|
Anti-Semitism among the
Arabs By Eliahu Salpeter (Haaretz) The term "anti-Semitism" was invented by a German journalist to express his own attitudes and to define the hatred of Jews on a racial basis, as distinct from hostility toward Judaism. The fact that the Arabs are also Semites has created several paradoxes.Hitler was on good terms with Jerusalem's mufti, Haj Amin El-Husseini, one of the Arab world's most rabid anti-Semites. Yet today's Arab anti-Semites disingenuously claim that Arabs can never be anti-Semites, because that would amount to self-hatred. Nonetheless, modern-day Arab anti-Semites have distanced themselves from the anti-Semitic roots in Islam and have adopted the symbols, expressions and messages of Western racist anti-Semitism. The official Syrian newspaper, Tishrin, last week issued a particularly crude anti-Semitic barrage, claiming, for example, that the Holocaust is a legend invented to extort money and sympathy from the West. Such accusations have been made before in the Arab world - in fact, ever since the end of World War II. Thus Arab anti-Semites take the same position as neo-Nazis and other anti-Semites who have turned Holocaust denial into a central plank of their ideology. Nor was Tishrin's phrasing a new development. Syria continues to provide Nazi war criminals with political asylum and has always used extreme anti-Semitic wording in its verbal attacks on Israel. Nor is this the first time that Damascus has used such vitriol in order to heighten tensions with Israel. In 1998, when the Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims hit the headlines, Damascus Radio declared that the issue "raises many legitimate doubts concerning Nazi crematoria allegedly used to incinerate the Jews ... The Nazi high command included a large number of Jewish officers and many of them were close associates of Hitler." The last statement echoes two traditional Western "arguments" used to deny the Holocaust - that the cultivation of the "Holocaust mystique" is designed to extort additional funds from the West and to stifle any criticism of either Jews or Zionism. Holocaust denial has additional meaning for Arab anti-Semites, who claim that the "legend of the six million" led the West to establish the State of Israel - at the expense of the Palestinians. From the Arab anti-Semites' perspective, Holocaust denial undermines the moral foundations of the Jewish state. It is thus not surprising that Western Holocaust deniers, such as David Irving and France's Roger Garaudy (who has converted to Islam), are both pro-Arab and anti-Zionist. Syrian Holocaust denial has a tactical political meaning. The Syrians are aware that Jews are especially sensitive to the issue of Holocaust denial. Damascus's decision to raise this issue when the talks with Israel have reached an impasse shows a flagrant disregard for Jewish sensibilities and perhaps also indicates the kind of peace Syria is contemplating with Israel. It is regrettable that Israel does not respond more forcefully to such venom. Arab publications in the area of Holocaust denial give the impression that the leading Holocaust deniers in the Arab world are intellectuals, who are also the chief opponents to peace with Israel. This is not a new development. In 1961, the Saudi Arabian press defined Adolf Eichmann as a "martyr who bestowed a true blessing on humanity." Even the Palestinian press contains expressions of Holocaust denial. The oppositionist, fundamentalist press in moderate Arab states consistently contains statements denying the Holocaust and has much in common with Iranian newspapers that explain that the Holocaust "legend" was concocted to inspire fear in the hearts of Jews and to force them to seek asylum in post-war Palestine. A comprehensive study of world anti-Semitism, recently published by Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute in collaboration with the University of Nebraska, includes an article on the rethinking of the Holocaust in the Arab world. The author, Esther Webman of the Roth Institute and the Dayan Institute, points out that Holocaust denial has become an increasing factor in Arab anti-Semitism. She describes the immense grass-roots support Garaudy received when he visited the Middle East after a Paris court fined him heavily for disseminating denials of Jewish persecution. Webman's study also notes certain indications of a change taking place in traditional Arab positions on the Holocaust. Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi explained Yasser Arafat's desire to visit the Holocaust museum in Washington as an expression of the Palestinian leader's desire "to share the Jewish people's historical pain" and to strengthen ties between Palestinians and Israelis. Her study cites an article that appeared in the London-based Arab-language newspaper A-Sharq Al-Ouest, whose editor warned that Holocaust-deniers "do not understand that they are concealing the persecution of Muslims by neo-Nazis in Germany and in other parts of Europe." A former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee, Shafiq Al-Hut, has said that the Holocaust has become an Arab problem because of its politicization, but also notes that no Arab or Palestinian could ever deny the Holocaust. These new trends are still something of a rarity amid the flurry of two self-contradictory positions expressed by Arabs on the Holocaust. On the one hand, there is the denial, while on the other hand there is the claim that the Palestinians are being forced to pay the price for the crimes of the Europeans against the Jews. The only way to remove the contradiction is to stop denying the Holocaust. The vitriolic statements appearing in last week's Tishrin perhaps indicate how long we may have to wait for such a development |
The Case Agianst Israel's Enemies by Alan Dershowitz 
Coming from England and particularly from the BBC, MUST BE SEEN VIDEO! ANOTHER MUST SEE VIDEO |