Arab Countries 2006

In early February 2006, a tribunal headed by former Malaysian PM Mahatir Muhammad found US President George Bush, British PM Tony Blair and Israeli PM Ariel Sharon guilty of human rights violations and crimes against peace and humanity. They were convicted in an "international trial" held in Cairo at the initiative of the Arab Lawyers Union, with the participation of a few Western representatives such as former American attorney Stanley Cohen, of bombing private homes, public buildings, hospitals and schools, obstructing food and medical supplies, destroying water and electricity supplies, and arresting, detaining and torturing innocent civilians in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. Although not widely covered by the Arab media, the trial was symptomatic of the prevailing Arab and Muslim mood. In an article, entitled "A Holocaust of a Different Kind," in the Jordanian Islamist weekly al-Sabil, attorney Muhammad Ahmad al-Rusan wrote that the tribunal was an answer to official Arab inaction and to the incompetence of international organizations in the pursuit of justice and in protecting peoples and individuals from oppression.[1] Indeed, a survey conducted from April to mid-May by Pew Center's Global Attitudes Project among Muslims and non-Muslims in 13 countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria, showed increasing opposition among Muslims to violence against civilians in the name of Islam, but persistent negative perceptions of the West and the Jews. Some 98 percent of respondents in Jordan and 97 percent in Egypt harbored anti-Jewish feeling.

Similar attitudes were found in other Muslim countries.[2] A solid majority of Muslims continued to believe that the 9/11 attacks in the US were not carried out by Arabs, while Muslim Brotherhood members of the Egyptian parliament, as well as other opposition representatives, voted against ratification of an Arab agreement to fight terrorism in mid-January. Usama Bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri, explained opposition deputy Rajab Hamida, "are a thorn in America's heart.you cannot incriminate any Arab for praising them and their activities."[3] According to a poll released in December 2005 by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and Zogby International, when Muslims in several countries were asked what aspect of al-Qa`ida they sympathized with most, 39 percent said it was because the group confronted the US. Nearly 20 percent said it was because it stood up for Muslim causes − which amounts to the same thing.[4] The declassified key findings of the American National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism" released in April, confirmed that anti-American and anti-globalization sentiment was rising and fueling other radical ideologies. Despite the damage that US-led counterterrorism efforts inflicted on the leadership of al-Qa`ida, the global jihadist movement, which includes al-Qa`ida and affiliated and independent terrorist groups, as well as emerging networks and cells, was spreading both among Muslims in Europe and in Arab and Muslim countries.[5]

"The distemper of these global times can be read in a wide variety of settings, where this new virulent anti-Americanism competes with historical antisemitism as a single explanation for the failures and delusions of entire nations," wrote Jim Hoagland.[6] Indeed, the rise in anti-Americanism has been accompanied by an escalation in antisemitic manifestations, reinforcing the correlation between the two phenomena.

Political developments in 2006 gave a further boost to Islamists in Arab countries. In January, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt won over 80 seats in Parliament becoming the biggest opposition party and Hamas won the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian Authority (PA); Hizballah emerged as the victor in the Second Lebanon War in July-August in the eyes of the greater Arab public (see General Analysis); Sunni and Shi`i Islamist clashes in Iraq curtailed any attempts to restore law and order; Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri continued to release audio and video tapes encouraging martyrdom and jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders; and Iran intensified its involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. All these triggered an increase in antisemitic manifestations, which reached a peak during the Lebanon War, proving once again that they are closely linked to events in the Middle East. There was intensification in the employment of Holocaust metaphors to describe the situation in the PA and Israeli behavior, as well as in the use of antisemitic caricatures to convey the negative traits of Israel and Zionism. The affair of the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, as well as in other European papers in September 2005, reverberated in the Middle East at the beginning of 2006, triggering a chain of events: an international caricature contest on Holocaust themes announced by Iran in February which followed by an exhibition and a conference in December aimed at questioning the established narrative of the Holocaust and Zionist usage of it.

Jews as the scapegoat

The perception that the Jews (or "Israel," "the Mossad" or "Zionism") are behind every disaster befalling humanity and particularly those affecting Arabs and Muslims continues to dominate the Arab discourse. Accordingly, Kamal Jaballah, writing from Canada, claimed that it was common knowledge that "international Zionism" was the driving force behind all the calamities of the Arab world.[7] He suggested "search[ing] for the Mossad" in the assassination of Lebanese PM Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005, an accusation raised in previous years (see ASW 2004). Similarly, the war raging in Iraq was repeatedly attributed to Zionist machinations and hatred, which derived from the Jewish legacy of the Old Testament and the Talmud.[8] Israel's hidden hand was allegedly behind the racist attitude toward Muslims in the World Cup games which took place in Germany,[9] the crisis in Darfur and anti-Sudanese demonstrations worldwide,[10] and the suicide bombings in the Egyptian resort of Dahab in the Sinai Peninsula, on 24 April, killing 24 Egyptians and foreigners and wounding 100.[11] Egyptian journalist Khalid Mahmud pointed out that Egyptians ranging from the intelligentsia to laymen, as well as parliament members such as Mustafa Bakri, who is also chief editor of al-Usbu` weekly, strongly believed that Israel was behind the bombings with the aim of damaging the Egyptian economy, embarrassing the regime and confusing public opinion.[12] Similar views were raised in various editorials in major Egyptian dailies.[13]

