Guardian's Nick Cohen

“The leaders of Ba’athist Syria or theocratic Iran or monarchical Saudi Arabia do not faithfully reproduce the fantasies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion solely because they hate Jews. They need a conspiracy theory to divert the attention of their subject populations from the failures of their rule as badly as the tsars did in the 1900s and the Nazis in the 1930s. Then, as now, the ability to brand political opponents as Zionist fifth columnists and liberal principles as decadent Jewish ruses that divert the faithful from fulfilling their religious or racial destiny are essential aids to the maintenance of their power.

Hamas, around which the disputes about aid to Gaza rage, is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which fused fascist and radical Islamist ideas during the German push into the Middle East during the Second World War. Large chunks of its constitution are lifted from European racism – Jewish money controls the world’s “media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations”; the Jews were behind “the French revolution, the communist revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about” and so on.

As with the European reactionaries of the 20th century, Islamists do not stop with Jew hatred. Advances for radical Islam are always disasters for women, homosexuals, democrats, socialists and free thinkers. Put like this, the behaviour of European liberals seems more reprehensible than ever.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/06/israel-gaza-blockade