January 8, 2007
TV Review | ‘Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence’
The Libeling of a People Surges With a Vengeance
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Diatribes against the Jews are shockingly crude in Arab television
programs and newspapers. They are also shockingly commonplace, "the
elevator music for the Arab world," as David Ignatius, an international
affairs columnist for The Washington Post, puts it in "Anti-Semitism in
the 21st Century: The Resurgence," a PBS documentary that is broadcast
tonight. And that background noise has become more strident and
pervasive over the last few years, spread by satellite television and
the Internet throughout the Middle East and North Africa, with echoes
reverberating deep into immigrant groups in Europe.
"Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century" tries to explain the origins of that
hate as well as its surge. Whatever its roots, anti-Semitism in the
Muslim world is linked inexorably to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and keeps getting worse. And no topic is more sensitive or incendiary.
So not surprisingly, the script is cautious and elliptical, more
comfortable exploring the past than the present.
The film begins with a vitriol sampler, clips of various Islamic
clerics culled by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a
Washington monitoring group founded by Yigal Carmon, a former
counterintelligence adviser to the Israeli government. In 2004 on
Al-Manar TV in Lebanon, for example, Sheikh Taha al-Sabonji said,
"Those responsible for all civil strife and other problems throughout
history were the Jews." (Muslim extremists are not the only ones to
express such sentiments, of course. Mel Gibson expressed a similar
idea when he was arrested for drunk driving.)
A history lesson follows. Various experts explain that Jews did not have
equal rights in the Muslim-ruled world, but were relatively tolerated
until the 19th century, when the crumbling of the Ottoman empire and the
rise of the Zionist movement dramatically changed the landscape. Jewish
refugees escaping persecution in Europe arrived in Palestine en masse.
"The Arab reaction was a refusal of Jewish presence," says Zeev
Sternhell, an Israeli historian. "It was not anti-Semitism."
But European missionaries and colonists supplied those biases, bringing
to the region a Christian rationale for anti-Semitism, steeped in images
of Jews as devils and killers of Jesus.
During World War II Arabs found common cause with European fascists.
Hitler won the allegiance of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by promising
to remove the Jews from Palestine.
Fabrications like the early-20th-century "Protocols of the Elders of
Zion" and medieval blood libels, legends that Jews baked matzo with the
blood of murdered Christian children, faded in Europe after World War
II. They lingered on in the East, finding new traction when Arab armies
were defeated in 1948 and Israel emerged as a state and Palestinians
were displaced.
Israeli’s victory in the 1967 war left the Arab world humiliated and
angry, so anti-Semitic theories of an all-powerful worldwide Jewish
conspiracy were "soothing," says Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus of
Near Eastern Studies at Princeton.
The film does not mention that Mr. Lewis is one of the leading
scholars that Vice President Dick Cheney consulted to formulate the
administration’s rationale for toppling Saddam Hussein. The
documentary makes very little mention of the American occupation of
Iraq – which is odd, given how often the Arab media paint the war as a
sinister conspiracy cooked up by Israel and its supporters in
Washington.
The film reports that anti-Semitic acts of violence have almost doubled
since the 1990s. But there are lots of other indicators besides
violence. Lately lurid television dramas include cockeyed depictions of
Jews and Jewish history.
One notable example from 2003 is a lavish, Syrian-made series called "Al
Shatat," a term for diaspora, which begins with Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, an earlier financier of Jewish settlement in Palestine, on
his deathbed, telling his family and friends that "God has given the
Jews the mission of ruling the world."
"Al-Shatat" also includes a modern-day blood libel: bearded Jews
slitting the throat of a Christian child.
Scholars say that Israel’s enemies exploit anti-Semitism to rally
support for their cause, but Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor
of Arab studies at Columbia University, argues that Israel also finds
anti-Semitism useful. "I think that the brouhaha about it is a
systematic attempt to draw attention away from the roots of the
conflict," Mr. Khalidi argues. "There has been an oppressive
occupation going on for 40 years, a people has been dispossessed."
The narrator, Judy Woodruff, steps in as if to cool frayed tempers. "And
while some say that hatred of Israel is caused by Israel’s occupation of
the Golan Heights and West Bank, and the conflict in Lebanon," she says,
"others note that overt calls by Arab leaders for the destruction of the
entire Jewish state were commonplace even before the occupation which
began in 1967."
"Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century" explores the ancient hatreds that
have risen up in new forms. But the film’s circumspection reveals just
how complex the problem is to address, let alone redress.
ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY
The Resurgence
On most PBS stations tonight; check local listings.
Directed, produced and written by Andrew Goldberg. Produced by Two Cats
Productions. Presented by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
