ABSTRACT
The Arab-Israel conflict and Arab hostility to Israel were not the result of Islam's attitude to Judaism and its unfavourable image of the Jews, but once the conflict arose the antagonism to Israel was liable to derive ideas and emotions from these attitudes. Arab anti-Semitism is the outcome of political circumstances. The ideas contained in Arab anti-Semitic literature are not new, and most of them are, no doubt, a repetition, a kind of delayed echo, of ideas expressed years ago in Europe, America and even the Middle East. Arab anti-Semitism might have been expected to be free from the idea of racial odium, since Jews and Arabs are both regarded by race theory as Semites, but the odium is directed, not against the Semitic race, but against the Jews as a historical group.