Even Pope Benedict XVI's remarks in a theological lecture delivered at the University of Regensburg in Germany on 12 September on the relationship between faith and reason, in which he quoted 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who condemned Prophet Muhammad's legacy and presented the idea of jihad as contrary to reason,[14] were seen as a product of Jewish/ Zionist machinations. Although this theme was less dominant in the plethora of Arab responses, it appeared in several articles and caricatures. The pope's comments were perceived as a provocation against Muslims and part of the renewed campaign against Islam, spearheaded by "international Zionism," President Bush and American neo-conservatives, and preceded by events such as the Western embrace of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses in the early 1990s and the Danish cartoons insulting Muhammad. The pope probably wanted to present a gift to the American president and the "Zionized Christian Right," to support their war against Islam, claimed leading Sunni Islamist scholar Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.[15] With the death of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican had become "an open arena for the maneuvers of the Mossad and the CIA," wrote Nahid Munir al-Ris in the Palestinian al-Hayat al-Jadida. "Surely, Israel and those behind it, the Zionist Lobby controlling the centers of power in the US, had succeeded in blackmailing the pope on account of his despicable Nazi past," contended the editor of the Egyptian mainstream daily al-Akhbar, adding that Pope Benedict XVI was also behind the Vatican's rapprochement with Israel and the exoneration of the Jews from responsibility for Christ's crucifixion. Ahmad Dhiban, in the Jordanian al-Ra'y, reasoned that the only explanation for the Pope's behavior was his German origin and his youth years under the Nazi regime as well as the mental and cultural burden imposed on Germans by the Zionist movement for the "extremely inflated" Holocaust.[16]

The Christian Jordanian writer Jurj Haddad, a persistent opponent of Zionism and Jews, was perhaps the most blatant. He not only connected the pope's statements to the Jews but found them part of ongoing Jewish attempts to instigate Christian resentment against Islam. The Jews continued to infiltrate ruling elites and amass power against their adversaries, he claimed. Historically, they considered Christianity and Islam as enemies and repudiated them as religions, rejecting any terms of co-existence and reconciliation. But when they were unable to realize their goals, they resorted to conspiring and fabricating accusations, "and this is exactly what happened." Historical facts confirmed by documents from the early Christian era established this contention, he continued, and the Islamic scriptures were full of evidence on the treachery and scheming of the Jews against the Prophet. Since 1958, when Pope Pius XII died and was succeeded by John XXIII, the doors of the Vatican had become wide open to new Jewish maneuvering, beginning with the Second Ecumenical Council in 1965 and the exoneration of the Jews.[17]

Equating Israel and Zionism with Nazism and Racism

Accusing Israel and Zionism of Nazism and racism is associated in the Arab discourse with Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. This was a recurring theme in many of Jihad al-Khazin's columns in the London-based liberal paper al-Hayat. Attacking European and American decisions to suspend financial aid to the PA, following the Hamas victory in the PA parliamentary elections in January, al-Khazin labeled Israeli government members on 9 March "Nazi war criminals," accusing them of being part of one of the most barbaric and terrorist movements in the modern age with its "Nazi army." On 19 April, following Israeli retaliation for a Palestinian suicide attack in Jerusalem, he repeated his allegation, asserting that since many members of the government and the army were descendants of Holocaust victims or survivors, "they can exploit their knowledge of Nazi expertise in order to apply 'the final solution' to the Palestinian problem." (For other expressions in the same vein during the Second Lebanon War, see General Analysis).

The equation between Zionism and Nazism is a recurrent theme in the Syrian public discourse. The Syrian representative to the annual World Health Assembly, which met in the last week of May in Geneva, accused the Israelis of acting like Nazis.[18] On 26 January, Syrian scholar Ghazi Husayn wrote an article on "the affinity between Nazism and Zionism," explaining that both were racist European movements based on the notion of racial superiority and purity. He charged that they had cooperated in fighting against the assimilation of Jews in order to bring about their emigration and the establishment of "the Israeli entity," thus protecting the interests of imperialist powers and "international Judaism," and fighting Arabism and Islam. Just as Nazism planned to gain control over Europe, Zionism strove to gain control over the "Greater Middle East region." In another article, he discussed ways in which Zionism and Nazism allegedly applied their ideologies, accusing "international Judaism" and Israel of committing Nazi crimes against their adversaries, including non-Zionist Jews, and "collective annihilation [holocaust]" against the Palestinians.[19]

Writing in the English daily Syria Times, Ayad Izzet Gharbawi was more cautious than Ghazi Husayn in distinguishing between Zionism and Judaism. Zionism, he asserted, was "a racist ideology that cannot co-exist, due to its fundamental theological principles, with other people except on a Master-Slave basis"; hence if peace were to prevail "we need to eliminate Zionism." However, he added, there are many Jews "who do not subscribe to these strange beliefs of Zionism, and so it is not wholly accurate to accuse all Jews of being Zionists"; however, "regrettably, a significant number of Jews are Zionists and, far more importantly, it is this significant number of Jews who hold the real and effective power that is causing the world so much misery." Gharbawi further contended that the Jews' belief that the Holocaust "was a crime that has no parallel in the entire history of mankind" also stemmed from the Zionist point of view that the Jews were "the Master Race," and therefore "the murder of a Jew is morally and ethically not the same as the murder of a Goyim [sic.]."[20]

The London-based Palestinian monthly Palestine Times, identified with Hamas, admitted in an editorial on 1 April that the word "Nazi" was "a loaded term that shouldn't be used arbitrarily to describe evil actions or evil people," and that ascribing it to Jews and Jewish behavior was "a tightly guarded taboo in many Western countries." However, an examination of how Israel thought, behaved and acted it said, left no doubt as to its Nazi character. Similarly, another editorial published on 30 April, accused Israel of carrying out "a silent genocide against the helpless Palestinian people."[21]

