NEW YORK -- It was, by all accounts, a heinous conclusion to a barbaric crime. The Pakistani kidnappers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl forced him to state that he was a Jew and his mother and father were Jews. Then, having laid out their legal case, the killers slit his throat and beheaded him.
Some might view the murderers, with their fixation on their victim's religion, as Islamist fanatics outside the mainstream of their societies. Western Palestinian sympathizers, on the other hand, might condemn the ugliness of anti-Semitism but hint that Israelis have brought it on their own people through their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Yet Muslim anti-Semitism is neither an aberration nor a mere political response. From the mosques to the presidential palaces, from the tabloids to the scientific journals, influential voices vomit an endless stream of propaganda that reads like Hitler's Mein Kampf. And while it is fueled by a hatred of Israeli policies, anti-Semites assume that all Jews worldwide are responsible for the actions of a state they may not live in and whose policies they may actively oppose.