While I don’t agree with his whole essay, Richard Cohen makes an important point:
To far more people than we would like to admit, the mystery of James W. von Brunn, the alleged shooter at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is not that he held such weird and depraved views about Jews and the Holocaust, but that those views are considered weird and depraved. In vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible.
In addition, Cohen deserves credit for highlighting the work of MEMRI.
That anti-Semitism is now a part of Middle Eastern culture. It has infiltrated textbooks; it is recited in mosques. It is aired on television — for instance, the broadcast of a play produced at Gaza’s Islamic University in which Jews were portrayed as drinking Muslim blood. “You must drink from the blood of Muslims,” a father tells his son, according to a transcript provided by MEMRI. “Okay,” the son says, “but just one cup, because I’m full.”
Such views are routinely espoused by religious figures. MEMRI quotes an official of the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowment as saying that all Jews are descended from pigs and can therefore be slaughtered. This particular statement was rebutted by other religious officials — such sentiments do not always go unchallenged — but it remains remarkable and scary that they are aired in the first place.
Cohen, later on, gives too much credence to the Palestinian grievances against Israel. At least though he rightly highlights the antisemitism that is so much a part of the Arab and Muslim political culture.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
