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Volume CXXXIII, Number 3 |
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The fundamental source of tension
YARON EISENBERG
CONTRIBUTOR
Recent events in Israel have triggered a whirlwind of speculations and prophecies. Such sweeping predictions have often included talks of an Islamic fundamentalist outcry or of another Arab-Israeli War. Although such prospects are not out of the question, the explanations given to analyze the present crisis in the Middle East occasionally overlook key issues, which are at the heart of the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. These topics include the historical and continuing tradition of rejecting Israel as a Jewish state, as well as anti-Semitism.
One can hold any number of opinions on this topic, but the indisputable fact remains that the Arab and Islamic World, the leaders and the Western media's beloved 'Arab Street', have never accepted Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Remember the infamous comments made by former Iranian leader Rafsanjani regarding the destruction of Israel by nuclear means.
The Arab leaders rejected the U.N. partition plan. It was a united Arab front that initiated the 1948 war and promised their Palestinian 'brothers' a short, sweet victory. There have been many subsequent wars, all of which endangered Israel's security and survival. The Six Days War '67, The Yom Kippur War '73, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, all of which started with the same rally cries calling for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews and concluded with the same stalemate that has plagued the region for the past fifty-five years: Israel's survival and the Arab and Muslim states seeking to terminate that survival.
One cannot deny the anti-Semitic attitudes that are not only entrenched in Middle Eastern society today, but also are seeping through the pores of government. The breed of anti-Semitism seen in the Middle East and elsewhere, taught in religious institutions such as schools and mosques, universities, state-run television, internet websites, newspapers, and other mediums, is taken straight from a Nazi playbook. Peer at most Arabic newspapers and you'll see that the political cartoons are not just reminiscent, but frighteningly similar to those appearing in Nazi propaganda pieces.
For instance, a political cartoon in the April 16, 2003 issue of Al-Watan, a Qatar newspaper, portrays a Jew in a classic anti-Semitic, Naziesque fashion. Note the hard to miss Star of David, nose, beard, stereotypical clothing, a demonic grin, satanic eyes, and hovering over world leaders as if he is in control of world policy; classical Jewish conspiracy theory.
Anti-Semitism in the Middle East should not come to anybody's surprise considering the fact that one of the leaders in the thirties and forties claiming to champion the Palestinian cause, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni, was indeed a staunch ally of Nazi Germany, as were other notable Arab leaders.
Renowned Middle East/Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis from Princeton Univerisity writes in his important book Semites and Anti-Semites, "His (al-Husayni) objectives as he explained on numerous occasions to German officials, were far-reaching. His immediate aim was to halt and terminate Jewish settlement in Palestine. Beyond that, however, he aimed at much vaster purposes, conceived not so much in pan-Arab as in pan-Islamic terms, for a Holy War of Islam in alliance with Germany against world Jewry, to accomplish the final solution of the Jewish problem everywhere."
A more modern example draws one to a sermon delivered in a Gaza mosque, which was broadcasted on PA television on Friday, August 3, 2001. Sheik Ibrahim Madhi said, "All spears should be directed at the Jews, at the enemies of Allah, the nation that was cursed in Allah's book. Allah has described them as apes and pigs, the calf-worshipers, idol-worshipers."
Egypt, a nation Israel has a 'peace treaty' with, ran a Saudi Arabian production on television of a dramatization of The Elders of the Protocol Zion, a work which has proven to be false and epitomizes anti-Semitic sentiment and literature. There are endless examples. I will offer one more. Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma, in the Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh, wrote about Purim, "For this holiday, the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries. In other words, the practice cannot be carried out as required if human blood is not spilled!!"
The crux of the problem in the Middle East neither begins with the Palestinian-Israeli
issue, nor ends with the solution to that problem. The source of the tension
runs deeper and thicker. Israel and its place in the Middle East is a
complex and multi-layered matrix. However, the intricate knots cannot
be untied unless there is a general acceptance - a genuine and sincere
acceptance - of Israel existing as a Jewish, democratic state in the Middle
East along with a reduction of the level of anti-Semitism.
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