III. Islamic
The strongest, most principled, and most sustained opposition to the peace process is offered in the name of Islam, especially by the government of Iran and its agencies, and by other Islamic parties and organizations. Islamic opposition has the considerable advantage of being ideologically formulated and logically consistent and of using familiar language to appeal to deep-rooted sentiments. This gives to arguments based on Islam far greater cogency and power than those based on nationality and race. Nevertheless, spokesmen for Islamic movements do not disdain to use racist arguments, and specifically, to draw on the rich resources of hatred provided by European anti-Semitism. Standard anti-Semitic themes have become commonplace in the propaganda of Arab Islamic movements like Hizbullah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Refah, the Turkish Islamic party whose head served as prime minister in 1996–97.
Most of these accusations are familiar and can be traced to their European sources. Others arise from local circumstances. Thus, for Turkish anti-Semites, the misdeeds of the Jews include the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and the recent troubles in Bosnia. In Iran, American sanctions and the resulting economic hardships are ascribed to sinister Jewish influences in Washington.
Other accusations are clearly transference or projection; for example, Israelis are allegedly told by rabbis that if they die while killing Palestinians they will go straight to paradise. Some are traditional Islamic accusations against the Jews, based on well-known passages in the Qur’an and hadith (sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad). Some are borrowed or adapted from the standard armory of European anti-Semitism. Increasingly, the second and third motifs are combined.
REWRITING HISTORY
These different kinds of propaganda all share the technique of rewriting or obliterating the past, and in particular removing anything that might arouse compassion or evoke respect for the Jew. Standard themes include recasting ancient history, Holocaust denial, and equating Jews with Nazis.
Ancient history. The rewriting makes Jews disappear from the ancient Middle East. The historical museum in Amman tells through objects and inscriptions the history of all the ancient peoples of the region—with one exception. The kings and prophets of ancient Israel are entirely missing. I was able to find only three references to Jews. The first explains (in English) the inscription on the Mesha Stele as “thanking the Moabite god Chemosh for deliverance from the Israelites.” (The Arabic explanation reads, “from the tyranny of the Israelites.”) The second appears in an alcove containing the Dead Sea scrolls produced by a “Jewish sect.” The third is a reference to “the militant Hasmonean Jews [who] established their own reign in Palestine and the northern part of Jordan. Most of the Greek cities welcomed the Roman army headed by General Pompey as a liberator from Jewish oppression.”
Textbooks used in schools under the Palestinian Authority lack even these few allusions to ancient Jewish history. For them, the history of Palestine begins with the retroactively Arabized Canaanites and jumps from them to the Arab conquest in the seventh century C.E., entirely omitting the Old Testament, its people, and their history.
Holocaust denial. Either the Holocaust never happened, or if it did, it was on a small scale and—some add—the Jews brought it on themselves. Another favorite line is that the Zionists were the collaborators and successors of the Nazis. This remarkable version of history commands increasing Arab support, as is evidenced by the reception accorded to Roger Garaudy, a French ex-Communist convert to Islam who has published a book entitled The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. 14 These myths are three: the religious myth of the Chosen People and the Promised Land; the Holocaust myth of Jewish extermination and Zionist anti-fascism; and the new myth of the modern Israeli miracle, actually due to foreign money procured by Jewish lobbyists. Garaudy’s sources include apologists for Hitler, post-Zionist Israeli revisionists, and European anti-Americanists.
Garaudy’s Middle East tour in the summer of 1996 was a triumph. In Lebanon he was received by the prime minister and the minister of education, in Syria by the vice president and several other ministers. He gave a number of highly publicized lectures and interviews in both countries and was welcomed by major literary and other intellectual bodies. In Jordan and Egypt he was not officially received but was welcomed with the same or greater acclaim in literary circles. The government-sponsored Arab Artists Union elected him an honorary member—the first since the Federation was established more than twenty years ago. The editor-in-chief of Egypt’s semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper conferred a press prize on Garaudy in recognition of the “fresh air” that he had contributed to the debate. He was even invited to contribute a series of ten articles to an Arabic weekly published in London by the BBC’s Arabic service.15
Garaudy’s welcome, however, was not unanimous. Some fundamentalists, while approving his views on Israel, questioned his understanding of Islam. In Morocco he was acclaimed by some newspapers, but his public appearances were canceled. “The universities,” said the minister of higher education, “will not open their gates to anti-Semites.”
