American University Professor Hillary Mann Leverett told MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry that there is no history of anti-Semitism in the Middle East, no "deep-seated animosity," at least when compared to 1940s Europe.

In the segment, Harris-Perry seemed troubled over the idea that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is "ancient" and "visceral." If only she could grasp that this conflict is "relatively recent," then she would be more "optimistic" about the future.

Luckily for Harris-Perry, Professor Leverett was there to guide her with this "well informed" commentary:

If you look at Jewish communities in other places around the Middle East, there certainly was after the creation of the State of Israel and especially after the '67 war, an immigration of Jews from many of these Arab countries to Israel -- but there still are Jewish communities. For example, there is a thriving Jewish community in Iran. And when I've talked about that people say, 'Oh, that's so terrible. How could you say that? Of course they're suffering.' No, I've actually been there. I've been to the Kosher restaurants, I've been to the Jewish hospital in Iran.

There is not this deep-seated Arab/Jewish, or Muslim/Jewish, animosity. There's not an anti-Semitism in the Middle East the way that there was in Europe, which is based on race, which is based on color, which is based on genes and biology. That doesn't exist in the Middle East. There's no history of that in the Middle East.

Leverett continued and implicated the United States' involvement with Israel as bringing anti-Semitism to the Middle East:

[W]hen the memory of the Holocaust was freshest, from 1948 to 1967, and when Israel was arguably its most democratic -- it wasn't occupying the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and other places -- there was barely any food aide coming from the United States, Israel. The United States decides to support Israel and embed the Israeli narrative in our narrative after 1967, when we see that Israel can become a so-called strategic asset, seize and hold Arab territory aligned in post-Soviet states.

This worked for Harris-Perry. She concludes with a little less weighing on her conscience:

It feels important to me to mark because as horrible as it is, I somehow feel somewhat more optimistic if this is a problem rooted in 1967 and not in the beginning of time in some way.

If we think it started in '67, it becomes more reasonable to imagine [a] different future.

H/T Soopermexican