Strange bedfellows now united in hatred of the Jews

Pro-Palestinian supporters gather during a protest at Hyde Park on October 6, Sydney, NSW.

The support for terrorist atrocities, anger and hatred seen on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney on Sunday and Monday are alarming. Rallies were held by extremists against Israel on the eve and day of the first anniversary of the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It was a day of grieving and remembrance for those who were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7 last year.

To understand what we’ve just witnessed in our largest capitals we can consider horseshoe theory. This suggests that political extremes approach each other at their furthest points from the moderate centre. It isn’t to suggest they have identical ideologies.

Rather, it observes that political extremes have some overlapping values and goals. A far-left anarchist and a far-right libertarian may share as a common goal the destruction of centralised institutions of state control.

Anti-Semitism is common to the extreme right and left, religious fundamentalist and secular atheist, ecological and human rights fundamentalists. They all see Jews who reject Christ, Mohammed and the UN obstructing the redemption of humanity.

Their political outrage is selective, ignoring Kanaks, North Koreans, Kosovans and Kurds, for example. In the past year, 15,000 to 50,000 Sudanese were murdered, 10 million displaced and millions face starvation. But they’re largely unnoticed. It’s their unlucky fate to be without a known Jewish scapegoat.

Radical Jews acting against the general Jewish population have always been of utility to anti-Semitic movements. They provide Zionist enemy intelligence and enable denial of racist anti-Semitism.

Looking at intersections between Islamism and the far right, the 1988 Hamas charter is a model of anti-Semitism. There were close relations between the Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian founder, Hassan al-Banna. The Nazis bankrolled Muslim Brother­hood propaganda via the German embassy in Cairo and the Nazi press agency. Payments were co-ordinated by Palestinian Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who set up the relationship. Hamas is derived from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Consider eco-fundamentalism. In Australia, if you heard someone say “the Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups” and “their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power” you would have been listening to a Greens politician. The Australian Greens still refuse to condemn the October 7 massacre.

On the extreme right, white supremacists promote jihadi attacks including October 7. Football fans performing Nazi salutes while holding Palestinian flags at the Israel-Paraguay soccer match at the Paris Olympics should come as no surprise. Jihadists are discovered with Nazi paraphernalia.

On the extreme left, the Soviets took up the Nazi mantle of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. They repackaged it in the 1970s as “anti-Zionism” to use Israel as a wedge between their Arab clientele and Western competitors. They supported Arab terrorism against Jews. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas majored in Holocaust denial and distortion under Soviet tutelage. His dissertation was on The Relationship between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945, a conspiracy theory born in Soviet propaganda. Last year Abbas delivered an anti-Semitic speech on Jews, European anti-Semitism, pogroms and the Holocaust that showed he still holds this mindset.

What we’re seeing is extremes across the ideological spectrum intersecting across common values and goals. Just as ideological extremists share a rejection of liberalism, moderation and centrism, they generally overlap in their scapegoating of Jews. A fraternal commonality inherited from their Christian, Islamic and humanist civilisations brings them together in an enduring archetypal struggle to conquer those damnable Jews.

Greg Rose is professor of international law at the University of Wollongong and co-author of Two states for two peoples? The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, international law and European Union policy