Two new books on Zionism were published in Egypt. The Zionist Media and its Propaganda Methods, by Muhammad `Ali Hawwat, deals with Zionist control over the international media since the advent of the Zionist movement.[22] Zionism and the Spider's Web, by `Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri, purportedly traces the roots and development of the Zionist movement and discusses antisemitism, Zionist relations with Nazism, and The Protocols. According to the review in the Syrian daily al-Ba`th, the author, a proliferate writer on Jewish affairs, accuses Zionism of instrumentalizing antisemitism and the Holocaust and of disseminating The Protocols in order to encourage emigration of Jews to Palestine.[23]

Occasionally the accusation of racism and Nazism was personified in specific Israeli leaders such as PM Ariel Sharon, following his stroke and subsequent hospitalization as of January. Although Arab reactions were mixed and some even admitted that the world would not necessarily be a better place without him,[24] some observers, such as Samir Husayn in the article "Sharon, That Nazi Butcher," in the Egyptian daily Afaq `Arabiyya, [25] rejoiced in his departure. Further, wrote Jihad al-Khazin, "if he were a normal man," one would have written an obituary, but Sharon would remain the "collective murderer and the enemy of peace."[26]

Former US President Jimmy Carter's new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, published at the end of 2006, was perceived as further proof of the Arab allegation that Israeli policies were tantamount to the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa (see also the case of the Walt-Mearsheimer report below). Rebuffing the Zionist/Jewish attack on Carter and accusations of antisemitism, Paris-based writer Hashim Salih, wondered whether "Carter's awakening marks the awakening of the West's conscience." Rejecting the notion that anti-Zionism, which had become acceptable in France, was antisemitism, he claimed that Carter was labeled an antisemite because he dared criticize Israel's criminal and inhumane policies. Although Salih supported the denunciation of Holocaust denial by Western intellectuals, he equated the Palestinian tragedy of 1948 with the Holocaust, complaining that they ignored "the holocaust against the Palestinians and Lebanese," and stressed the fact that Israel had never apologized to the Palestinian people as the Germans did to the Jews. Nawaf al-Zaru, in the Jordanian mainstream daily al-Dustur, asserted that whoever attempted to dispute the facts of the Jewish Holocaust or pointed out Israeli violations and war crimes against the Palestinian people was considered a racist and an antisemite by Israelis and Americans.[27]

Jewish Control and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Jews and global Zionism were persistently portrayed as controlling the fate of the world and particularly the US; however, whereas "the West accepts the Zionist grip, the Arabs reject it."[28] Saudi intellectual `Awad al-Qarni alleged in an interview to Iqra' TV on 16 March that "the Zionist gang is now toying with the fate of America, and consequently, with the fate of the world, for the sake of Jewish biblical greed and hatred."[29] Iraqi Ayatollah Ahmad Baghdadi said in an interview on al-Jazeera TV on 5 May that the two big American parties were playing the roles assigned to them by global Zionism.[30]

Undoubtedly, the study "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," by Stephen M. Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published in a shortened version in March in the London Review of Books, reinforced this belief. The report, which argued that US Middle East policy, and particularly its unconditional support of Israel, was contrary to America's long-term strategic interests and blamed the Israel lobby for this misguided approach, received much attention from Arab observers.[31] While seeing it as a confirmation of their long-standing claims, some commentators exposed inherent antisemitic beliefs. Calling his article in al-Ahram "The Israeli Octopus in America," Egyptian resident political analyst in Washington Muhammad Hakki considered the report "the first cracks in the dam."[32]

Describing the report as "new ultimate proof of Zionist despotism in America," journalist Zayn al-`Abidin al-Rikabi discussed "the terrorism" employed by Israel's supporters, and especially accusations of antisemitism, to stem any criticism against it. Referring to the Holocaust, another cause for America's special attitude to Israel, according to the report, al-Rikabi admitted that indeed Jews had been subjected to persecutions throughout their history and had the right to defend their existence; he was ready to accept this fact if the downtrodden had not turned into despots. As the report showed, however, the Zionist tyrants had come to control the fate of Americans, and this was a bad sign for the Jews since a small group of them always provoked the disasters that befell them. In conclusion, he cited several historical examples from the early days of the First Kingdom until the Holocaust, claiming that they had become corrupt and arrogant, amassing power and wealth, and were behind Germany's defeat in World War II when they dragged the US into the war. Insisting that he was not condoning Hitler massacres but interpreting historical phenomena, al-Rikabi wondered if the Jews or the Zionist despots wanted a catastrophe to again befall their people in the US, explaining that this was probably the reason for the harsh Jewish reaction to the Walt-Mearsheimer report.[33]

Syrian Minister of Information Buthayna Sha'ban referred in two of her weekly articles to the report, emphasizing that the Arabs had discovered its findings long before. She attacked so-called attempts to "shut mouths and stifle freedom of expression" by Israel's supporters, who used the accusation of antisemitism and the fact of their being in a state of denial regarding the situation in the Middle East.[34]

Nabil Zaki, in the Egyptian opposition paper al-Wafd, considered the study a reminder to the Arabs of their righteous cause, asserting that the Holocaust was justification for granting the Jews a homeland but not an excuse for committing new crimes against innocent Palestinians.[35] The mainstream Jordanian daily al-Ra'y noted that the book Israeli America and American Israel, by Jordanian scholar Husni `Ayyash, which preceded the Walt-Mearsheimer study in allegedly exposing the extent of Jewish/Zionist meddling in American decision making and its influence on the emergence of the Christian right and neo-conservatives, described Israeli policies toward the Palestinians as "a complete application of Nazi methods."[36] The Egyptian weekly Akhir Sa`a and monthly Sutur accompanied their accounts of the report with illustrations and pictures, alluding to the Jews' hidden hand and their plot to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque.[37] Writing in the pro-Syrian Lebanese daily al-Safir, Egyptian writer Muhammad Ahmad criticized Arab leaders and Arab NGOs for ignoring the report and missing an opportunity for exploiting it in order to expose the "mythical power" of the pro-Israel lobby.[38]

