2006-03-11
Genevieve Cora Fraser
Dear Friends ,
I am passing this article along having read the original article a month ago (the article to which Chris Spannos refers) that was in a transcribed Israeli news. What concerns me now is that it is not uncommon to read of
the "Final Solution" for the Palestinian issue in the Israeli press. And of course, our politicians play right along and demonize the indigenous people of the Holy Land. Gen
An Experiment in Anti-Semitism vs. Anti-Arab Racism
Imagine if an Arab spiritual leader referred to Jews as "foul", a
"disease" or as a "devil". What if he called them "asses" and asked "why
did God not create them walking on their fours?" In reply to his own rhetorical question, the imaginary Arab spiritual leader then coolly
replies, "The answer is that they need to build and wash." You would be
right to be angry and disgusted by such vile racism. And you would be
right to wonder what institutional and cultural influences help create,
perpetuate and sustain such anti-Semitic garbage.
But would you feel and think the same way if it was a Jewish spiritual
leader targeting Arabs with this hateful, racist nonsense? We certainly
hear, see and read both genuine and exaggerated claims of anti-Semitism
almost daily in radio, T.V. and newspaper reports. But we don't see
balanced attention given to anti-Arab racism. If we had the resources to
conduct amethodical and systematic study documenting the discrepancy
between media coverage of anti-Semitism and media coverage of anti-Arab
racism I'm willing to bet that we'd find conclusive evidence of a
profound neglect. And the source of this neglect can be found in the
hesitation and fear of criticizing the state of Israel's policies and
illegal occupation; the fear of being called an anti-Semite. Since all
Jews do not identify with thestate of Israel, or Zionism, despite
Zionism's claim to act on behalf ofall Jews, the accusation of
anti-Semitism is of course nonsense.
I opened this commentary with "Imagine if an Arab spiritual leader... ".
There is in fact no real person as such. However, all the insults and
vitriol spewed in this hypothetical anti-Semitism are the real words of
a Jewish spiritual leader, Rabbi David Bazri, directed at Palestinians.
His racist attack comes in the wake of a very sane, reasonable and
necessary proposal for the establishment of a mixed Arab-Jewish school
in Pat, Jerusalem.
Now it is true that anti-Semitism exists in the Arab World, just as
anti-Arab racism exits among Jews. But not all Arabs are anti-Semites,
just asnot all Jews are racist. But it is not true, as the well
documented daily humiliations of occupied Palestinian lives testify,
that these forms ofracism are given equal attention and consequently
have equal outcomes. If the particular hypothetical anti-Semitism used
here were a real incident, you can be sure it would receive wide spread
media and political attention, used to justify Israel's illegal
occupation - more rational to reign collective punishment down upon the
Palestinians.
But the opposite is true; a particularly nasty anti-Arab racism was
expressed. Will we see newspaper, T.V. or radio reports covering these
extremely hysteric remarks? Why not? Do we even care? Can we even begin
to ask what institutional and cultural influences help create,
perpetuate and sustain such anti-Arab garbage? Would equal attention and
examination of these issues illuminate the failings of a flawed ideology
- Zionism, or the brutalities of Israel's occupation? In contrast to the
hypothetical anti-Semitism above, the response to real anti-Arab racism
directed at Palestinians from a Jewish spiritual leader is a vacuum of
silence from our political leaders and dominant media institutions.
Walla !News ( Haaretz) reported on Jan. 10, in a news item appearing only
in Hebrew (see here for an unofficial English translation), that "Today
the school is running in a temporary building and is looking for a
permanentresidence in the Pat neighborhood of Jerusalem. The
municipality assigned a territory for the school but because of
repeating appeals to court the process isdelayed. Today [Jan 10.] the
matter is scheduled for a debatein the High Court."
A Rabbi named Yehuda Der'i also participated in the conference against
the school and said that "this is a thing that the Jewish mind, logic
and soul cannot tolerate. We have to go from house to house and raise
supporters in the neighborhood to prevent this horrid punishment."
More vacuous comments, and the news item quoted here is actually worse
than I've let on...
Here are Rabbi David Bazri's words, in full, which I quoted above for
thehypothetical anti-Semitism, "The establishment of such a school is a
foul, disgraceful deed. You can't mix pure and foul. They are a disease,
a disaster, a devil. The Arabs are asses, and the question must be
asked, why did God not create them walking on their fours? The answer is
that theyneed to build and wash. They have no place in our school".
This gross racist assault against a proposed school provides one window
peering into the daily humiliations that Palestinians suffer in Israel.
It is the foundation for the belief that there are "pure" and "foul"
races ,ethnic groups and cultures; and in the particular case of Israel,
that there can be a "pure" "Jewish State". It enables the existence of
second class citizenship for Palestinians in Israel, identification
cards for Palestinians, checkpoints for Palestinians, systematic house
demolitions forPalestinians, extra judicial executions and
assassinations for Palestinians, an Apartheid Wall for Palestinians, a
brutal military occupation which has practiced ethnic cleansing and
denied Palestinians their Right of Return. It is a backward and insipid
thinking that belongs to the Stone Age.
Sadly, anti-Arab racism is not confined to Israel alone. The US and
Canada are both engaged in the illegal detention, deportation and
torture of Arabs. As Noam Chomsky has noted "Anti-Arab racism in the US
has long beenextreme, the last "legitimate" form of racism in that one
doesn't even have to pretend to conceal it. That's long before 9-11, and
a deep problemin the society, which can't be ignored, any more than
other forms of racism can." But that will have to be the topic of
another commentary.
Chris Spannos is an anti-war activist, anti-capitalist, ZNet volunteer
and member of the Vancouver Participatory Economics Collective. His
email address is: spannos at gmail dot com He blogs for ZNet at
http://blog.zmag.org
