The Anti-Semitism the West Ignores By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe 18 January 1999 Journalists no longer ignore anti-Semitism in high places; this century has made grimly clear what can happen when Jew-haters come to power. In the czar's day, anti-Jewish outbursts in the Duma provoked little comment in the West. Today they make the morning papers in London and Washington. When General Albert Mashakov, a Communist member of the Russian parliament, railed against Jews last fall - ''To the grave with all the Yids!'' he exclaimed to one audience - reporters on both sides of the Atlantic took note. The Guardian described the degeneration of the Russian left into a ''primitive, pre-revolutionary nationalism,'' reminding its readers of the long history of murderous Russian pogroms. The Washington Post caught Mashakov's call for a Jewish quota and observed that Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader, was standing by him. Closer to home, Pat Buchanan's ugly innuendo that America was dragged into the Gulf War by Israel's ''amen corner in the United States'' - i.e., American Jews - was much discussed during his presidential campaigns. Coming on top of a long history of defending accused Nazi war criminals and minimizing the Holocaust, his remarks convinced many voters that he was anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism needn't even be current to be newsworthy. Jean-Louis Roux, Quebec's lieutenant governor, resigned in disgrace in 1996 after it was discovered that decades earlier he had worn a swastika on his sleeve and joined demonstrations that targeted Jewish shops. Yet it would be false to say that all anti-Semitism by leading figures draws attention in the West. For there is almost no reporting on the dominant source of contemporary Jew-hatred: the Arab/Muslim world. This lack of interest is perplexing since the Arab-Israeli ''peace process'' gets covered in detail. American and European journalists pay great attention to the Arab world's diplomatic dealings with the Jewish state; how odd that they pay almost none to what Arabs and Muslims actually say about Jews. Anti-Semitism is peddled openly in the Arab world, crude filth on a par with anything Der Sturmer ever printed. With this twist: In addition to perpetuating every anti-Jewish Nazi canard and insult, right down to illustrations that portray Jews as bearded, big-nosed, pot-bellied demons, Arab anti-Semites also accuse Jews of being - Nazis! Consider some recent items in the Egyptian media. A cartoon in the magazine October, a state-controlled weekly, depicts a smirking Benjamin Netanyahu relaxing as he props himself up on two chairs - one labeled ''USA,'' the other marked with a swastika. In Al-Ahram, the leading Egyptian daily newspaper, Netanyahu appears in a Nazi uniform, beating a wardrum emblazoned with Jewish stars. Muhammad al-Sayeed, a former ambassador, writes an article proposing a Museum of Zionist Crimes. ''The crimes of the Jews,'' he declares, ''are worse than the crimes of the Nazis.'' Anti-Semitism in Egypt is worth focusing on for two reasons: (1) Egypt is the largest, and in many ways the most influential, Arab state. (2) It has been at peace with Israel for more than 20 years. In the 1978 Camp David treaty, Israel relinquished the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for normalized relations. Israel kept its end of the deal, but the Egyptians never came through. To this day blind prejudice against Jews is routine. Egypt's trade unions forbid contact with Israel. The Jewish state's ambassador to Egypt is ostracized. Israeli exhibitors have been barred from the international book fair beginning in Cairo next week. ''I, like millions of Egyptians, can't bear anything Jewish,'' writes the editor of Mayo, the newspaper of the ruling party. ''The Jews are a nation famous for arrogance and fanaticism.'' One cannot make sense of Arab-Israeli relations without taking this naked bigotry into account. ''The Jews are a tribe of treaty-breakers,'' says the sheikh of Al-Azhar, Egypt's foremost university. ''The Jew is by nature treacherous. They are the slayers of the prophets, against whom Allah will fight.'' The ancient well-poisoning libel lives on in Egypt; the government-controlled press routinely issues alarums about hospital blood that Israelis have contaminated with AIDS. The blood libel lives on, too. In November, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shaab published the details of how Jews kill Christians for religious reasons (''The blood is gathered in a jar. These jars are brought on Passover and Purim to the leading rabbi, who blesses the blood. Then they mix the blood together with flour to make matzah. Afterward, the matzah is distributed to God-fearing Jews and they eat it with an appetite.''). Egyptian opinion-makers put Jews behind every misfortune. The massacre of 60 tourists at Luxor in 1997, Al Ahram suggested, was the doing of Jews. It asserted last fall that ''the Jews have been behind all wars, and their goal was corruption and destruction.'' Salama Ahmed Salama, the paper's sophisticated editor, approvingly quotes an Egyptian author: ''There is a great Jewish plot to gain control of the world.'' Egypt is not atypical; such stuff percolates throughout the Middle East. Even the Palestinians, Israel's current ''peace'' partners, traffic in the grossest anti-Semitism. Jew-hatred is a danger sign: Wherever it flourishes, barbarism follows. There is no excuse for this oldest of bigotries. There is no excuse for ignoring it, either. |
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