According to a review of Saudi textbooks by Nina Shea, Arab commentators often resort to conspiracy theories to explain the complex realities of the Middle East. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had permeated the Arab mind and discourse, she said. Presented as an authentic document revealing what Jews genuinely believed, it was a key element of lessons on the Zionist movement in a 10th grade Saudi textbook on the hadith and Islamic culture for boys.[39]

In view of the Jews' alleged extensive interest in financial ventures and state economies, Muwaffaq Mahadin, in the Jordanian daily al-`Arab al-Yawm of 1 April, attributed to the Jews "a philosophy of destruction" explicitly expressed in The Protocols. In another article, Mahadin asserted that he was not interested in the issue of the authenticity of The Protocols; the important thing was that their spirit prevailed and was felt. Similarly views were expressed by Muhammad Khalifa, in an article published in al-Hayat al-Jadida and the Qatari daily al-Watan. Admitting to having enjoyed the TV series Horseman without a Horse, which was screened in Egypt in 2002 and aroused a heated debate over The Protocols (see ASW 2002/3). Muhammad al-Ajrud, in the Egyptian opposition paper al-Wafd, referred to the old Jewish dream of controlling the Arab market and economy, The series had exposed the fraudulence and schemes of the Jews he said, warning that Zionists had penetrated Arab, and particularly Egyptian, financial and economic sectors and turned Egypt into their springboard for furthering their grip.[40]

The Nobel Prize was also said to stem from The Protocols. Interviewed on al-Jazeera TV, Iraqi scholar Samir `Ubayd, who lives in Europe, wondered how 167 Jews had been awarded the prize and only four Arabs, and attacked the choice of Turkish author Orhan Pamuk as laureate, contending that only traitors and heretics who cursed the Prophet deserved the prize.[41] Syrian writer Hisham al-Dajjani, who questioned the Arab belief in the "the myth of Zionist power," asserted that Israel understood the award's potential, exploiting it to terrorize authors and thinkers and even world leaders. In conclusion, he pointed to the campaigns against London's mayor Ken Livingston and Holocaust denier David Irving who dared express their independent views.[42]

Incitement to Hatred and Islamist Indoctrination

against the Jews

Hamas' victory in the PA parliamentary elections, coupled with its persistent resistance to recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce its charter, which contains bold antisemitic references, reinforced the Islamist discourse on Israel and the Jews. Indeed, according to a public opinion poll conducted in mid-March by the Hebrew University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, nearly 60 percent of Palestinians opposed recognition of the State of Israel by Hamas.[43] Historian Daniel Goldhagen described Hamas' charter as "a manifesto for murder," and its references to the Jews as "classically Nazi accounts of Jews and its annihilative reveries."[44]

In the run-up to the elections and afterwards, Hamas leaders made pragmatic alongside extremist statements. Hamas leader Khalid Mash`al warned in a Friday sermon delivered at a Damascus mosque and broadcast by al-Jazeera TV on 3 February, that Israel would be defeated as would anyone who supported it. "Before Israel dies," he declared, "it must be humiliated and degraded." Suggesting that European countries "hurry up and apologize to our nation," he said that when the nation of Islam would sit on the throne of the world, the West would be filled with remorse.[45]

In an interview to World Net Daily on 27 April, following a suicide bombing which critically injured a Jewish teenager from Florida a week earlier, senior members of al-Aqsa Brigades and Islamic Jihad rejoiced in the attack. They described the Jews as "sly and dishonest," and warned that Jews of all backgrounds were targets for attacks. "The meaning and the goal of our lives," they asserted, "is to fight the devil spiritually and physically. The Jews are the expression of both kinds of devil. No mercy for devils."[46]

In view of the importance Islamists attach to indoctrination, Hamas embarked on a campaign to disseminate its messages through its TV station al-Aqsa, which broadcasts from Gaza, in newspapers and on its Internet site Palestine-info.[47] On 11 June, two days after an Israeli retaliation attack in Gaza, Hamas posted an article on its site by Khalid Amayreh, entitled "The Jewish Gestapo." Amayreh described the Israeli army as "a reptile-Nazi-like army of thugs, hoodlums, and common criminals, not unlike the Gestapo, SS and Wehrmacht," and accused Israel of committing "more massacres per capita than any other people."[48] Ten days later it released a video promising the eventual conquest and subjugation of Christian countries under Islam, after the Jews had been crushed and expelled from Palestine through jihad for Allah, "the only way of truth and salvation."[49] In August, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported on an Islamic Jihad summer camp for disadvantaged children. One of the camp directors candidly explained that they teach the children the truth: "how the Jews persecuted the Prophets and tortured them," and how they killed and slaughtered Palestinians. Most importantly, he concluded, "the children understand that the conflict with the Jews is not over land, but over religion. As long as Jews remain here, between the [Jordan] river and the sea, they will be our enemy and we will continue to pursue and kill them."[50]

