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Matthias Küntzel (born 1955) is aGermanpolitical scientist and historian. He was an externalresearch associate at the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at theHebrew University of Jerusalem from 2004 to 2015. Currently, he is a member of the German Council on Foreign RelationsDGAP and of the advisory board of UANI (United Against Nuclear Iran).
From 1984 to 1988, Küntzel served as a senior advisor for theGerman Green Party caucus in the Bundestag. He was member of theCommunist League (Kommunistischer Bund, KB) and part of theAnti-Germans movement.[1] Between 1992 and 2021 he held a tenured part-time position as a teacher of political science at a technical college in Hamburg, Germany.
In 1991, he received hisdoctorate in Political Science at theUniversity of Hamburg. His thesisBonn & the Bomb. German Politics and the Nuclear Option (London:Pluto Press) was published inEnglish in 1995.
Since 2001, his main field of research and writing have been anti-Semitism in currentIslamic thinking,Islamism, Islamism andNational Socialism,Iran, German and Western policies towards theMiddle East and Iran. His essays and articles have been translated into sixteen languages and published inter alia inThe New Republic,TheWall Street Journal,TheIsrael Journal of Foreign Affairs,The Weekly Standard,Telos,Policy Review,The Jerusalem Post,Der Standard,Spiegel Online,Die Welt,Die Zeit andInternationale Politik.
In 2003, he delivered the keynote address at the"Conference on "Genocide and Terrorism – Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator". 20 March 2003. atYale University.[2]
In 2005, he discovered antisemitic tracts at the Iranian stands at theFrankfurt Book Fair, an incident he wrote about in theWall Street Journal.[3]
In 2007, Telos Press (New York, NY) published his bookJihad and Jew-Hatred. Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. In 2008, he presented "Jihad and Jew-Hatred in the USA" at numerous universities (Stanford University,Columbia University,UCLA,UC-Santa Cruz,UC-Irvine,SUNY-Buffalo,University of Maine, and theCooper Union). The book was criticized by Gilbert Achcar as "a fantasy-based narrative pasted together out of secondary sources and thirdhand reports; it aims to demonstrate that there is a direct line of descent from Amin al-Husseini and Hassan al-Banna through Gamal Abdel-Nasser to Osama bin Laden."[4] Alexander Flores has critiqued the book for lacking context about Palestinians' relationship to Zionism: "he draws a grotesquely distorted picture of the general strike and subsequentrebellion of the Palestinians from 1936 to 1939. According to this picture, the rebellion was brought about by the machinations of the mufti who just followed his lust for power and his anti-Semitic leanings and who already at that time colluded with the Nazis. The real background of the revolt, the Palestinians' apprehension at enhanced Jewish immigration, accelerated Zionist upbuilding and the possible loss of their homeland, is absent from this picture."[5]
Jeffrey Goldberg reviewing the book in theNew York Times called it a "bracing, even startling, book" and an "invaluable contribution" about an explosion of anti-Jewish hatred. "Küntzel makes a bold and consequential argument: the dissemination of European models of anti-Semitism among Muslims was not haphazard, but an actual project of the Nazi Party, meant to turn Muslims against Jews and Zionism. [...] Küntzel marshals impressive evidence to back his case, but he sometimes oversimplifies."[6]
He also spoke at conferences organizedinter alia by theAmerican Enterprise Institute, theIsrael Project, theAnti-Defamation League, and theJewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and at the "Global Forum For Combating Antisemitism" atIsrael's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He participated in an international academic workshop on "Antisemitism in the 21st Century: Manifestations, Implications and Consequences", organized by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of theUnited States Holocaust Museum.
In 2009, he spoke at the "London Conference on Combating Antisemitism", organized by theForeign and Commonwealth Office of theUnited Kingdom, and published his bookThe Germans and Iran: The Past and Present of a Fateful Friendship (German publisher: Wolf Jobst Siedler, Berlin). 2012 the Persian translation of this book by Michael Mobasheri was published in Cologne-Germany (Forough-Publishing Cologne). In 2010 he became a guest commentator on Germany's main public radio station,Deutschlandradio Kultur, and addressed the "Second Conference of the Interparliamentary Coalition on Combating Antisemitism" in Ottawa, Canada. In 2011, he received the ADL's Ehrlich-Schwerin Human Rights Prize and spoke at the international scholars conference on "Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives", organized by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism atIndiana University.
In 2012, he spoke on behalf of theHenry Jackson Society to Britain'sHouse of Commons on the 70th anniversary of theWannsee Conference, and at theKonrad Adenauer Foundation inBrussels on the current meaning of the Auschwitz day of remembrance. He was the main speaker at a rally against the award of theAdorno Award toJudith Butler, held in front of St. Paul's Church inFrankfurt.[7]The Germans and Iran was republished inPersian Translation by Michael Mobasheri.[8] He also publishedGermany, Iran and the Bomb (LIT, Münster), which was also a reply toGünter Grass.[9]
His book "Nazis and der Nahe Osten. Wie der islamische Antisemitismus entstand" (Nazis and the Middle East: How Islamic antisemitism came into being) was published in 2019. According to the reviewer Philip Henning Küntzel has become the most important German voice on this topic. For Küntzel a different position than pro-Israel is impossible. In his book Küntzel according the review selectively displays how NS-propaganda spread in Arabic countries, while and he ignores the many Arabic enemies of the Nazis. The influence of colonialism in the region is not a topic of the book either. However Hennig writes the book an overdue contribution to the awareness of a topic which plays too little a role in scientific and general public discourse.[10] In 2023, Routledge published "Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East. The Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II", an expanded English version of "Nazis und der Nahe Osten“.
On 14 March 2007 Küntzel was due to addressUniversity of Leeds in England on the topic ‘Hitler’s Legacy:Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East.’[11] The university's student Islamic society complained about what they called the lecture's "provocative" title and the university removed the words "Hitler" and "Islamic" with the title amended to read: "The Nazi Legacy: The Export of Anti-Semitism to the Middle East." However, several hours before the talk was due to take place, the talk was unexpectedly cancelled due to "security concerns," following protest e-mails from some of the university's Muslim students claiming the lecture was an "open racist attack".[12]
Küntzel said he had given similar addresses (atYale University, as well as universities inJerusalem andVienna) around the world and there had been no problems. "I know this is sometimes a controversial topic," he said, "but I am accustomed to that and I have the ability to calm people down. It's not a problem for me at all. My impression was that they wanted to avoid the issue in order to keep the situation calm. My feeling is that this is a kind of censorship."Dr. Küntzel also said that the contents of emails described to him did not overtly threaten violence but "they were very, very strongly worded". He added: "It's stupid, because I also talk aboutChristian anti-semitism." Members of the German department at Leeds accused the university of "selling-out"academic freedom.[13]
In 2011, Matthias Küntzel was presented with the Anti-Defamation-League's (ADL) Paul Ehrlich-Günther K. Schwerin Human Rights Award.[14]
In 2011, Matthias Küntzel was (together with Colin Meade) the recipient of the Best Book Review Award of theJournal for the Study of Antisemitism.[15]
In 2022, the German-Israeli Society in Hanover awarded him the Theodor Lessing Prize for enlightened thinking and acting.[16]
