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Arabs and anti-Semitism

Arab anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism (bias towards or discrimination against Jews) in the Arab world. As the Arab-Israeli conflict has placed Arab states in conflict with the Jewish state of Israel for decades, alleged and actual anti-Semitism has been a recurring issue in Arab countries, and is the source of much controversy.

Arab anti-Semitism in the 20th and 21st century

Arab Newspapers

Many Arab newspapers, such as Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, the Palestinian Authority's official newspaper, often write that "the Jews" control all the world's governments, and that "the Jews" plan genocide on all the Arabs in the West Bank. Others write less sensational stories, and states that Jews have too much of an influence in the US government. Often the leaders of other nations are said to be controlled by Jews.

Articles in many official Arab government newspapers (notably those of the Palestinian Authority, Libya and Saudi Arabia) claim that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous anti-Semitic forgery, reflects actual facts, and thus points to an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

"Netanyahu's Plan completely matches the foundations of the greater Zionist plan which is organized according to specific stages that were determined when the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was composed and when Herzl along with Weizmann traveled around the world in order to determine the appropriate location for the implementation of this conspiracy," (official Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, November 30, 1997)

"The Jews seek to conquer the world...We must expose the Zionist-Colonialist plot and its goals, which destroy not only our people but the entire world" (PA Minister of Agriculture, Abdel Jawad Saleh, quoted in Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, November 6, 1997)

[1] (http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pastatements.html)

The Egyptian government run newspaper, Al-Akhbar, on 29 April 2002, published an editorial denying the Holocaust as a fraud. The next paragraph decries the failure of the Holocaust to eliminate all of the Jews [2] (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP37502):

With regard to the fraud of the Holocaust… Many French studies have proven that this is no more than a fabrication, a lie, and a fraud!! That is, it is a 'scenario' the plot of which was carefully tailored, using several faked photos completely unconnected to the truth. Yes, it is a film, no more and no less. Hitler himself, whom they accuse of Nazism, is in my eyes no more than a modest 'pupil' in the world of murder and bloodshed. He is completely innocent of the charge of frying them in the hell of his false Holocaust!! The entire matter, as many French and British scientists and researchers have proven, is nothing more than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German government in particular and the European countries in general. But I, personally and in light of this imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, 'If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin.'

Arab Zionist conspiracy theories regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks

Across the Arab world, a fair number of Arab media outlets, some government-sponsored (such as those of Libya and Saudi Arabia, and some of those of the Palestinian Authority), published pieces arguing that the attack was actually carried out by Jews, Zionists, Israelis, or even Americans. Many within the Arab world viewed this terrorist act as a conspiracy to make the world hate all Arabs, and therefore believed that people perceived to be enemies of the Arabs must really be to blame; many others disagreed. After Al Qaeda acknowledged their role publicly, these claims lost credibility, and came to be widely seen as a conspiracy theory. Such theories are also found outside the Arab world, including in the United States.

The Palestinian Authority's view of Israel

Some people claim that the Palestinian Authority's hostility to Israel constitutes anti-Semitism in itself; others regard this claim as absurd, noting that hostility to an enemy nation need not imply hostility to the associated ethnicity, and that the Palestinian Authority includes representatives from Neturei Karta (an extremely small group of anti-Zionist Haredi Jews with views considered extreme by most Jews).

Examples of hostility to Israel follow, as translated by MEMRI.

The Palestinian Authority's official television channel has shows which teach 6 and 7 year old kids to kill Israelis. Episodes of a program called “The Children's Club,” broadcast in early 1998, showed a group of young Arab children, one of whom stood up, raised her fist, and shouted: “When I wander into Jerusalem, I will turn into a suicide warrior in battle dress! In battle dress!” She was cheered and applauded by the other children in the group, and their adult leader declared, “Bravo! Bravo!” On another segment, a young girl sang: “Each and every part of your soil I have drenched with all my blood. And we shall march as warriors of Jihad. Oh, my exalted martyr, you are my example. Oh, my sister, sing constantly about my life as a suicide warrior, how we remain steadfast. On, my country, you are my soul.” (Videotape of “The Children's Club”, Peace for Generations, Jerusalem, 1998)

An investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer (September 7, 1997) found children's programs on PA television in which an 8 year-old girl was shown singing: “I am a daughter of Palestine. Koran in my right hand, in my left — a knife,” and another in which a young girl recites a poem she said she wrote for Yassir Arafat: “I am finished practicing on the submachine gun of return... We swear to take vengeful blood from our enemies for our killed and wounded. We will board a bustling boat which will take us to Jaffa.” On the show, the girl then approached Arafat, who kissed her on both cheeks. The Inquirer continued:

"In a show about the opening of Palestinian schools, girls in frilly white dresses were shown dancing with Kalashnikov rifles that they twirled like batons. In another broadcast, a schoolboy, asked what he got out of summer camp, answered: 'I am defending the homeland and undergo training like army drills.' "

"There is a children's quiz show about great figures in Palestinian history — many of whom are considered heroes by Palestinians, but terrorists by Israelis. One show featured Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a shaikh who was killed by the British in 1935. The military wing of Hamas, which has carried out many terrorist bombings in Israel, was named for Qassam. The heroine of another episode was Dalal al-Maghribi, a woman who commanded a bus hijacking near Haifa in 1978. Thirty-four Israelis and nine Palestinian commandos, Maghribi among them, were killed. The quiz-show emcee referred to Maghribi as "our sacred martyr."

