By
Bernard Lewis
Middle East Quarterly
June 1998
Bernard Lewis is Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies
Emeritus at Princeton University. He recently received the 1998 Atatürk
International Peace Award.
What
has come to be known as the peace process—the developing dialogue between the
state of Israel on the one hand and the Palestinians and some Arab governments
on the other—raised hopes that it would lead to a lessening of hostility and
more specifically of anti-Semitism. In some quarters this did indeed occur. But
in others the peace process itself has aroused a new Arab hostility to Jews,
among both those frustrated by its slowness and those alarmed by its rapidity.
As a result, anti-Semitism in recent years has conquered new territory and
risen to a new intensity.
European
anti-Semitism, in both its theological and racist versions, was essentially
alien to Islamic traditions, culture, and modes of thought. But to an
astonishing degree, the ideas, the literature, even the crudest inventions of
the Nazis and their predecessors have been internalized and Islamized. The
major themes—poisoning the wells, the invented Talmud quotations, ritual
murder, the hatred of mankind, the Masonic and other conspiracy theories,
taking over the world—remain; but with an Islamic, even a Qur'anic twist.
The
classical Islamic accusation, that the Old and New Testaments are superseded
because Jews and Christians falsified the revelations vouchsafed to them, is
given a new slant: the Bible in its present form is not authentic but a version
distorted and corrupted by the Jews to show that they are God's chosen people
and that Palestine belongs to them.1 Various current news items—the
scandal over Swiss banks accepting Nazi gold stolen from Jews, the appointment
of Madeleine Albright as secretary of state, even the collapse of the Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)—are given an anti-Semitic slant.
Jewish world plots—against mankind in general, against Islam, against the
Arabs—have become commonplace.
One
of the crimes of Israel and of the Zionists in these writings is that they are
a bridgehead or instrument of American or, more generally, of Western
penetration. For such, America is the Great Satan, Israel the Little Satan;
Israel is dangerous as a spearhead of Western corruption. The more consistent
European-type anti-Semites offer an alternative view; that America is the tool
of Israel, rather than the reverse, an argument backed by a good deal of
Nazi-style or original Nazi documentation. In much of the literature produced
by the Islamic organizations, the enemy is no longer defined as the Israeli or
the Zionist; he is simply the Jew, and his evil is innate and genetic, going
back to remote antiquity. A preacher from Al-Azhar University explains in an
Egyptian newspaper that he hates the Jews because they are the worst enemies of
the Muslims and have no moral standards, but have chosen evil and villainy. He
concludes: "I hate the Jews so as to earn a reward from God."2
The
argument that "we cannot be anti-Semitic because we ourselves are
Semites" may still occasionally be heard in Arab countries, though of
course not in Turkey or Iran. But some of the more sophisticated spokesmen have
become aware that to most outsiders this argument sounds silly or disingenuous.
Some writers make a serious effort to maintain the distinction between
hostility to Israel and Zionism and hostility to Jews as such. But not all.
President Khatami of Iran, in his interview on CNN, pointed out—correctly—that
"anti-Semitism is indeed a Western phenomenon. It has no precedents in
Islam or in the East. Jews and Muslims have lived harmoniously together for
centuries." A newspaper known to express the views of the "Supreme
Guide" Khamenei rejected this statement as untrue: "The history of
the beginnings of Islam is full of Jewish plots against the Prophet Muhammad
and of murderous attacks by Jews . . . unequivocal verses in the Qur'an speak
of the hatred and hostility of the Jewish people against Muslims. One must
indeed distinguish between the Jews and the Zionist regime, but to speak in the
manner we heard was exaggerated and there was no need for such a
presentation."3 The Egyptian director of a film about President
Nasser reports a similar complaint by the late president's daughter. She
objected to a passage in his film indicating that "Nasser was not against
the Jews, but against Zionism, because she wanted to portray her father as a
hero of the anti-Jewish struggle."4
Spokesmen
of the government of Iran usually disclaim anti-Semitism; they refrain from
overtly anti-Semitic phraseology and proclaim their readiness to tolerate
Jews—of course within the limits prescribed by the Shari‘a (Islamic
law). This however does not prevent them from embracing the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, the hundred-year old Russian forgery alleging a Jewish plot
to take over the world. These are frequently reprinted in Iran in book form and
were even serialized in a daily newspaper "as a reminder to the
reader."5 Iranian networks also distribute copies of the Protocols
internationally in various languages. In Egypt the Protocols formed the
basis of an interview published in a popular Egyptian magazine with Patriarch
Shenouda, head of the Coptic church.6 The interviewer starts by
introducing the Protocols as an authentic historical record and
questions the patriarch, whose comments on Jews and Judaism seem to be based on
the information supplied to him by the interviewer, and derived from the Protocols
and another popular anti-Semitic forgery, the pseudo-Talmud.
Arab
opposition to the peace process as such, or to the manner in which it is being
conducted, is of three major types: political, economic, and Islamic.
The
first is basically a continuance of what went before—ideological polemic
against
Zionism and political warfare against the state of Israel. Ideological or
political opposition as such is not based on prejudice, but it affects and is
affected by prejudice.
This
kind of opposition and the prejudice associated with it continue to flourish
and even to spread in spite of, and in some quarters because of, the peace
process. It has been aggravated by some of the actions of the new Israeli
government and still more by the utterances of some of its followers. Israeli
extremists cannot really be blamed for the anti-Semitic propaganda in the
Egyptian and other Arab media, which had already reached high levels of
scurrility before the change of government and policy in Israel in June 1996;
they have, however, undermined the efforts of well-meaning Arabs to counter
these campaigns.
