In the end, Francesca Albanese apologises: “I misunderstood the term ‘Muselmann’. Anti-Semitism refers to hatred towards Jews.”

“I sincerely apologise. I misunderstood the term ‘Muselmann’ (Muslim) used in Nazi camps to refer to prisoners on the brink of death, mistakenly assuming that the term ‘anti-Semitism’ originally meant hatred towards all Semitic peoples. In reality, it was coined specifically to denote hatred towards Jews.” With these words, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese apologised for certain statements she had made in recent days, in which she had said that anti-Semitism was not “merely discrimination against Jews, but discrimination against Semitic peoples”, which included, “at the time the word ‘anti-Semitism’ was coined, anyone who was not European and came from the Middle East”.

Essentially, according to Albanese, “the Jews were a Semitic people, according to the Nazis and fascists of last century’s Europe. And so, as they were by far the largest group in Europe at the time, anti-Semitism came to be equated with the concept of anti-Judaism. Today, it is understood as hatred towards Jews. It must actually be said that the concept of anti-Semitism is broader. In fact, when they were taken to the gas chambers, there are some accounts of life in the concentration camps which state that Jews were called ‘Muslims’”. As we have written here, the term ‘Muselmann’ was the term used by the victims to describe the final stage of their ordeal. To turn this into ‘proof’ that ‘the Jews were Muslims’ is a minor masterpiece of bar-room philology or something straight out of a glossy high-fashion magazine – Love, perhaps. However, anyone who listens and is willing to understand has got the message: if the hatred that produced Auschwitz is no longer directed solely at Jews, then the Jews are merely extras in a greater drama whose contemporary protagonist is someone else – ‘the other’, perhaps the Palestinians. A clever technique of subtraction: one does not deny the dead; one simply changes their name.