Similar themes appeared on the children's site www.awaladnaa.net of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers. The site contained various sections praising jihad against the infidels, as well as antisemitic statements, among others, referring to the widespread Islamic belief that the Jews killed 25 prophets, and warning of the Jewish tradition of murdering children and conspiring against Islam and the Muslims. It accused the Jews of spreading corruption and deviance in the world and the Jewish religion of promoting rituals of annihilation.[51] In an Egyptian children's TV program broadcast on 21 June, cleric Shaykh Muhammad Sharaf al-Din defined the Jews as "people of treachery and betrayal," relating an imaginary tale about a Jewish woman who attempted to poison the Prophet to encourage jihad and martyrdom.[52] Another Egyptian cleric, Shaykh Hazim Salah Abu Isma`il, also harked back to the early days of Islam in order to prove contemporary allegations against the Jews, in a weekly show aired on 14 April on Egypt's al-Risala TV. He accused them of being the origin of corruption on earth, of controlling the media and of violating agreements.[53]

Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi reiterated his view sanctifying martyrdom operations against the Jews on Qatari TV, on 25 February, because "they plundered" Muslim land, and assured Muslims that everything would be on their side and against the Jews on Judgment Day. "At that time," he concluded with the well-known hadith, "even the stones and the trees will speak. and say: 'Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."[54]

The Holocaust - A Constant Issue on the Public Agenda

As noted, the Holocaust was frequently raised in the course of discussion of various topics throughout the year, and particularly in relation to events such as International Remembrance Day, Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel and the Tehran conference in December.

Arab and Muslim attitudes to the commemoration of the Holocaust by the international community remained unchanged (see ASW 2004, 2005). The Egyptian parliament unanimously refused a request by the Knesset speaker that Egypt commemorate the event annually. According to the Kuwaiti daily al-Qabas, Egyptian MPs considered the UN resolution not binding on the Arabs, explaining that dozens of other genocides committed by Israel against the Arabs should have been commemorated instead. The Muslim Council of Britain also continued its adamant boycott of the UK's National Holocaust Day.[55] Mustafa Hajju Kharma reiterated in the Islamist weekly al-Sabil, the traditional Arab approach to the Holocaust, contending that it "does not concern us Arabs and Muslims" especially since the perpetrators admitted it and legislated laws that incriminate whoever doubts it in any way. "What concerns us. is that the Jews are being compensated for the suffering inflicted on them by the Europeans on the account of the Arabs and Muslims."[56]

Muhammad Na`ma, publisher of the Paris-based Western Orbits which specializes in the translation of Western thought into Arabic, called, notwithstanding, in al-Quds al-`Arabi, for reforming the Arab discourse on the Holocaust. However, while acknowledging the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust, he warned Westerners and Israelis, "sinking into a routine of remembering the past (the Holocaust)" and reinforcing its generalization might lead to obfuscation of the link between the memory and the event. Nazism and fascism were rooted in European history. There would be no remedy for the wounds as long the West remained blind to all its crimes in the last century and the Zionists continued to ignore their responsibility to their victims, the Palestinian people. Likewise, Syrian Buthayna Sha`ban insisted that the Holocaust was a European issue which had no connection to Muslims and Arabs. Criticizing German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to Yad Vashem and her reiteration of German commitment to the existence of Israel, she accused the West of launching a Crusader war against Arabs and Muslims after September 11, and carrying out a "new holocaust" against them in Europe. Egyptian writer Farida al-Naqqash complained in the leftist weekly al-Ahali that the official narrative only remembered the Jews and ignored all non-Jewish Holocaust victims. We do not oppose the UN decision "in principle," claimed Rashad Ibrahim Mahjub in the Egyptian opposition al-Wafd, but the racist campaign which enforces the decision for the sake of the Jews and singles them out. Moreover, it justifies and encourages the horrors perpetrated by Zionism and the tyrannical Jews, and prohibits any scientific research of the Holocaust. He concluded by questioning the international silence in the face of ongoing bloodshed and terrorism against the Palestinians and others in the prisons of Abu Ghrayb (Iraq) and Guantanamo.[57]

On the occasion of Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day and the commemoration of the Palestinian tragedy (nakba) on 15 May, two additional motifs, which were traditionally part of the Arab Holocaust discourse, were raised: the accusation of Zionist exploitation of Holocaust memory; and equation of Jewish suffering with the Palestinian one. Journalist Mahmud `Abd al-Rahman concluded from what he considered the Jews' experience and success in registering and "inflating" every event that happened to them in order to wring international sympathy and bring about a false sense of unity and belonging, that the Arabs should also revitalize their historical consciousness and self-confidence by pursuing similar methods and expose the Zionist massacres.[58]

The Holocaust, explained Nawaf al-Zaru, paved the way practically, politically and morally for the nakba, and therefore, the "Holocaust file" should always remain open and questioned. Thus, he cited the doubts voiced by Holocaust deniers, referring specifically to American technician Fred Leuchter who refuted the Jews' claims of collective extermination in the Nazi camps and contended that the Zionist state established the Holocaust story as a means of extortion.[59] Although acknowledging the Holocaust, Vienna-based Palestinian Na'il Bal`awi asserted that there could be no recognition of Holocaust victims without genuine recognition of the Palestinian victims of "the second holocaust"; acknowledgement of the Holocaust would break the Jews' moral monopoly over it. He claimed the Arab discourse on the Holocaust was superficial, providing Israel with justification for attacking the Arabs, and admitted that the Holocaust was not part of Arab culture and research.[60]

The Holocaust was also invoked by Syrian President Bashar al-Asad in an interview with American journalist Charlie Rose aired on 27 March on PBS. He claimed that many people in the Middle East believed that the West exaggerated the Holocaust. He admitted that massacres of the Jews happened during WWII, but that he does not have "a clue how many were killed or how they were killed, by gas, by shooting.we don't know." The problem, he said, "is not the number of those killed but rather how they use the Holocaust," and "what the Palestinians have to do with the Holocaust to pay the price." In another interview to an Italian paper in December, he said Europe had a Holocaust complex, but Arabs did not because they did not perpetrate it.[61]

