The case of Iran

Prof. Meir Litvak

As said before, antisemitism in the Muslim world today is usually not instilled by the governments themselves. A growing gap exists in most Muslim states between the official political stance toward Israel and the Jews, and popular negative and hostile attitudes expressed in the media. There is one state in the Muslim world, however, where antisemitism, and particularly Holocaust denial, is propagated and sanctioned by the state itself, and that is Iran.

How is antisemitism expressed in Iran today? What place do anti-Zionism and Holocaust denial hold in this country?

References

• Gheissari, Ali ,ed., Contemporary Iran: Economy, Society, Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

• Keddie, Nikki R., Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

• Litvak, Meir, “Iranian Antisemitism: Continuity and Change,” in Charles Asher Small (ed.), Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity: Volume IV: Islamism and the Arab World (New York: ISGAP, 2013), pp. 55 – 66.

• Litvak, Meir, “Iranian Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust,” in Anthony McElligott and Jeffrey Herf, eds., Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust: Altered Contexts and Recent Perspectives (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 205 – 221.

• Litvak, Meir, Constructing Nationalism in Iran: from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic (London: Routledge, 2017).

• Rusi, Jaspal, “Delegitimizing Jews and Israel in Iran’s International Holocaust Cartoon Contest,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (2014), pp. 167 – 189.