US President George Bush’s signing of the new law authorizing the State Department to keep a watch on the anti-Semitic activities the world over before the recent elections has invited sharp criticism from several quarters. Anybody can guess the real motivation for enacting such a law in the background of a general election. The anti-Semitism was, apparently, used in the past as well with some ulterior motives.
In order to have a clear perception of the issue one should understand what precisely is meant by the word anti-Semitism. The Bible divided mankind into three major races. They are the Semites, the Hamites and the sons of Japheth. While the Semites descended from Shem, son of Noah, Hamites were scions of Ham. While the Hamites were black and the Japhites had both white and yellow complexions, the Semites were a mixture of black and white.
The Semites settled in Iraq, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula. The racial discrimination in Europe was mainly based on the classification of the people as Aryan and non-Aryan. The non-Aryans included the Arabs, Jews and other races with an Oriental origin. The discrimination was aggravated by European fears of a Semitic threat to dominate the Aryan people and reached its climax during the Nazi regime.
It is an acknowledged fact that the Jews were persecuted by the Nazis, but they were not the only people who fell victim to Nazi excesses in World War II. Gypsies, Slavs and Russians suffered equally. It also is true that huge numbers of Jews were killed in Hitler’s concentration camps. The difference of opinion, however, is in the precise number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. It is the inhuman attitude underlying ethnic-cleansing that we are more concerned with than the actual number of victims.
We also are concerned by the new meaning anti-Semitism has been given. The term no longer describes hostile attitudes toward the Semitic people in general, including Arabs and several descendants of the Prophet Noah. The word now is monopolized by the Jews to mean sentiments or acts hostile to them. All other Semitic races are removed from the scope of the word. It was in fact in 1879, to be precise, that the Jewish German journalist Wilhelm Marr published “The Victory of Judaism Over Germanism” from a nonreligious perspective and employed the term anti-Semitism to mean exclusively anti-Jewish sentiments.
Israel’s first premier, Ben Gurion, reportedly, said that an anti-Jewish feeling should be generated among other people, if it didn’t already exist. The founding prime minister also said the most insignificant incident of Jewish hatred should be exaggerated to appear as part of an international conspiracy against Jews.
Why all these fabrications?
It is, in fact, in the interest of Israel to keep alive in the hearts of all Jews the fear of being hounded, persecuted and exterminated. The Jewish leadership also wanted to ensure that Jews did not mingle and merge with non-Jewish societies so that they preserved their ethnic purity. They should be convinced that their stay among other people was no more than a transit phase before their entry to the Promised Land (Palestine). This is the explanation for the reports of Israeli involvement in organizing Jewish persecution in various parts of the world apart from the Israeli collusion with Nazis or the ultra rightists elsewhere to terrify the local Jewish population so that they would flee to Palestine.
According to the records of a Jewish agency: “If we have to choose between saving 10,000 able-bodied people capable of contributing to our nation-building and saving a million Jews who would be a burden to us, it is our duty to save the 10,000 able-bodied.”
This leads us to another important cause of the forced immigration to Palestine. It is accepted that a good number of Jews comfortably settled in their own countries only decided to immigrate after intense anti-Semitism campaigns secretly sponsored by Israel. The founders of the State of Israel knew very well that the ties of a common religion would not guarantee a political entity of its own for the Jews, largely because of their diverse nationalities and places of origin. The Jewish leaders were looking for a powerful cultural identity to hold them together as a political entity. They found it in the image of a racially oppressed community that was being wrongly treated or expelled by the peoples and leaders of the world.
It is not difficult to understand that this was the strategy that underlined the exhortations of the former Israeli military chief Moshe Dayan and others like him to have the Israelis to rally together and take revenge upon neighboring nations.
Only the feeling of fear and tension that perpetually haunts their hearts would keep both Israeli civilians and soldiers ready for fighting, Dayan once said. Or in other words, keeping alive and cleverly playing the anti-Semitism card.
Nevertheless, one wonders why the issue of anti-Semitism was raked up prior to the US elections. Bush apparently was eager to please Israel and make sure that he got the maximum number of Jewish votes. It also is quite clear that Israel wants greater international sympathy by projecting it as the victim and all others as aggressors because the European countries are becoming increasingly bold to criticize Israel for its brazen violations of the international laws and human rights.
Israel also wants to guarantee the continuation of the Jewish immigration to Palestine against the rapid population growth of the Palestinians. On the other hand, it has been disconcerting to Israel to note that the Jews in other parts of the world are not very enthusiastic about the immigration to Israel.
Time and again the Israeli leaders have effectively used the anti-Semitism charges against people or leaders who did not agree with the Israeli policies and methods.
Even William Shakespeare and Mahatma Gandhi have not been spared by Israel or its friends. Former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir, French thinkers Roger Garudi and Pascal Boniface are only a few of the victims of the Jewish accusations of anti-Semitism. The Jews also demanded the closing of the Zaid Center for Coordination and Follow Up based in Abu Dhabi, UAE for hosting some people who expressed fears about the consequences of the new US regulations on anti-Semitism.
This is the method Israel employs to achieve its goals. While it achieves great progress we Arabs still remain at a lower level because of our own side wars. The solution is with us, that is, to continue the climb.
— Suraya Al-Shehry is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.