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's statements on the Holocaust in 2005 continued to generate Arab reactions in 2006 similar to those raised previously (see ASW 2005).[62] However, the conference on the Holocaust that he convened on 11-12 December[63] provoked more extensive responses.[64]

Arab commentators were divided between those who supported the conference, those who rejected it for tactical reasons, and those who denounced it. While not denying the Nazis' hated and persecution of the Jews, Jurj Haddad supported Ahmadinejad's claim that "many historians and researchers and research institutes in countries of what is considered the democratic, civilized 'free world' deny partly or entirely the Jewish narrative of the Holocaust." Yet, because of Jewish pressure the Holocaust cannot be questioned, and laws against denial had been legislated. He also maintained that many more Russians and other nationals than Jews had been killed, and accused the latter of initiating a coup against Hitler and violating the understanding they had reached with the Nazis. He concluded his article by affirming Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's equation of Zionism with Nazism at the opening session.[65]

Articles in Syrian papers considered the conference a serious and courageous attempt to break the siege on researchers so that they might expose the truth about the Holocaust.[66] Contesting Zionism's "sanctification" of the Holocaust, `Ali Mahmud Fakhru asserted that Arabs do not deny the Nazi persecution of the Jews, Slovaks, Russians and Gypsies. However, they should act "hand in hand with the noble authors and thinkers in the West who demand removal of the mythical sanctity from the Jewish tragedy." If the West wanted to get acquainted with a similar tragedy, he continued, it should send envoys to Palestine to witness how the "new Nazism" kills our children, wives and the elderly. Accusing the Jews of turning the Holocaust into an icon, Ahmad Abuzina, in al-Watan, said he was not surprised by questioning of the Holocaust at the conference, and hoped that it would usher in a change in world perception.[67] Hazim Hashim, in the Egyptian opposition paper al-Wafd − which claimed that Israel had turned the Holocaust into a tool of political and economic extortion − praised Iran for being the only Muslim country that had succeeded in convening such a forum, as did Muntasir al-Zayyat, an Egyptian Islamist lawyer, in the Qatari al-Raya.[68]

Several writers rejected the conference for tactical reasons, considering that it harmed the Arab cause. Denying the tragedy of the enemy would not benefit the Arabs; on the contrary it might produce the opposite result and serve Israel's interests, they said.[69] Perusal of the subjects of the lectures, al-Akhbar editor Ibrahim Sa`dah wrote, reveals vague topics that are all intended to support Ahmadinejad's views. Elias Harfoush, in al-Hayat, doubted the advisability of holding such a conference, which he said would only reinforce the evidence against those who deny the Holocaust. If the Iranian government wanted to bring the Palestinians closer to achieving their rights, it would have been more appropriate to discuss how the Zionist movement exploited the Holocaust in order to justify the establishment of the Jewish state. "When national issues are turned into political commodities that are propagated at the expense of truth," he concluded, "the goal is to sell the causes in popular markets, where science and knowledge are the last concern of the masses."[70]

While Egyptian writer Fathi `Abd al-Fattah thought that the conference was an important and unprecedented event, he contested the presence of David Duke and neo-Nazi organizations, and thought that it would have been better if the conference had dealt with the issue of the victims to prove that not only Jews were targeted by the Nazis but millions of others, too. Other issues that might have been discussed, according to `Abd al-Fattah, were the fact that the persecution of the Jews did not justify the uprooting of another people, and that the Israeli state, which "was based on religious and racist foundations" with the support of the West, applied fascist methods similar to those of the Nazis.[71]

Outright denunciation of the conference was expressed particularly by writers who saw it as part of a broader phenomenon: the growing influence of Iran and of Islamist thought in the Middle East. This was the conference "of Arab and Muslim Neturei Karta [ultra-Orthodox Jews]," wrote Arab Israeli journalist and proponent of Arab unconditional recognition of the Holocaust, Nazir Majali. Iran did not convene this gathering out of concern for scientific historical research. It sought to undermine the foundations of the State of Israel not because of an Iranian-Israeli conflict but for totally different reasons, he continued. Palestinian writer Hasan Khidr bluntly mocked Ahmadinejad's academic pretensions in the Palestinian daily al-Ayyam. The "ignorant, reactionary and backward" Arab discourse, which typified previous decades, he lamented, was now becoming "authentic and honorable." The Holocaust was a fact that had to be accepted. There was countless evidence to corroborate it. The problem was the instrumentalization of the Holocaust by the European right which strove to revive ideologies that caused the death of millions, by Israel which tried to exploit it in order to justify its colonial policy and occupation, and by Arab and Iranian fundamentalism which used it in a battle they wanted to turn into a clash of civilizations.[72]

London-based journalist `Adil Darwish, in an article entitled "The Holocaust: What danger does its recognition pose to Muslims?" attacked Ahmadinejad and his followers for drowning the Muslims' humane sentiments in feelings of hate, and branded the participants of the conference evil, despicable figures. Saudi journalist Yusuf Nasir al-Suwaydan and Kuwaiti Khalid `Ayid al-Janfawi published similar attacks on Iran and the conference on the same day in the Kuwaiti paper al-Siyasa, characterizing it as racist, seeking to spread hatred and tendentious propaganda and defending the heinous crimes of the Nazis. Sa`ada Wassam in the Lebanese daily al-Safir lashed out at the Iranians for dealing with denial of the Holocaust and thus providing further justification for Israel to enhance its power in order to defend itself. He also reminded the Arabs that according to Nazi ideology they were considered even more despicable than the Jews.[73]