Senior PA officials also regularly engage in hostile propaganda against Israel, and Arafat has taken no action against them. For example, the Deputy Minister of the PA Ministry of Supplies has accused Israel of giving Palestinian Arabs “food containing material that causes cancer and hormones that harm male virility and other spoiled food products in order to poison and harm the Palestinian population.” (Yediot Ahronot, June 25, 1997)

The PLO's representative to the United Nations in Geneva has accused Israel of injecting “300 Palestinian children with HIV.” (Jerusalem Post, March 17, 1997)

The director of the Inspection Department of the PA Ministry of Supplies has claimed that Israeli chewing gums sold in PLO-controlled areas “contain a sexually-stimulating adrenaline substance.” (Jerusalem Post, March 27, 1997)

The Palestinian Authority's view of Jews

Many senior PA officials and the PA-controlled media have also repeatedly made statements denigrating Jewish religious beliefs and Jewish history, such denying that modern Jews have any connection to the Jews in the Bible; that Jews have any historical connection to Jerusalem; and that the Western Wall has any religious significance in Judaism. (See Israeli-Palestinian history denial for details.) These same PA officials and the PA-controlled media have also repeatedly made statements distorting or denying the Holocaust.

In some cases, they have claimed that Jews invented the “myth” of Nazi genocide in order to gain world sympathy and reparations money. In other instances, they have acknowledged that some Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but charged that Jews vastly exaggerated the death toll for political purposes.

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Arafat's number-two man and the architect of the Oslo Accords, is the author of a book claiming that the Nazis may have really killed less than one million Jews. (Jerusalem Post, January 26, 1995) Numerous senior PA officials, Left-Wing and Right-wing Americans, Israeli Soldiers and Jewish intellectuals have also compared Israel to the Nazis, in one noted case declaring that Israel's treatment of Arabs is even worse than the Nazis' treatment of Jews.

Anti-Semitic laws and policies in Arab countries

The Saudi Ministry of Tourism announced on its web site in early 2004, that visas to enter the country will not be issued to "Jewish people".[3] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3493448.stm).

The Jordanian Nationality Law of 1954 states that "Any man [in the West Bank] will be a Jordanian subject if he is not Jewish."

Quotes

• "The volume of anti-Semitic books and articles published, the size and number of editions and impressions, the eminence and authority of those who write, publish and sponsor them, their place in school and college curricula, their role in the mass media, would all seem to suggest that classical anti-Semitism is an essential part of Arab intellectual life at the present time-almost as much as happened in Nazi Germany, and considerably more than in late nineteenth and early twentieth century France." (Bernard Lewis, Semites and Antisemites New York/London: Norton, 1986, p. 286)

• "No more than 400,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis." "It is well-known that every year the Jews exaggerate what the Nazis did to them," said the moderator of a cultural affairs program on Palestinian Authority Television, during an August 25, 1997. "They claim there were 6 million killed, but precise scientific research demonstrates that there were no more than 400,000."

• "Zionists forged Holocaust claims." On Sept. 3, 1997, the PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah featured an article by Palestinian Arab author Nabil Salam, which declared: "Since its establishment, the racist Zionist entity has been implementing various forms of terrorism on a daily basis which are a repetition of the Nazi terror. This proves the shared roots of Nazi and Zionist thought. This also explains the cooperation between the Jews and Nazis during World War II, through which was revealed the forged claims of the Zionists regarding the alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period."

• "Zionists were partners with the Nazis in the Holocaust." Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the number 2 official in the PLO and architect of the Oslo Accords, authored and has refused to retract a book claiming that "the Zionist movement was a partner in the massacre of the Jews." The book is entitled The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement, and uses the statements of German Jewish Zionists who supported Hitler to suggest that they supported the Nazis, and thus the holocaust. The book also claims that the Nazis may have really killed less than one million Jews, and that the rest were killed by Soviets. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 26,1995)

Jewish-Arab dialogue

There are a number of projects working for peace among Israelis and Arabs, and projects which include Jewish-Islamic theological dialogue. One of their goals is to reduce anti-Semitism.

See also

• Peace process
• Islam and anti-Semitism
• Religious pluralism
• Anti-Zionism#Arab anti-Zionism
• Anti-Arabism

External links

• reflections of the Israeli Uri Avnery about Palestinians and Anti-semitism (http://www.nahost-politik.de/friedensbewegung/antisemitismus.htm)
• Arab Anti-Semitism in 1998/99 (http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw98-9/arab.html) - summary of Arab anti-Semitism, by the University of Tel Aviv
• Anti-Semitism in the Arab World (http://www.adl.org/main_Arab_World/default.htm) - a collection of materials updated regularly
• The Problem of Muslim Anti-Semitism (http://www.secularislam.org/articles/khawaja3.htm)

These examples of anti-Semitism in the Arab press are provided by MEMRI:

• Egyptian government newspaper reprints Nazi forgeries (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SP33902)
• Jews blamed for the September 11th World Trade Center attacks (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SR00602)
• Egyptian government science journal claims that the Jews deliberately spread AIDS (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SP32201)
• Saudi government newspaper claims that Jews are taking over the world (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SP32101)
• Zionism is accused of being the same as Nazism (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SP22501)
• Leader of Libya claims that the Jews deliberately spread AIDS (http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SP21401)

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