israel distributes poisoned candy to Arab girls to make them infertile, and allegations that Israel spreads toxic chemicals in Arab neighborhoods as part of its genocidal plots.

There is, however, one important difference between the ravings of a Harvard student or a New Jersey protester and the statements made by officials of the Palestinian Authority. America’s laws protect the rights of bigots to free expression. The PA, however, is bound by the Oslo accords which it signed in 1993-1995.

Article XXII of the Oslo II agreement prohibits “incitement, including hostile propaganda” and requires the PA to “take legal measures to prevent such incitement by an organizations, groups or individuals” in the territories that it occupies. Will that provision ever be enforced?

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is The Road to October 7: Hamas, the Holocaust, and the Eternal War Against the Jews, published by the Jewish Publication Society & University of Nebraska Press.