The application of Arab Israeli lawyer Khalid Mahamid to take part in the conference in order to explain that Iran's denial harmed the Arab cause was turned down. Mahamid, who opened a small Holocaust museum in his office in Nazareth in 2005 and published a book, The Palestinians and the Holocaust State in 2006, urges the Arabs to acknowledge the Holocaust in order to enable the Palestinians to gain their rights.[74] A similar view was expressed by Palestinian activist Mahmud al-Safadi, who was freed in 2006 after spending 17 years in an Israeli jail, in an open letter to the Iranian president. He accused him of doing a disservice to popular struggles in general to the Palestinian cause in particular. "Our success and our independence," he asserted, "will not be gained by denying the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people, even if parts of this people are the very forces that occupy and dispossess us to this very day."[75] Arab Knesset members, as well as some Arab Muslim clerics, such as Shaykh Kamil Rayan, one of the leaders of the more moderate southern faction of the Islamist movement in Israel, unanimously condemned the conference.[76]

Arab Israeli MK Azmi Bishara identified two types of Holocaust denial: one, espoused by elements of the European traditional right and neo-ultra right, which denied that it happened; the other was "to ignore that the Holocaust occurred within a particular historical context and, hence, to deal with it as some fiendish aberration that somehow occurred outside the bounds of time and place." This led to inhibiting the "study of the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon and as a sobering primer on the dangers of racism, extremist national chauvinism and totalitarian social engineering in modern mass societies." An additional kind, Bishara, said, was to reduce the Holocaust to an instrument for realizing political ends, accusing the Zionist movement of excelling in it. Victims of the Holocaust, he contended, "have been nationalized and converted, in spite of themselves, either into an episode in the Zionist struggle to create a state or into an instrument for blackmailing others into supporting Zionist aims or for justifying the crimes the Zionist state perpetrates against others." He called on victims of racism worldwide "to break the Zionist hold over the role of spokesman for victims of the Holocaust, and at the same time warned Arabs and Palestinians to avoid denial, which not only absolved Europe of a crime that was committed, but also aroused its contempt. Bishara praised the initial "straightforward" and "rational" Arab reaction to the Holocaust during the 1940s and 1950s that acknowledged its occurrence, but insisted that the Europeans and not the Arabs should assume responsibility for it. The Holocaust, he concluded, was "a phenomenon that merits proper scholastic study, the purpose of which is to sort fact from fiction, and myth from reality," a task that could not be achieved at the Tehran conference.[77]

Calling for the recognition of the Holocaust, Somali Muslim immigrant and former member of the Dutch Parliament, Ayaan Ali Hirsi asserted in an article published in Arabic, Hebrew and English that the world and especially Muslims needed to be informed again and again of the Holocaust, and wondered why there was no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad.[78] In the same vein, Jihad al-Khazin (al-Hayat) wrote that if he were Ahmadinejad, he would have convened Muslim and Jewish moderates to a conference for building bridges and looking to the future.[79]

Instead, another conference was held in Cairo on 27 December. Organized by the opposition Egyptian Arab Socialist Party and the Liberal Socialist Party, together with the Afro-Asian Writers Association, it gathered public figures, media representatives and "experts" to discuss "The Lie of the Holocaust and the Arab holocaust in Palestine." The local Egyptian media ignored it, whereas the Iranian Satellite Channel in Arabic al-`Alam reported it extensively. The chairman of the Egyptian Arab Socialist Party, Wahid Fakhri al-Aqsari, denied the Holocaust in his speech, repeating the claim that it was just a means to justify persecution of the Palestinians and extort the West, and accused the Jews of conspiring against the world.[80]

The diversification in the Holocaust discourse, exposed in reactions to the Tehran conference, was also manifested in a book on the Holocaust by Ramsis `Awadh published in Egypt at the beginning of the year. Based on Western sources, The Holocaust of the Jews - Auschwitz, is the first work by an Arab that deals with the reality in the camps, reportedly presenting an accurate picture, including the means of extermination and treatment of the bodies.[81] Up to then Arab publications on the Holocaust had dealt either with its political ramifications or alleged Zionist-Nazi cooperation, or were translations of Western publications denying it.

Pictorial Demonization of Israel and the Jews

The phenomenon of demonizing Israel and the Jews through caricatures in the Arab press "has been part and parcel of its mode of editorial conduct" since the establishment of Israel, stated Dan Pattir in an article on "Graphic Anti-Semitism."[82] Yet, the usage of cartoons in the struggle against Israel and the Jews was particularly striking in 2006. Bahrain's largest daily newspaper Akhbar al-Khalij published numerous cartoons pointing to the Jews as the real culprits behind the Danish cartoons defaming the Prophet Muhammad.[83] One of the cartoons depicted a block of cheese shaped as a Star of David full of worms with the caption: "Zionism's infiltration of Denmark and insults of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him," and the injunction "Boycott them."[84] Another one illustrated a sheet of paper with the caption "Cartoons harming the messenger" written with Jewish ink, symbolized by a Star of David on the ink jar.[85] Jewish ink bubbling like poison from a pen stamped with the words "Denmark" and "Western states" appeared in another cartoon.[86] The Qatari paper al-Sharq harped on the same theme, depicting on one side of a cartoon a figure holding in one hand a pen pointed like a sword at the back of a man sitting and praying, labeled "Islam," and in his other hand a brush painting the man's head gear. The other side of the cartoon featured "Western media" bowing in front of a toilet bowl, labeled "Zionism," from which fire, labeled "the Holocaust," rages. Behind the fire stands a devil, carrying a menorah with a Star of David.[87]