Jews as Nazis. Denying or minimizing the Holocaust facilitates another favorite theme—that Jews, far from being victims of the Nazis, were their collaborators who now carry on their tradition. Cartoons depicting Israelis and other Jews with Nazi-style uniforms and swastikas have now become standard. These complement the Nazi-era hooked noses and blood-dripping jagged teeth. The memory of both the Jewish victims and Arab admirers of the Third Reich is totally effaced. To maintain this interpretation of history, some measure of control is necessary, extending even to entertainment. Schindler’s List, a film portraying the suffering of the Jews under Nazi rule, is banned in Arab countries. Even Independence Day, which has nothing to do with either the Nazis or the Middle East, was denounced in Arab circles because it has a Jewish hero, and that is unacceptable. The film won approval for release in Lebanon only after the censors had removed all indications of the Jewishness of the hero—the skullcap, the Hebrew prayer, the momentary appearance of Israelis and Arabs working side by side in a desert outpost. A Hizbullah press liaison officer explained his objection to the film. “This film polishes and presents the Jews as a very humane people. You are releasing false images about them.” 16
While visits to Arab bookshops or to religious bookshops in Turkey reveal a wide range of anti-Semitic literature, any kind of corrective is lacking. The Arab reader seeking guidance on such topics as Jewish history, religion, thought, and literature will find virtually nothing available. Some material on modern Israel (e.g., that produced by the former Palestine Research Center in Beirut) is reasonably factual. But most of what is available is either lurid propaganda or used as such. Translations from Hebrew are few and fall mainly into three categories: accounts of Israeli espionage, memoirs by Israeli leaders (Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu) with explanatory introductions and annotations, and writings by anti-Zionist and anti-Israel Jews.
SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT
The peace treaties negotiated and signed between governments will remain cold and formal, amounting to little more than a cessation of hostilities, until peace is made between peoples. As long as a high-pitched scream of rage and hate remains the normal form of communication, such a peace is unlikely to make much progress.
But there are some signs of improvement, of the beginnings of a dialogue. Statesmen, soldiers, and businessmen have been in touch with their Israeli opposite numbers, and some of these contacts have so far survived the change of government in Israel. Intellectuals have proved more recalcitrant, but even among them, there have been signs of change. A few courageous souls have braved the denunciation of their more obdurate colleagues to meet publicly with Israelis and even on rare occasions to visit Israel.
A number of Arab intellectuals have expressed disquiet and distaste with the vicious anti-Semitism that colors so much of the debate on
the Arab-Israel conflict. The trial of Roger Garaudy in Paris in February 1998 for a violation of the Loi Gayssot, making Holocaust denial a criminal offense in France, evoked strong reactions in the Arab world. In general, there was an outpouring of vehement moral and substantial material support. But there were some dissenting voices. In the first of a number of articles condemning the cult of Garaudy, Hazim Saghiya drew attention to the contrast between Western and Arab criticisms of the trial in Paris. Western critics took their stand on freedom of expression, even for odious ideas. Arab critics, he observed, have in general shown little concern for freedom of expression; it was Garaudy’s ideas that they liked.17 Several other writers in the Arabic press expressed disapproval of the cult of Garaudy, and more generally, of Holocaust denial.
There were other hopeful signs. In January 1997 a group of Egyptians, Jordanians, and Palestinians, including intellectuals, lawyers, and businessmen, met with a similar group of Israelis in Copenhagen and agreed “to establish an international alliance for Arab-Israeli peace.” Their declaration is not confined to pious generalities but goes into detailed discussion of some of the specific issues at stake. Needless to say, the Arab participants in this enterprise were denounced and reviled by many of their colleagues as dupes, traitors, or worse.
