Hazem Saghieh
TT

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Palestinianism

We well know that Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine, produced, among other things, Arab hostility toward Jews. This hostility doesn’t have the same nature as that which Europe had known, where anti-Semitism sprung from fairy tales, like those of “blood libels” and poisoning wells, not to mention accusations of having crucified Jesus Christ. Here, in the Middle East, the conflict has been over something concrete: it is over land.

Something else differentiates the two kinds of anti-Semitism: in Europe it was accompanied, for many centuries, by acts of violence and pogroms in both the east and west of the continent, before they culminated in the Holocaust. In our part of the world, Jews and Christians did not obtain full equality; they were not granted the rights that French Jews were granted after the French Revolution. However, they were not massacred on the scale seen in Europe, neither in terms of size, the number of victims or its continuity across time.

With that, there remains the problem of differentiating between the political struggle for Palestine and the Palestinians and falling into anti-Semitism.

In this, we cannot say that we succeeded much.

As for the reasons, they are many: the bitterness born out of the repeated Palestinian and Arab defeats led to enragement, and rage is not always accompanied by good reasoning. This was coupled with our limited appropriation of a universal culture, for which the major historical event that is the Holocaust is among the entry points.

For their part, the way that Arab politicians dealt with this, with the exception of very few, exacerbated the distortion of Arabs and Muslims’ image of Jews. True, most of them did not go as far Haj Amin al-Husseini or Rashid al-Gaylani, but there were no differences of opinion between their civilians and their military politicians or between their conservatives and their radicals with regard to the matter in question. Arab rulers' desire to divert attention away from their countries' pressing issues did its deed. Their limited or weak legitimacy did the same, with their rhetoric’s focus on Jews and their “conspiracies” increasing the less legitimacy they enjoyed. Some have consequently said that in contrast to European anti-Semitism, which was bottom-up, moving from society to echelons of power, Arab anti-Semitism is top-down, descending from the powers that be to society.

In our political culture, and within our political parties, racism only started being paid any attention to in the preceding decade, with the expansion of globalized culture and imagery. Even a cursory reexamination of the work of Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Anton Saadeh and Sami Shawkat and others would confirm this.

The militant concepts of "a war for existence, not borders," and "no reconciliation" and the call to put this cause at the center of our lives added savagery to the political conflict. This rendered it a conflict between herds which could only be resolved with killing.

With the end of the Cold War and the accompanying ascension of cultural issues at the expense of issues of economics and development, "anti-normalization" added its harmful contribution. Every artistic or intellectual project that was touched by an Israeli, any Israeli, is forbidden for Arabs. Every handshake, meal or coincidence that brings one of us together with an Israeli is a crime.

For its part, Zionism also fed our racism. This was two-sided: on the one hand, Zionism itself was based on uniting religion, nationalism and ethnicity into a whole whose unevenness was blurred and contradictions were obliterated. This facilitated the job of anti-Semites, who blame the whole for what was done by some. On the other hand, it exaggeratedly used pretexts for every crime Israel perpetrated.

The history of Jewish suffering, especially the Holocaust, was the most important of these pretexts. Israeli leaders such as Menachem Begin or his heir, Benjamin Netanyahu, make use of the Holocaust with every breath. In this sense, this suffering has been transformed into an “industry” that generates both financial and political profit. It made it permissible for the victim, because of his having been victimized, to victimize at will.

Years ago, Arab voices of a different tone started to emerge. This wave perhaps began in Iraq after 2003, in the form of reexamining, with a sense of guilt, what had happened to Iraqi Jews.

The expansion of this wave is a major asset for our patriotism and humanity, making them more expansive and complete. However, what is most valuable about this reconsideration is that it binds us to the culture of anti-racism, opposing it whether its victims are Jews or non-Jews. But it seems that there is a risk of recycling this new tone by turning it into a militaristic gateway for new Arab civil conflicts in which the rejected Jew is replaced with the rejected Palestinian. If this is the case, we would be replacing one hatred with another, and we would remain prisoners of a racist consciousness and sentiment, even though the victim's name would change.

What is required, in contrast, is the exact opposite: to grow our capacity for solidarity with all groups and peoples. The Palestinians' conditions today, in Israel and in the occupied territories, and in countries like Lebanon and other Arab countries, make it very urgent and pressing to stand by them. This is particularly true for those who choose to support the fight against racism and stand against a resumption of all civil conflicts.