Muslim protests in reaction to the Danish cartoons intensified in the first week of February, culminating in the announcement on 6 February of an international cartoon contest on the Holocaust by the right-wing Iranian daily Hamshahri in the name of free speech.[88] Over 1200 entries from 61 countries were received, of which 204 were displayed in an exhibit held in Tehran between mid-August and mid-September. At the entrance, a poster showing a helmet with the Star of David lying on top of others bearing a Nazi swastika greeted visitors and conveyed the message that Zionism equals Nazism. Moroccan `Abdallah al-Darqawi won the first prize, $12,000, for his cartoon depicting an Israeli crane piling large cement blocks on Israel's security wall and gradually obscuring al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, while creating on the wall a picture of Auschwitz concentration camp. Brazilian cartoonist of Arab origin Carlos Latuff, won the second prize, while Syrian Ra'id Khalil and Jordanians `Umar al-`Abdalat and Nasir al-Ja`far received special awards.[89] Except for a few references, the Arab press did not report on the contest or the exhibit. The Syrian daily Tishrin published a translated report (probably from an unnamed Iranian source) on the exhibit after its closure, explaining its goal of challenging the West's "double standard in dealing with the issues of the region [the Middle East] under the guise of freedom of information, which stops at the doorstep of criticism of Israel," considered antisemitism.[90]

Cartoons also appeared in reaction to the Pope's statement in mid-September, conveying the message of Jewish/Zionist involvement in what is seen as a war against Islam. A cartoon showing a Star of David holding a cross aimed at striking a crescent moon, symbolizing Islam, was published in Bahrain's Akhbar al-Khalij on 22 September. Another caricature in the same paper published a few days earlier depicted a Hassidic man, symbolizing "International Zionism," as a snake charmer luring snakes out of a basket with his flute, one of them with the head of the pope. Hamas weekly al-Risala published a caricature featuring Pope Benedict XVI wearing a scarf of US and Danish flags and holding a swastika, with the caption "the Pope and those who live under his cloak."[91]

Other issues which preoccupied Arab public opinion, such as the Israeli attitude toward the Palestinians before and after the Second Lebanon War in July-August, was also expressed extensively in caricatures, depicting traditional antisemitic stereotypes of Israelis as Hitler-like and bloodthirsty, and the Palestinians as crucified and helpless.[92]

Conclusions

Any survey of Arab antisemitic manifestations would be incomplete without the voices censuring them. Although the critics tended to be Arabs residing in the West and publishing in the Arab press and occasionally appearing in television debates there, they were joined by a few intellectuals and journalists from Arab countries out of a deep concern for the future political, economic and cultural development of the region. In this context, they criticized the stagnation of Islamic thought, Islamist movements and the discourse of violence and terrorism.[93]

In response to Ahamdinejad's statements, Washington-based Egyptian scholar `Amru Hamzawi bemoaned what he defined as "the plague of generalization" in the Arab discourse, which led to justifying terrorism and the imposition of an "arrogant view toward society and history" that contradicted the essence of liberal democratic thought. This approach, Hamzawi claimed, was reflected in "the heinous discussion" of the Holocaust which proved the strong linkage between denial of the Holocaust and rejection of the historical changes of the 20th century.[94]

Tunisian Christian philosopher, Mezri Haddad, criticized Islamism for reducing the Qur'an to "a nauseating lampoon," intentionally isolating verses from their historical context and enhancing the anchoring of antisemitic stereotypes in Arab-Muslim societies. Attacking the Iranian president for his extremist statements, he decried the lack of indignant Arab and Muslim reaction, which his pronouncements had provoked in other parts of the world and claiming that Arab public opinion had found in antisemitism "the perfect catalyst for all its narcissistic wounds and social, economic and political frustrations."[95]

Learning of the Muslim Brothers' children's site mentioned above, Yemenite writer Ilham Mani`, admitted in an article in the liberal site metransparent that she could not believe the news report and had checked the site herself, discovering to her great surprise that indeed the Muslim Brothers, who often reiterated that they had no problem with the Jews or Judaism, indoctrinated to Jew hatred, distorted historical facts and presented Jews and Muslims as eternal enemies. It was about time, she concluded, that we confronted ourselves as well as our racism and hatred of others, instead of crying and yelling that the entire world hated us.[96]

The widespread belief in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and in conspiracy theories in general was also criticized by some Arab writers, among them the London-based liberal Lebanese Hazim Saghiya, who attacked the Arabs for adopting them to explain "the defeats that nobody wants to admit responsibility for." They reveal more about the state of crisis of Arab societies than about the actual behavior of others, and reflect Arab xenophobia, and deep feelings of frustration, humiliation and impotence, he said.[97] Stressing the mendacity of The Protocols and their export to the Middle East, along with the "European Jewish question," Hasan Manaymana claimed that they fitted in with the process of uprooting Jewish aspects from Arab Islamic culture in the course of the 20th century as a consequence of the Zionist movement and Arab nationalist thought. The Jews had been turned into a source of all evil and the existential enemy of the Muslim umma (community). The continued dissemination of The Protocols, he warned, would lead to the "renunciation of competence, self-delusion and disdain for the truth."[98]

The growing number of Arab intellectuals who agreed that The Protocols epitomized a larger, more dangerous phenomenon of cultivating conspiracy theories in Arab thought, led the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt to embark at the beginning of 2006 on a research project in order to establish the dimensions and characteristics of conspiratorial thinking in the Arab region;[99] its findings remain to be seen.