Mick Hartley

Most Malaysians have never met a Jew - the small Jewish community is long gone - yet a 2014 survey found that 60% of the population had anti-Semitic beliefs, making it the most anti-Semitic country in Asia.

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed spoke at the 2003 Organization of the Islamic Conference of the natural enmity between Muslims and Jews: “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews”, he said, adding that, “The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy.” The current Prime Minister, Najib Razak, is engulfed in a scandal involving the transfer of $700 million into his bank account. He's claimed that the money, far from being looted from state coffers, was in fact a gift from the Saudi royal family. Why should the Saudi royal family give him $700 million? Ah well: it's to protect the people of Malaysia from a take-over from the rival DAP – a party supposedly financed by the the Jews. And so the old anti-Semitic tropes thrive in a country which has next to no experience of Jews.

Jon Emont in the Tablet:

Anti-Jewish prejudice in Malaysia did not develop in response to the tiny population of Jews who lived here but instead was tuned to the frequencies of a Muslim world that saw the rise of Israel—and the subjugation of the Palestinians—as their religion’s great humiliation. According to Daniel Chirot, Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington, since the Iraq War, global anti-Semitic discourse has focused on the ways that Jews use political proxies to fulfill their geopolitical goals: This idea is present in the claim that Jews are using rival political parties as proxies to dismantle the Muslim Malaysian state….

Malaysian hasbara makes the country out as a racial paradise. In “Malaysia: Truly Asia” the Malaysian Tourism Ministry’s campaign to woo visitors to Malaysia, advertisements promise visitors a “multi-cultural harmony,” as images of Buddhist temples and indigenous tribes flash past. “The wonders of Asia in one exciting destination,” the campaign promises. Najib Razak, the country’s embattled prime minister, promotes Malaysia as a country enjoying exemplary racial harmony. But Malaysia is not actually a racial paradise, and the corruption scandal enveloping the country has only thrown this into sharper relief.

Najib’s political party, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO) has ruled since independence, on a platform that guarantees affirmative action benefits to the Malay Muslim majority, whom the country’s constitution refers to as “sons of the soil.” Roughly 50 percent of Malaysia is Malay Muslim, roughly 20 percent is Chinese, another 7 percent is Indian, with indigenous and other minorities making up the rest: “Sons of the soil”—i.e., the Malay Muslim majority or plurality—receive free state education, preferential access to government jobs and a wide range of benefits from the state that are denied to the country’s ethnic minorities. This system of affirming the majority reduces non-Malay Malaysians to permanent second-class status, regardless of how many generations their families have lived in Malaysia.

Though formal state privileges accrue only to the Malay majority, the country’s ethnic Chinese dominate many sectors of the Malaysian economy. Ethnic Chinese, many of whom came to Malaysia as traders, continue to maintain extensive business networks with the Chinese mainland and are criticized by Malay nationalists for exploiting the country’s wealth for themselves. As a result, violence has periodically erupted against ethnic Chinese traders throughout Malaysia’s modern history, most notably in 1969, when 150 ethnic Chinese were murdered in race riots.

There are strong similarities between the prejudice that the Jewish “entrepreneurial minority” faced in Europe and the one faced by ethnic Chinese throughout South East Asia. In both cases, heightened senses of nationalism in host countries in the 20th century led to systematic persecution of the “entrepreneurial minority” based on accusations that the minority was abusing its host country’s generosity and exploiting locals for its community’s own benefits….

The claim that DAP, a political party that represents ethnic-Chinese, takes money from Jewish interests, is effective because racist stereotypes of Jews and Chinese in Malaysia are similar. Daniel Chirot says, “The association of secret finance with Chinese is not so difficult to believe, so the association comes naturally. It’s also known that [predominantly ethnic-Chinese] Singapore and Israel are very friendly. All these things can be used.”

The other element is that Najib’s UMNO ruling party is facing challenges from the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, an Islamist party which promotes the use of Islamic law. Despite their major philosophical differences, The Islamic Justice Party and ethnic-Chinese DAP have formed an alliance to challenge the ruling UMNO, so linking DAP with Jewish money could be an attempt to undermine the alliance. According to Daniel Chirot, “The more insecure the ruling party is the more likely it is to use anti-Semitism to counter the opposition.” He described the use of anti-Semitic rhetoric as an attempt to “out-Muslim” rival political parties.