GUEST COLUMN: Hanukkah Reflections 2002
If you were to go to the north of Israel to look into Lebanon from the border, you would see a large billboard facing south into Israel that reads, in Hebrew, “Sharon — Don’t forget your soldiers are still here.”
Those words are the caption under a photograph of a Hezbollah guerrilla holding the severed head of an Israeli soldier by the hair. If you were to watch the popular satellite TV station Al Manar, broadcast by Hezbollah from Lebanon (and available by satellite even in the United States), and you understood Arabic, you could listen to programs that deny the Holocaust happened.
On Al Manar you could also see “musical” videos with titles like “Death to Israel” and “We Will Kill All the Jews.” Synchronized gunshots sometimes provide the rhythm for such videos. If you were in Egypt or elsewhere in the Arab world last month, you could have viewed “Horse Without a Horseman,” an anti-Jewish television drama series produced to coincide with the Muslim fast of Ramadan.
The story is based on the notorious 19th century Russian anti-Jewish forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which was one of Nazism’s propaganda weapons of choice against Jews. If you found yourself in the Arab and Muslim world right now, you could read — in newspapers, magazines, and published books — hateful blood libel legends and rumors, accusing Jews of murdering innocent children to use their blood to make mazzah (unleavened bread) at Passover.
These legends, especially common in medieval and early modern Europe, were used to instigate anti-Jewish riots; now they are being used cynically by Arab and Muslim leaders to mobilize hatred against Israel and Jews everywhere. In the Middle East (outside of Israel) you could hear and read the absurd, concocted lie (promoted by Saudi journalists and leaders among others) that the World Trade Center attack was really the work of Israel — because 5,000 Israelis (or Jews, depending on the version) supposedly didn’t show up for work that morning. (Of course 5,000 Israelis and/or Jews didn’t work at the WTC, and the reality is that Jews and Israelis died there, just as Arabs and Muslims did.)
This is not just an entertaining urban legend with a truth value that’s secondary or up for grabs; it’s a false tale fashioned from vile stereotypes and prejudice. These examples are only a hint of the enormous propaganda effort now being carried out against Israel and against Jews, and this propaganda is being disseminated on a scale larger than that carried out by Nazi Germany. The rhetoric of genocidal anti-Semitism — in the open, with no hesitation, shame, or sense of decency — has returned to the historical stage yet again. And it is the work not only of Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other extremist groups (which are sponsored by governments in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere), but it is promulgated by American “allies” like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The violent prejudice and hatred the Arab and Muslim world generously funds and subscribes to is dishonest, cynical and unprecedented in its scale — and it is having success even here in the United States. So ask yourself who you are supporting if you are among those cheering “Go Team Palestine” as if the anguished Middle East conflict were a football game. I urge you, as students in the true sense of the word, to question what you’re told. Wonder why it’s become stylish to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel on American university campuses. Ask why it’s suddenly OK to interfere with freedom of speech — if the speaker is pro-Israel. (This happened at San Francisco State University — where pro-Palestinian supporters surrounded Jewish students, shouting “Go back to Russia,” “Get out or we will kill you,” “Die, racist pigs” and “Hitler didn’t finish the job.” And this happened as well at Yale, the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley — where Jewish students were badly beaten — the University of Colorado, etc.)
Ask how it can be that some academicians prevent Israeli academicians from serving on the boards of academic journals just because they are Israeli. How can it be that such so-called scholars attempt to prevent Israelis from taking part in joint international endeavors just because they are Israeli.
Isn’t this the very definition of prejudice? To be guilty, convicted, and punished for being born? And isn’t it ironic that this attitude would come from academe, where freedom of thought and speech is supposedly valued? But then, didn’t the Nazis and Fascists ban Jews from universities as soon as they came to power? Ask why so many people are indifferent to, or even tacitly in support of, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish actions — like stifling freedom of speech, boycotts, and divestment? Is this familiar? Has it happened before? As true students, ask why every national liberation movement in the world is acceptable except one.
Why is Zionism called racist and every other national liberation movement is considered noble? Ask yourself if you really want a world without Israel. Ask yourself how much you’re being manipulated by the onslaught of pro-Palestinian propaganda and anti-Israel news coverage. Ask yourself if you want a world without Jews. Ask yourself if you want to align yourself with those who today find Hitler to be their hero and model. Steve Siporin is an associate professor of English and history. Comments can be sent to siporin@cc.usu.edu.