In the Judo competition of the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, an Israeli heavyweight judo fighter named Orsason

defeated his Egyptian opponent, Islam and Shahabi, in a first round match.

The Egyptian then refused to shake the Israeli's extended hand,

earning booze from the crowd.

If you want the short answer for why the Arab world is sliding into the abyss,

look no further than this little incident.

It illustrates how hatred of Israel and Jews corrupts every element of Arab society.

You won't find this explanation for the Arab world's decline among journalists and academics.

They reflexively blame the usual suspects, the legacy of colonialism,

unemployed youth, the Sunni Shia sectarian divide, and every other politically correct excuse

they can think of. For them, hatred of Israel is treated like sand in Arabia, just part of the landscape.

Yet the fact remains that over the past 70 years, the Arab world expelled virtually all of its Jews,

some 900,000 people, while holding on to its hatred of them.

Over time, the result proved fatal. A combination of lost human capital,

expensive wars against Israel, and an intellectual life perverted by conspiracy theories and a

perpetual search for scapegoats. The Arab world's problems are a problem of an Arab mindset,

and the name of that problem is anti-Semitism. As a historical phenomenon, this is not unique.

Historian Paul Johnson has noted that wherever anti-Semitism took hold, social and political

decline almost inevitably followed. Just a few examples. Spain expelled its Jews in 1492.

The effect Johnson noted was to deprive Spain and its colonies of a class already notable for the

stupe handling of finance. In Zara's Russia, the adoption of numerous anti-Semitic laws ultimately

weakened and corrupted the entire Russian government. These laws also led to mass Jewish

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