Gilbert Ashcar
"Anti-Semitism? What anti-Semitism?"
(Hat tip to Campus Watch and FrontPage Magazine)
Gilbert Ashcar is a Lebanese writer whose recent book, Arabs and the Holocaust, is a work of apologia and downplaying of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. Reading it-as I have- is an exercise in outrage as this man downplays the anti-Semitism in the Arab world. These days, Ashcar is giving his speeches at several University of California campuses. Below is a report on his appearance at UC Davis, followed by a report on his appearance at Berkeley. Note the attempt to silence critics during the Q and A at Davis by faculty from the Jewish Studies Department, which, incredibly, sponsored his appearance.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/11/when-jewish-studies-programs-are-part-of-the-problem/
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11855
In Ashcar's book, he attempts to downplay the influence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, who lived in Berlin during World War II, made radio broadcasts to the Middle East urging his listeners to drive out the Jews, and helped organize the formation of a Muslim Bosnian SS division. In his book, Ashcar (no admirer of Husseini) downplays that issue and argues that these troops did nothing against Jews in the region and spent much of their service in France. He argues that photos of Husseini conferring with Hitler in Berlin and reviewing Bosnian SS troops have been overplayed by Zionists and blown out of proportion.
Ashcar also tries to put a somewhat happy face on the Hamas Charter, which quotes the hadith of hate about Jews hiding behind trees and the trees calling out to the Muslims to come and kill them, as well as a reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Like many Hamas apologists, he explains that the charter was (until 2006) in the process of being reworded as attitudes were changing from being anti-Jewish to anti-Zionist, blah, blah, blah, woof woof woof, quack quack quack.
Were I present, I might have asked him about how Muslim immigrants in Europe are stoking anti-Semitism and making it unsafe for Jews to walk the streets of major cities in Jewish garb. Of course, I would probably would have been cut off by the Jewish Studies professors at Davis.
I wonder if they have a Jewish Federation in the Davis area. I wouldn't be surprised.
Ashcar sounds like he is trying to cast world history into the mold he thinks would have been proper, rather than the messy way things actually happened. We are all tempted to do that in one way or another, but sooner or later we all have to face up to the imperfect truth. If America has had to acknowledge the imperfections of our own history, why should the Arabic-speaking peoples of the middle east?
ReplyDeleteThere IS a difference, a very important one, between European anti-Semitism, and recent Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism. Arabic peoples have, since 1948, increasingly resented Jews all over the world BECAUSE they see the financial contributions of non-Israeli Jewish people sustaining a state they believe (perhaps wrongly) would never have existed without it.
The Grand Mufti resented the rather small number of early Zionist settlers because their socialist politics, egalitarianism, and advanced farming techniques, their example generally, was a threat to the feudal order that he himself represented.
Not all anti-zionists are anti-semitic but the Grand Mufti was clearly both.
ReplyDeleteThis dude gave a speech recently at UCLA that is on ITunes U. I listened to it today. He makes a few good points during the lecture but also says things like Holocaust Denial in the Arab world is a reaction to treatment of Palestinians.
He consistently says things Arabs do is a reaction but never considers some of the things Israelis do is a reaction to things Arabs do.
He also tries to make it like Jews and Muslims existed in harmony before the "Zionist project", which isn't really the truth. Jews were treated better in Muslim lands than Europe as a broad generalization, but Jews had no security at any time could be treated as second class citizens.
Now, I'll check out the links Gary posted.