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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| It's not anti-Semitic to connect Iraq and Israel |
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| amatullah |
| 03/10/03 at 19:48:33 |
| It's not anti-Semitic to connect Iraq and Israel Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust, yet today they are being made to pay the highest price for it By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 06 March 2003 In some ways this column is an indulgence. A battle between columnists on the same paper could be seen as self-conceit. On the other hand, maybe this paper quarrel reflects the extraordinary times we are living in, with families, lovers, friends and colleagues falling out over Iraq and the worsening crisis in the Middle East. Ten days ago, I described how painful and confusing it was to hang on to precious relationships, in particular with Jewish friends whom I love and trust, who have done much to fight against Islamophobia. I see connections between Iraq and Israel, connections that they find unsettling. Like many liberal Jewish people, they worry that this may be just another excuse to resurrect anti-Semitism, which is very a light sleeper. I know that political criticism of the state of Israel today could indeed validate anti-Jewish hatred, and is doing so, and I am worried that I'm becoming too detached from these fears. I also said, and say so again, in spite of the hundreds of Muslims who have written to disagree, that the anti-war marches should have focused only on Iraq, but that public debates had to discuss both Iraq and Israel because there is an indisputable link between them. The world today needs us all to cross boundaries to places outside our fields of simple loyalties, and this is becoming impossibly hard in the present atmosphere. In response, Howard Jacobson produced a denunciation of me in particular and all those who drag Israel into the current conflict. The piece was, as ever, exquisitely written, but the tone was, well, both Moses and Oxbridge don, and we were notified that what we believed would not be tolerated by Jews like him who had suffered "slander" for long enough. One well-known Jewish writer wrote to me to say: "Howard in sarcastic mode can be extremely abrasive." Quite. We are condemned by Jacobson as anti-Semites because we dare to question Israel. I am obviously a Jew-hater because I use the word "murdered" for six hundred Jewish victims of Palestinian bombers and the word "massacred" for over 2,000 (plus 14 more since I last wrote) Palestinian victims of the Israeli army. As I was writing this, 15 more Israeli victims were felled by another suicide bomb. More blood and sorrow. I am not cowed by this accusation. We are also, apparently, secret supporters of Saddam, a reprehensible slur, currently being used by our government and pro-war journalists. There are so many flaws in Jacobson's arguments, and such easy disdain for those he disagrees with. Take his fury about making bogus connections. We are misguided or manipulative when we make the linkages between Iraq and Israel. So can't he see that his threads which tie our protests against the war and Sharon with a sly love for Saddam seem spurious and menacing to us too? And guess who wrote this, in Time magazine, just three weeks ago? "Israel is wrapped up in Iraq... [the goal of] a stronger Israel is very much embedded in the rationale for a war with Iraq." No, not some swarthy Arab of ill intent, but Joe Klein, yes Joe Klein, the hard-headed American political guru and a man of impeccable Jewish descent. Then the Holocaust argument, which is always valid. What happened must forever be kept alive in the memory of the world. But that does not mean granting the state of Israel immunity from criticism in perpetuity. That state today betrays the memory of its too many dead, says one of many readers from the US: "My husband's grandmother was murdered in Theresienstadt. His four-year-old cousin, aunt and uncle perished in Auschwitz. With a very heavy heart, he now says his relatives were murdered by jackbooted Nazis only to be commemorated by jackbooted Israelis." We watched Israel actively supporting apartheid; we were silent when Israel was arming Idi Amin so that he could oppress his own people. Today they send their tanks into Gaza to destroy all that they find. And yes, the fact that three times as many Palestinians have died does count as more. Dr Robert Wintemute, a human rights lecturer in London, sent me his correspondence with a close Jewish friend in Washington. Wintemute agrees with me. But it is his friend I want to quote, because he captures the anguish of being on the other side: "You show no sensitivity to the turmoil a Jew must feel when a people with whom he identifies closely pursue bad policies and yet at the same time are in grave danger." This intifada has been a disaster for the people of Palestine and Israel. A survey in August 2002 showed that for the first time ever support for Palestinian Islamicists has overtaken the secular parties. Stalinist Islam is a force that wants to destroy Jews, Israel and peaceful Muslims, especially those of us who accept the right of Israel to exist. And now we have the deep yet unnamed systemic loathing of Arabs in general which is erupting around the world and in the hearts of Zionists who believe that they have a right to that hatred and all that flows from it. They don't. Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust, yet today they are being made to pay the highest price for it. Jacobson states that weaponry, any weaponry, that Israel possesses is OK because it stands between annihilation and a future. Do we meekly accept this dangerous fearmongering? Many Arabs and Jews have come a long way together, and can see that although times are as bad as they can be, an arms race can only make things worse. The West knows exactly what weapons are held by the Muslim states and their autocratic rulers – after all, we sell them the stuff. But what do we really know of Israel's loot? A new film by the award-winning BBC journalist Olenka Frenkiel will show that since the time of President Kennedy, Israel has been amassing weapons of mass destruction. They have denied this, and when Kennedy sent an inspection team, they plastered off parts of buildings and gave a falsified account. Since then Israel has given itself an exceptional position which says that it says nothing about these weapons, and nobody asks. Ah, but Israel is a democracy. Yes, and that is admirable in an area where potentates rule and destroy their people. But Milosevic was also elected, and Hitler was a very popular leader. Democracy offers no guarantees of goodness. For many of us, it is not just the double standards applied to Israel and Iraq but the fear that Bush will watch as Sharon now lets rip with his unmatched store of weapons. Why would he agree to a two-state solution when he can roam free henceforth? I have talked with, eaten with, slept in the houses of Jewish people, and for many years I lived in the home of a German Jewish scientist who had lost many in the Holocaust. Without these normal interactions I would not be in the anguish I am today. Supporters of Israel right or wrong, or inward looking Muslims, can only feel what they do because they have not made the effort to know their "enemies", and that is the real difference between Howard Jacobson and me. And without such intimacy, you can write brilliantly, but with little real understanding. y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk |
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