The Jewish people are not rats. They are human beings. Yet from the Holocaust onwards, Jewish people have been compared to rats by anti-Semites across the world. In Belgium, a couple of years ago, an annual parade featured puppets of Jews with rats on top of money bags. Several years ago, a Brooklyn synagogue was vandalized with hate-filled graffiti that proclaimed, "Die Jew rats." Around that same period, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies received hate-filled messages, calling them rats. Furthermore, Palestinian Media Watch reported that Muslim cleric Sheikh Raed Da'na compared Jews to rats, as did official PA TV.
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Thus, even though the Holocaust occurred many years ago, this anti-Semitic trope just refuses to die. In fact, recently, American journalist Patrick Lancaster documented an Armenian man who worked for a nationalist organization in his country proclaiming in Republic Square in Yerevan, "The swastika is the symbol of the Indo-European Aryan people. Gypsies were killed as a parasite nation. And Hitler killed Jews because they engaged in incitement. They have bloody money. No difference, Jews are very harmful. If rats live in your house, will it be good? Do you know that in 1915 the Armenian genocide was organized by Jews?"
Following that incident, Lancaster proclaimed: "I don't stand for racism or hurting the innocent. It is really terrible to see that there are still people in the world that have such horrible opinions of people because of their skin color or where they come from. It cannot be stood for." However, despite Lancaster's bravery, not too many media outlets in the West have reported on this incident, even though Lancaster's video was translated into English and spread widely on social media. The question remains, why?
According to a 2014 Anti-Defamation League Global Anti-Semitism Index Survey, 68% of Armenians believe that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their countries of origin; 72% believe that Jews have too much power in the business world; 68% believe that Jews have too much control in international financial markets; 45% believe Jews talk too much about what happened in the Holocaust; 60% believe that Jews don't care about anyone but their own kind; 51% believe that Jews got too much control over global affairs; 53% believe that they are better than other people and 38% blame Jews for most of the world wars.
In an exclusive interview, Rabbi Zamir Isayev claimed that the Armenian government has been promoting a an ideology known as Nzhdehism and that this man in this video reflects that ideology: "This man in the video is not the only Armenian who thinks this way. Many others talk like that in social media and express the same ideas. If you look to the past, during the Black Death, because of the Jewish population were affected less, the inquisition decided that the Jews are the reason for the plague. They blamed the Jews for the plague, but it was due to the good hygiene of the Jews. The opinion of the people have not changed since then. The fact that Israelis got the coronavirus vaccine before anyone encourages more anti-Semitism."
In fact, even Armenia's Deputy Culture Minister Zhanna Andreasyan has warned: "The ideology of Nzhdeh is, in fact, a fascist ideology. By itself, it is very dangerous for us as a society of the 21st century, since this ideology is built on the basis of aggression against the world, sidelining oneself from the whole world and demonstrating its advantage over all societies." Andreasyan called upon Armenia to move away from this ideology, a call that has so far not been heeded. In fact, Andreasyan is the first Armenian official to recognize the country's fascism problem and to speak out against it.
Nevertheless, too many in the Western media have turned a blind eye to this incident. Jewish Canadian activist Esther Halevi, who is of Azerbaijani origin, speculates as to the reasoning for this: "They don't expect it but in fact, the worst anti-Semites come from this country." Indeed, Armenia is presently not on too many people's radar screen as a center of anti-Semitic activity. However, as the latest 2020 anti-Semitism report from Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs noted, anti-Semitism has been on the rise there since the Second Karabakh War and perhaps the time has come for people to start paying attention to the anti-Semitism originating.
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