Arab anti-Semitism: It’s pandemic

This post was first published on July 29, 2004. It is just as relevant today as it was four and a half years ago. And the reason I’m republishing it: The Egyptians are calling Avigdor Lieberman “racist.”

For the past sixty or seventy years, if not longer than that, the Arab nations have been indulging in one form or another of Jew-hatred. I don’t see how we can possibly re-educate those whose very institutions regularly deny the existence of the state of Israel. I don’t see how we can reform those whose governments sponsor a multi-part miniseries during the Arab equivalent of sweeps month (Ramadan) that echoes the lies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with their media insisting the series was truthful. And if you go to Google News today and look for the phrase “horseman without a horse,” you will find this article on Al-Jazeera, which calls the Protocols “an allegedly anti-Semitic television programme” that was “loosely based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a controversial document that has never been corroborated.”

That article is dated July 16th.

A quick look around MEMRI will show you case after case of institutional Arab anti-Semitism. And MEMRI presents regular updates on the presence of anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world.

So the shock and surprise expressed by the UN’s European’s ambassadors at the negative Arab reaction to a UN resolution on anti-Semitism is particularly annoying. All they had to do was open their eyes in their own backyards to see the Muslim hatred of Jews.

NEW YORK – Arab states at the United Nations are trying to foil a proposal to raise a vote condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly this September.

At a closed meeting held recently in New York, UN ambassadors from Arab and EU countries met and the Arabs made clear that they do not accept the initiative for the UN General Assembly to condemn anti-Semitism.

The blunt language used by the Arabs describing their opposition, and their plans to use diplomatic means to prevent the resolution from reaching a vote, shocked the Europeans, said a UN source.

According to UN sources, the Arab delegates were also critical of a UN seminar on anti-Semitism held last month. A senior Western diplomat said that among the Arabs who spoke with the Europeans was PLO observer Nasser al Kidwe, and he was particularly outspoken in his objections to a UN General Assembly resolution on anti-Semitism.

The source said Kidwe attacked the content of UN Secretary general Koffi Anan’s speech to the seminar last month, particularly Annan’s pride in the cancelation of the 1975 Zionism equals racism resolution. “The Europeans were depressed when they left the meeting,” said the source.

I would like to hear what kind of blunt language they used, frankly. I would very much like to hear the Arab ambassadors to the UN expressing the kind of Jew-hatred we know they already hold. I’d like to see it plastered on the front page of the New York Times. But then, I’d also like to win the lottery.

Jordanian Ambassador to the UN Prince Ziad Hussein argued that the resolution would reinforce the tendency to call any criticism of Israel, anti-Semitic. Moroccan Ambassador Mohammed Banone, said that the seminar against anti-Semitism was a terrible idea and a decision would only divide the world body. Arab League Ambassador Mahamas Hani warned that a UN resolution condemning anti-Semitism would have a negative impact on the Middle East.

The proposed resolution would issue a general condemnation of all forms of anti-Semitism and acts of intolerance, incitement and harassment. The decision would also call on member countries to take steps to block anti-Semitism.

Major countries have already committed to voting in favor. Last year, an Israeli initiative for a similar resolution failed.

Of course the Arabs would have to vote against this resolution. The Protocols are bestsellers in Arab nations, and their Friday sermons nearly always condemn or call for the deaths of Jews. How could they vote for a resolution against anti-Semitism, when hatred has become a part of their way of life?

Shame, once more, on the United Nations. Shame, once more, on the European nations that allow this hatred to continue. And shame on the European ambassadors who are so ignorant that they don’t recognize the depths and read of this hatred.

This is why Israel exists, and this is what “Never again” truly means: Never again will Jews leave their fates in the hands of others. Because every time we have done so in the past, we’ve regretted it.