V o L u m e I : a d

Zionism was not the only response of European Jews to anti-Semitism.

Many embraced socialism and communism as ideologies that held the prom-

ise of acceptance and equal treatment. Indeed, Zionism and socialism were

often linked. In Russia, many Jews actively supported the Bolshevik Revo-

lution of 1917 and embraced the resulting Soviet state. However, traditional

Russian anti-Semitism often flared in the Soviet Union and was remolded

in Soviet terms. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Soviet dictator Josef

Stalin grew frustrated with the support of Soviet Jews for Zionism and con-

templated the creation of a separate enclave for them in eastern Siberia; he

also acted to limit Jewish educational and professional opportunities. Soviet

limitations on Jewish identity continued in the 1960s, and after the 1967

Arab-Israeli War many Soviet Jews—known as refuseniks—wished to emi-

grate but were denied permission, ostensibly because of their knowledge of

state secrets. During the 1970s, the United States made Jewish emigration a

priority in negotiations with the Soviet Union, and many Jews left Russia.

Jewish dissidents such as Natan Sharansky continued to pressure the Soviet

leadership in the late 1970s and 1980s, often to their peril. However, it was

not until the advent of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that Soviet Jews

received the freedom to depart.

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Anti-Semitism

A French police officer surveys the wreckage after a bomb explosion at a synagogue in Paris that killed four people on 

3 October 1950. (AFP/Getty Images/Georges Gobet)

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The Zionist movement, begun by Herzl and his followers in the late

nineteenth century, had sought to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine

through land purchases and emigration from Europe (to increase the Jewish

community already present). The first Jewish kibbutzim, or collective farms,

were established in the first decades of the twentieth century. Jewish immi-

gration continued unabated as the region passed from Ottoman Turkish to

British control after World War I. The increase in the Jewish population of

Palestine resulted in considerable Arab resentment and anti-Jewish sentiment.

From the Arab point of view, the Jewish presence would unjustly result in

the displacement of Arabs and in the reduction of Arab power and influence

in the region. Anti-Jewish riots took place several times in the 1920s, as the

grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, encouraged action against

Zionism. A general Arab uprising in 1936 contributed to a change in British

policy, and in 1939 the British drastically cut Jewish immigration.

The establishment of Israel transformed the situation. While the global

Jewish population viewed Israel as a haven in their ancestral homeland, the

Arabs considered it an unjust seizure of Arab territory by the Western powers

on behalf of European Jews. Arabs questioned why European atrocities

against the Jews should result in a loss of Arab sovereignty over Arab land.

None of the newly formed Arab states—Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and

Lebanon—voted for the United Nations (UN) resolution that created Israel.

The state was created in the Middle East over Arab objections. When the

new nation was proclaimed in May 1948, all five of these states immediately

invaded Israel, initiating half a century of Arab-Israeli warfare.

As Israel fought successfully in the various conflicts of 1948, 1956, 1967,

and 1973, anti-Jewish feelings among the Arabs increased. Anti-Zionism rep-

resented the core of the Arab position. Indeed, none of the Arab nations of

the Middle East recognized the right of Israel to exist until the Egyptian-

Israeli peace treaty of 1978. Anti-Zionism, however, was often combined with

anti-Semitism, as Arab rhetoric attacked Judaism and the Jewish people. For

example, Lebanese and Syrian cartoons at the time of the 1967 War depicted

caricatured Jews being expelled from Israel and mounds of Jewish skulls in

the streets of Tel Aviv. At the same time, Israeli rhetoric vilified the Arab

people. The existence of Arab refugees fanned the flames. Such refugees,

mostly Palestinian Arabs who had fled Israel during the 1948 War, lived in a

number of large camps located in Syria, Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank.

Dispossessed by the Israelis and not accepted by any of the Arab states, the

refugees seethed with anti-Jewish sentiment. The Palestinian Liberation

Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, drew its members largely from their

ranks.

While some anti-Jewish rhetoric during the Cold War had a religious

overtone and called on Arabs to fight the enemies of Islam, the Arab govern-

ments largely adopted the socialist, anti-imperialist positions of Arab nation-

alism. Zionism and Judaism were attacked as racist and imperialist, and Israel

was denounced as part of an American imperial plot for global domination.

With the Israeli victory in the 1967 War and the seizure and occupation of

Arab territories in the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, such charges

Anti-Semitism

147

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intensified. Much of the developing world, recently liberated from Euro-

pean colonialism, responded to such Arab views; Muslim nations already had

an obvious reason to sympathize with the Palestinian refugees and with the

Arab cause in general. The Soviet Union cleverly fostered anti-imperialist

arguments as a way to reduce American influence among developing nations.

The trend resulted in the global isolation of Israel, best illustrated by the

1975 UN General Assembly’s resolution defining Zionism as a form of racism

and recognition of Yasir Arafat and the PLO. Global anti-Zionism and anti-

Semitism continued to grow, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982

accelerated its pace.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the accompanying

decline in global socialist movements, Islam has become an increasingly

important source of identity in Arab resistance to Israel. Anti-Israeli and anti-

Zionist views in the Middle East and around the world have acquired a more

religious character in the years since the end of the Cold War.

Robert Kiely

See also

Arab-Israeli Wars; Israel; Middle East; Palestine Liberation Organization; Refuseniks

References

Dimont, Max I. Jews, God, and History. New York: New American Library, 2003.

Perry, Marvin, and Frederick Schweitzer. Anti-Semitism: Myths and Hate from Antiquity

to the Present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Service, Robert. A History of 20th Century Russia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1998.

Romanian marshal and dictator (1940–1944). Born to a prominent military

family at Pitescti on 14 June 1882, Ion Antonescu graduated from Romanian

military schools in Craiova (1902) and Iasci (1904). A cavalry lieutenant during

the 1907 Peasant Revolt, he fought in the second Balkan War and in World

War I. From 1922 to 1927 he was military attaché in Paris, Brussels, and Lon-

don. He was named chief of the General Staff in 1933, but his opposition to

King Carol II’s corrupt and sycophantic cabal led him to resign in December

1934. In 1937, Antonescu became minister of national defense in the short-

lived government of Octavian Goga, a German-backed regime with strong

links to the Romanian fascist organization the Iron Guard. When King Carol

announced a royal dictatorship in 1938 and took action to squelch the Iron

Guard, Antonescu retired from public life for two years.

In 1940, regional crises climaxed with the Soviet Union’s seizure of

Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, Bulgaria’s retrieval of southern Dobruja,

and, with the Vienna Award of 30 August 1940, Hungary’s reannexation of

northern Transylvania. Before abdicating in favor of his son, Michael, King

148

Antonescu, Ion

Antonescu, Ion

(1882–1946)

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