UANI

Author and political scientist Matthias Küntzel

Born in 1955, holds a tenured part-time position as a teacher of political science at a technical college in Hamburg, Germany.

Küntzel is an external research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a founder and member of the Board of Directors of the German chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).

Since 2001, his research and writing has focused on: Iran, and German and European policies towards the Middle East and Iran, Antisemitism in current Islamic thinking and Iran, Islamism, Islamism and National Socialism.

His essays and articles have been translated into ten languages and published inter alia in The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Telos, Policy Review, The Jerusalem Post, The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Standard, Spiegel, Die Zeit, Die Welt and Internationale Politik. He also serves as a guest commentator on Germany’s main public radio station Deutschlandradio Kultur.

His book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (Telos Press, 2007), also published in Hebrew (Tobypress 2008), in French (L’Oevre Editions 2009) and in German (Ca Ira 2002) won the Grand Prize at the London Book Festival in 2007 and the Gold Award for Religion at the 12th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards in Los Angeles in 2008.

His most recent book, The Germans and Iran. The Past and Present of a Fateful Friendship (in German) was published by the Berlin publishing house WJS in 2009. The book has been translated into English and Farsi.

In 2011, Matthias Küntzel was presented with the Anti-Defamation-League (ADL) Paul Ehrlich-Günther K. Schwerin Human Rights Award during the League’s National Executive Committee meeting in Palm Beach, Florida. “Matthias Küntzel has a long and distinguished record in speaking out against anti-Semitism and warning his readers in his native Germany and elsewhere about the dangers posed by this age-old virus that has no known cure,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, in presenting the award.

See Küntzel’s homepage at www.matthiaskuentzel.net .