A recent incident evoked disquieting memories of the rampage of the Egyptian gendarme Sulayman Khatir in 1985 when he shot at Israeli visitors, killing several and disabling nine of them. It also provided an encouraging contrast. On March 13, 1997, a Jordanian soldier, Ahmad Daqamsa, suddenly started firing at an Israeli girls’ school outing, killing seven children and wounding several more before being overpowered by his comrades. In a gesture of contrition and compassion, King Husayn of Jordan a few days later crossed into Israel and called in person to offer his condolences to the bereaved families. Reactions in Jordan were mixed. Some of his people joined the Israelis in acclaiming this act of courage, human decency, and generosity of spirit. Others, while condemning the murders, thought the king’s response excessive. Others again made the murderer’s home a place of pilgrimage. But there was nothing comparable with the outpouring of support that, for a while, made Sulayman Khatir a popular national and even intellectual hero in Egypt.
Closer contact between the two societies may bring interesting, perhaps even valuable results. Israel with all its faults is an open, democratic society. A million Arabs are Israeli citizens; two million Palestinians have lived or are living under Israeli rule. Although this rule has often been harsh and arbitrary, by the standards of the region it has on the whole been benevolent. Two contrasting incidents illustrate a direction of possible change. During the intifada, a young Arab boy had his wrist broken by a baton-wielding Israeli soldier. He appeared next day, bandaged and in a hospital, denouncing Israeli oppression—on Israeli television. In 1997 a lawyer in Gaza submitted an article to a Palestinian journal describing the investigation by the Israeli police of the prime minister and other members of the Israeli government, and suggesting that similar procedures might be adopted by the Palestinian Authority. The editor of the journal did not publish the article but instead referred it to the attorney general who ordered the arrest and imprisonment of its author.
Growing numbers of Arabs see—and some even make— this point. It did not pass unnoticed that the only public investigation of the Sabra and Shatila massacre was a judicial inquiry held in Israel. No such inquiry was held in any Arab country. The principal perpetrator of the massacre, Elie Hubayqa, a Lebanese Christian militia leader at that time allied with Israel, subsequently went over to the Syrian side and has for some years past been a respected member of the Syrian-sponsored government in Beirut. The election for the Palestinian Authority held in January 1996, acclaimed as the freest and fairest held in the Arab world, contrasted the more sharply with the show election held a little earlier in Lebanon in the presence of a different neighbor.
The Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies in Amman, under the patronage of Crown Prince Hasan, is concerned with Judaism as well as with Islam and Christianity. It has invited Jewish scholars from Israel and elsewhere to contribute to its activities and to its English-language journal. 18 This attempt to present Jewish beliefs and culture in objective terms, even to allow Jews to speak for themselves, is rare, and perhaps unique, in the Muslim world.
The last word may be left to ‘Ali Salim, one of the first Egyptian intellectuals who dared to visit Israel. He said: “I found that the agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis was a rare moment in history. A moment of mutual recognition. I exist and you also exist. Life is my right; it is also your right. This is a hard and long road. Its final stage is freedom and human rights. It will not be strewn with roses but beset with struggle and endurance. One cannot make peace just by talking about it. There is no way to go but forward, to achieve peace with deeds and not just words.”19
NOTES
1Ash-Sha’b, Jan. 3, 1997; Al-Watan (Muscat), Feb. 12, 1997.
2Al-Ittihad, Dec. 20, 1996.
3Jumhuri-i Islami, Jan. 8, 1998.
4La Presse de Tunisie, Jan. 26, 1998.
5 Ettela’at published the “Protocols” in 1995 in more than 150 installments.
6Al-Musawwar, Dec. 27, 1996.
7Al-Majd, July 31, 1995.
8Shihan, July 29, 1995.
9 Shimon Peres with Arye Naor, The New Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1993).
10 Muhamad Hilmi ‘Abd al-Hafiz, trans., Ash-Sharq al-Awsat al-Jadid (Alexandria: n.p., 1995).
11Akhir Sa’a, Dec. 25, 1996.