An
example of reporting and comments on the news may be seen in reports of the
suicide bombing in Ramat Gan on July 24, 1995. This act was disclaimed, even
denounced, by responsible Palestinian and other Arab leaders. It was acclaimed
by many others, from the center and the left as well as in the fundamentalist
Islamic press. A leading article in a Jordanian leftist weekly by its editor,
Fahd ar-Rimawi, acclaims the heroism of the Hamas bomber who "sent seven
Zionist settlers to hell and thirty others to the casualty wards" and goes
on to denounce those who had condemned the attack as hypocrites or worse.7
That Ramat Gan is near Tel Aviv, part of Israel since the foundation of the
state, makes the description of its inhabitants as "Zionist settlers"
the more noteworthy. The Jordanian fundamentalist Ziyad Abu Ghanima rails
against those who "shed torrents of tears in mourning for filthy Jewish
blood while sparing their tears when Palestinian or Lebanese blood is shed by
the hands of the Jews, may God curse them."8
More
dangerous than this old-guard resistance is a new active opposition to the
peace process that arises from the process itself, from a fear that the prowess
which the Israelis had demonstrated in the battlefield would be equaled or even
exceeded in activities with which Jews are more traditionally associated—in the
factory, the counting house, and the marketplace. A certain Israeli brashness
and lack of understanding of the courtesies and sensitivities of Middle Eastern
society have often exacerbated such fears.
According
to this perception, Israel has changed its tactics. It has now switched from
warlike to peaceful methods to pursue its nefarious design of penetrating and
dominating the Arab world. Some see dark menace in every Israeli attempt at
communication and cooperation. The expansion of trade links means economic
exploitation and subjugation; the development of cultural links means the
subversion and destruction of Arab-Islamic culture; the quest for political
relations is a prelude to imperial domination. These fantasies, absurd as they
may seem to the outsider or indeed to any rational observer, nevertheless
command wide support in the Arab media and particularly in Egypt.
For
exponents of this view, European anti-Semitism provides a rich reservoir of
themes and motifs, of literature and iconography, on which to draw and
elaborate. Shimon Peres's book, The New Middle East,9 with
its somewhat idyllic view of future peaceful cooperation between Israel
and the Arab states for economic improvement and cultural advancement, has
appeared in several Arabic translations. The purpose of these translations is
indicated in the blurb of one of them, published in Egypt:
When the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were
discovered about two hundred years ago [sic] by a Frenchwoman [sic] and
disseminated in many languages including Arabic, the international Zionist
establishment tried its best to deny the plan. They even claimed that it was
fabricated and sought to acquire all the copies in the market in order to
prevent them from being read. And now, it is precisely Shimon Peres who brings
the decisive proof of their authenticity. His book confirms in so clear a way
that it cannot be denied that the Protocols were true indeed. Peres's
book is the last but one step in the execution of these dangerous designs.10
The
Protocols remain a staple, not just of propaganda, but even of academic
scholarship. Thus, according to an article in an Egyptian weekly,11
the University of Alexandria accorded the degree of master of arts to the
writer of an important "scientific treatise" dealing with the
economic role of the Jews in Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century.
The description of this dissertation makes it clear that its author relied very
heavily on the Protocols and on the methodology of research that they
provided.
A
campaign attacking Israeli agricultural techniques and products—the one area in
which there has been real cooperation with Egypt—accuses the Israelis of
selling hormonally altered fruit that kills men's sperm. (They also supposedly
supply Egyptian women with hyper-aphrodisiac chewing gum that drives them into
a frenzy of sexual desire.) Other stories accuse the Israelis (or simply
"the Jews") of supplying Egyptian farmers with poisoned seeds and
disease-bearing poultry "like time bombs";12 of
deliberately spreading cancer among the Egyptians and other Arabs by devising
and distributing carcinogenic cucumbers and shampoos; of promoting drug
consumption and devil worship; and of organizing a campaign to legalize
homosexuality to undermine Egyptian society. A Syrian paper even claims that
Arafat made peace because he himself is a Jew.13
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.
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
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.
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 arespected 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
1 Ash-Sha‘b, Jan. 3, 1997; Al-Watan
(Muscat), Feb. 12, 1997.
2 Al-Ittihad, Dec. 20, 1996.
3 Jumhuri-i Islami, Jan. 8, 1998.
4 La Presse de Tunisie, Jan. 26, 1998.
5 Ettela'at published the Protocols in 1995 in more
than 150 installments.
6 Al-Musawwar, Dec. 27, 1996.
7 Al-Majd, July 31, 1995.
8 Shihan, 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).
11 Akhir Sa‘a, Dec. 25, 1996.
12 Ash-Sha‘b (Cairo), Mar. 14, 1997.
13 Ath-Thawra, Oct. 4, 1995.
14 Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israelienne (Paris:
Samizdat, 1996).
15 Al-Mushahid as-Siyasi, May 4, 11, 18, 25; Jun. 1, 8, 15,
22, 29; July 6, 1997.
16 Al-‘Ahd, Nov. 15, 1996.
17 Al-Hayat, Jan. 15, 1998.
18 Interfaith Newsletter, Mar.-Sept. 1995; Interfaith
Monthly, Sept. 1995.
19 ‘Ali Salim, Rihla ila Isra'il, (Cairo: Akhbar al-Yawm,
1994), p. 8.
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