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Thursday, April 2, 2020

Germany: US historian: Berlin antisemitism center ignores Israel-related antisemitism


Via The Jerusalem Post:
The prominent American historian, Dr. Jeffrey Herf, sharply criticized the Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research (ZfA) for failing to address radical left-wing, communist and Islamic Jew-hatred.

Herf, one of the world’s leading experts on antisemitism, wrote on Thursday in the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) that: "The Center for Antisemitism Research in Berlin has been noteworthy in recent decades for standing outside this scholarly consensus due to its reluctance to address the Communist/radical leftist, as well as the Islamist strains of antisemitism."

He added that, "Scholars at the Center for Antisemitism Research, despite being located within a short distance from the key archives of the former DDR [German Democratic Republic], did not write an archivally based history of the East German diplomatic and military assault on the Jewish state. I did. No amount of theoretical gymnastics can avoid the simple truth that those in the Soviet bloc, including the DDR, who used force and falsehoods to attack and defame the State of Israel with the hope of destroying, wrote a chapter in the longer history of antisemitism."

In 2016, Cambridge University published the distinguished historian Herf’s monumental work: Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989.

The highly acclaimed book was published in German by Wallstein Publisher in September 2019.

Three Faces of Antisemitism: A Response to Stephanie Schüler-Springorum, was the title of Herf’s FAZ article. Schüler-Springorum is the director of the controversial antisemitism center. Herf teaches German history at the University of Maryland.

The scandal-plagued ZfA has faced intense criticism over the years for employing a researcher who worked for an organization that promoted an Iranian regime-sponsored rally calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.
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