12Ash-Sha’b (Cairo), Mar. 14, 1997.
13Ath-Thawra, Oct. 4, 1995.
14Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israelienne (Paris: Samizdat, 1996).
15Al-Mushahid as-Siyasi, May 4, 11, 18, 25; June 1, 8, 15, 22, 29; July 6, 1997.
16Al-’Ahd, Nov. 15, 1996.
17Al-Hayat, Jan. 15, 1998.
18Interfaith Newsletter, Mar.–Sept. 1995; Interfaith Monthly, Sept. 1995.
19 ‘Ali Salim, Rihla ila Isra’il (Cairo: Akhbar al-Yawm, 1994), p. 8.
An Exchange Between BERNARD LEWIS and ABDELALEEM EL-ABYAD
September 1998
Dear Editor:
Writing about what he calls “Muslim Anti-Semitism” [ The Middle East Quarterly, June 1998], Professor Bernard Lewis engages, as too often, in selective scholarship. He approaches his subject in a total vacuum. Sporadic phenomena of so-called Arab or Muslim anti-Semitism is not related to any wrongdoing by Israel or its supporters, or to the universally acknowledged fact of Palestinian victimization by an ethnic and a religious group that has suffered greatly at the hands of Hitler and other European anti-Semites.
Professor Lewis’s sweep of accusations is really too wide, perhaps on purpose in order to obfuscate. No one could deny the existence, though very limited, of verbal manifestation of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. Such manifestations, however, should be unequivocally condemned. But how much of this is really anti-Semitism in the well-established sense of the word, and how much of it is an expansion of indignation and frustrations against an Israeli policy of occupation, ethnic cleansing (1948 and 1967), settlers’ behavior, etc.? The list is really very long.
Professor Lewis could have asked himself if Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim reaction would have been different if the occupier was Great Britain, Russia, or America. The professor of Islamic studies has never told us how Jewish extremists in Israel or in the United States perceive the Palestinians, the Arabs, and Muslims. The favorite slogans of these extremists, as is well known, are: “Death to the Arabs” and “The only good Arab is a dead Arab.”
Allow me, Professor, to ask how you would describe the Jewish advocates of “transfer,” which is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. And Professor, which is really more nefarious: crude verbal expression of bias toward the enemy, or a consistent policy of annexations and total violation of human rights in the occupied territories?
I don’t think there is enough s
pace to respond to every piece of disinformation in Professor Lewis’s piece. But I will refer to two examples he has given because they reflect on the cast of his scholarship. Professor Lewis is very proud of the fact that after the massacre of Shatilla and Sabra in Lebanon, there was an inquiry in Israel to determine Mr. Ariel Sharon’s responsibility, something the professor is telling us could not happen in any Arab country.
As we recall, the massacre—it is true—was carried out with extreme brutality by Lebanese Phalangists who were trained and reviewed by then General Sharon’s troops before they were set loose to do their mayhem. Incidentally, Professor, in this unprovoked invasion of Lebanon, 20,000 hapless Lebanese and Palestinians were murdered by Israel.
Another example touted by Professor Lewis is the banning of Schindler’s List in many Arab countries. Personally, I’m against the banning. But the banning of this film could also be viewed against the very effective censorship exercised by Jewish activists of any film or television documentary sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. In the 1960s and 1970s, when I used to live in New York City, all Soviet-bloc artistic shows, including classical operas, were banned from the city. The Soviets were perceived as pro-Arab. Cultural boycott remains a constant feature among Jewish activists to this day. We have a saying in Arabic which roughly translated means: “If you have no sense of shame, then every thing is possible.”
The Egypt you have vilified in this article is the same Egypt that had provided a sanctuary to Sephardic Jews escaping the Inquisition and Jewish settlers in Palestine sharing German and Turkish persecution during 1914, World War I, etc. The Egyptian-Jewish community was part of the socio-economic elite, well-respected and highly trusted until Zionists started to foment disloyalty to Egypt among its members. The rest is well known.
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