The history of Jew-hatred can be understood as the systematic perpetuation of defamatory rumors strategically deployed to demonize Jews. These myths have repeatedly produced lethal consequences, claiming Jewish lives across centuries and geographies.
The recurrence of these claims makes them difficult to refute before violence ensues. From the medieval blood libel to contemporary accusations of genocide and colonialism, each new fabrication presents itself as unprecedented. In reality, each libel constitutes a continuation of a long and violent genealogy of anti-Jewish discourse.
Professor Hatem Bazian at the University of California, Berkeley has advanced a modernized libel claiming that Israel seeks to conquer Mecca, an Islamic holy site. He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “wants Egypt and Saudi Arabia because the Mecca and Medina area is part of Greater Israel.”
Bazian’s accusation echoes the same destructive falsehood propagated nearly 100 years earlier by the grand mufti of Jerusalem—Haj Amin al-Husseini—who alleged that Jews were plotting to storm the Al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with their Third Temple.
The grand mufti showed “proof” of Jewish machinations to take over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in the form of fundraising leaflets soliciting contributions to city Torah institutions and propaganda materials of various Zionist groups, including ”drawings of the Al-Aqsa mosque or the Dome of the Rock adorned with Jewish symbols, primarily Stars of David.” Husseini also orchestrated the Hebron massacre in 1929.
Bazian, co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine—the student group notorious for harassing and attacking American Jews on college campuses—and the American Muslims for Palestine, knows exactly what he is doing when he deploys this falsehood. Indeed, structural anti-Zionism relies on a closed system of libels whose goal is to disseminate false information about Jews to demonize the Jewish people and convince good people to be willing and ready to enact violence on the Jewish people. It worked on the night of Aug. 24, 1929, when Arabs, believing Husseini’s lies about Jews planning to take over the Temple Mount, attacked the Jewish community in Hebron and murdered 67 Jews in their homes and destroyed their synagogues.
Bazian’s “Mecca desecration libel” echoes Husseini’s “Al-Aqsa desecration libel” not only because the information is untrue and damaging, but because the goal is to globalize terrorism in the attempt to kill more Jews.
The strategy for addressing these falsehoods is two-fold. The first step must be to learn to recognize them. The second, more challenging step is learning how to respond to them.
Consider the Jewish response, issued by the National Committee of the Jews of the Land of Israel in November 1928, to the Al-Aqsa desecration libel: “We hereby announce, honestly and sincerely, that no one from Israel has any intention of infringing the rights of Muslims to the places that are holy to them. However, our Arab brothers must also recognize the rights that Israel has in this land, to our own places . ... Any attempt to describe the desire of the Jews to pray at this holy place, the Western Wall plaza, in peace, with respect and without restriction, as the creation of a strategic base for an attack on the mosques of the Muslims, is nothing but the fruit of a fevered imagination or a malicious libel. The aim of this libel is to sow tumult and confusion in hearts and arouse animosity and conflict between different peoples.”
While the Jewish community did expose the libel and its sole purpose, which was “to arouse animosity,” the Jews of British Mandate Palestine nonetheless fell into the trap of defending themselves by producing evidence of their innocence. It is a rhetorical impulse that many Jews still share today. When Jews are accused of committing genocide in Gaza, the instinctive response is often to refute the charge by citing the legal definition of genocide and stressing the centrality of intent. Yet this strategy inevitably fails because libels operate outside the realm of facts. As such, efforts to counter libels with evidence are ultimately futile.
Anti-Zionism is structural in that it is a system built upon lies that function as signs with a particular purpose. From the medieval charge that Jews poisoned wells to ritual murder accusations to conspiracies of global domination, the task for Jews is to decode these signs as recurring monikers of demonization.
Put differently, the claim that “Israel is an apartheid state” must be recognized as shorthand for “Israel must be exterminated.” It should not be read as a commentary on actual apartheid for the sign functions instead to communicate that “the Jew is evil and must be destroyed.”
As the school year begins, groups advocating for Jews and Israel on campus, especially at UC Berkeley, where Bazian has been given free rein to spread his libels, must be careful not to fall into the trap of hosting events aimed at disproving accusations of genocide, apartheid or the charge of “taking over Mecca.” Instead, their focus should be on exposing these dangerous libels and showing the world that anti-Zionism kills—and that its primary weapons are libels.
