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Indeed,
the fabricated storm surge that stirred the air on the heels of featuring
the first Arabic translation of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion on ‘rotating display’ at the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s Manuscript Museum, may be considered a practical
paradigm for incoherent handling of
incidents …
On November 17,
2003 a Cairo newspaper falsely reported that
The Protocols was displayed at
the front of the Manuscript Museum, side by side with the Torah in the
display case dedicated to divine books. The journalist who wrote that piece
of falsehood claimed that in reply to her question about why I added
The Protocols to the exhibit
among monotheistic books, particularly next to the Torah, I
explained: “The Protocols is
more important than the Torah”! The newspaper did not miss to include a
picture not of the Manuscript Museum, but of some rabbis! Thus, incoherence
and even ill intention were thrust into the limelight.
To wonder, the same journalist
indulged in further careless, ill-intentioned provocation. Knowing that the
book has never been placed alongside the Torah, she made another coverage
for the same issue on December 15, 2003, supporting
her document this time by a photo featuring the book inside its display
case. No one, however, heeded the fact that she was unintentionally
falsifying herself! It could be clearly seen from the photo that the book
was exhibited inside the ‘Documents’, not “Divine Books’ display case; and
only documents such as maps, legal deeds of ownership (Hujja), endowment
deeds (Waqfiyya) etc. were displayed next to
The Protocols.
What added to my wonder was that the
‘Documents’ label showed in the photo! Tragically, the newspaper stirred up
some writers against the Library of Alexandria, when it conned them into
believing that the book was ‘withdrawn’ under external pressure, which drew
the wrath of most Egyptian intellectuals. Consequently, some of them
unleashed fiery statements against the Library, whereas in reality the
display period of the book has ended, or rather has been ended, a few days
before the set date as a result of the ensuing fake storm. The book was then
returned to its original place - among several other copies- in the Rare
Book Reading Room to be at the avail of scholars and researchers, not the
regular library visitors. It is to be noted that all the world’s major
libraries keep tens of copies of that book in different languages among
their holdings! Such fabricated storm would have never been created had only
that Egyptian newspaper been a little more honest, and had the Egyptian
intelligentsia, who poured their anger against the Library into that
newspaper, gone through the labor of reading through evidence by making a
single phone call to the Library.
On the other shore, in
Israel, papers started to quote from their Egyptian
counterparts. On November 27, 2003 Israeli dailies, Yediot Ahronot and
Maariv reported the same false news without checking their authenticity.
Thus, the incoherence there (in Israel) found its match here (in Egypt)!
The two Israeli papers - and the other papers that handled the issue
afterwards - should have bothered to contact the Library or any of its
officials, even through email, so as to realize that the whole issue was a
mere fabrication from the outset.
The hectic rhythm
of incoherence and ill intention was further intensified by the massive
flood of articles of condemnation and exaggeration posted on different
Jewish websites. Seeking to prove me guilty, angry uproars grew louder,
mixed papers, and branched into irrelevant issues!
Enraged voices maintained that I deny the veracity of the Holocaust, as I
once wrote that only 1 million Jews (only!) had fallen victims to Hitler’s
atrocities. They also blamed me for anti-Semitism. I shall elaborate on
these ‘issues’ in the coming lines, however, I do want to throw emphasis on
a point related to The Protocols.
In brief, I wish to assert loud and clear that
this fabricated book has done an enormous
damage to the Arabs, and a big favor to the Israelis; for it has
depicted a totally false image in the Arab perception of the Jews, one that
turned into a stereotype overwhelmingly captivating people’s thoughts and
blinding them against the real image of the neighboring Israeli community.
Such a community that has concurrently maintained good relations with the
West and erected the Daimona nuclear reactors; cries only for seconds over
its sad lot, but works long hours to build the future in its own high-tech
silicon valley (known in Israel as the Falafel Valley). On the other hand,
The Protocols has always been reason for eternal Jewish
weeping, and a strong argument that provides worthy justification for
self-sorrow and feigned tears, one that supports the veracity of their
oppression over the centuries.
Drawing on extensive studies, scholars
believe the book is a fake document plagiarized from a pamphlet written by
French journalist Maurice Joly, entitled
Dialogues in Hell Between
Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a political satire directed at
Napoleon III.
The Protocols bears direct
borrowings, or rather excerpts, from that satirical book. At the behest of
the Ochrana, Russian secret police the book was widely circulated among the
masses to incite popular feeling against the Jews, and build on public
support for the Czar. In his encyclopedia
Jews, Judaism and Zionism - to
which I contributed with my pen several years ago -
Dr Abdel-Wahab al-Missiry has conducted an in-depth study and
concluded that: “Using
‘The Protocols’ in anti-Zionist propaganda is unethical since it
is a forged document, that no single scientific research (Arabic or
otherwise) is available to prove its authenticity. The very
useful information that Dr Missiry’s essay contains has driven me to ask his
permission to include it herewith in full text (See appendix).
Reverting to the ‘Holocaust’ that has
been thrust in the eye of this fake storm. It is no accident that it has
been deliberately pushed into the subject by many Jewish websites
with an eye to weave around me evidence of the
‘anti-Semitism’ crime, the beget of Holocaust denial. Then, it would only be
natural if I place The Protocols
alongside the Torah and maintain that it
is a monotheistic book more important than the Torah! Weaving around me
evidence
Now, I have two main points to be
clear about, namely anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. I shall start with the
anti-Semitism fable, which has become a ready accusation against whoever
dares to oppose the Jews, even in opinion.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica
(London 1966, Vol. II, p.81, p.90), Encyclopedia Americana (1983, Vol. II,
pp. 74-75), the New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (1992, pp.58-62), The Jews,
Judaism and Zionism Encyclopedia (Vol. II, p. 333) and other sources dealing
with the Jewish and Zionist issues, ‘anti-Semitism’ is a modern political
term propagated by the Jews to lend credence to their long-running
oppression complaints. The term was coined in 1879 by German Jewish
journalist, Wilhelm Marr in his The Victory of Judaism over Germanism (Siege
des Germanenthum über das Judenthum).
Semitism is an ethnic concept applied
specifically to a community believed to be descendants of Sam, son of Noah.
The categorization of Semites was initially based on language, not race so
as to make a distinction between Semitic and Aryan (Indo-European)
languages. Naturally, according to this ‘unscientific’ classification, the
Arabs are indisputably the most Semitic race; unlike the Jews whose racial
purity has been called into question by anthropological and historical
studies. Such skeptic views stem from facts like the existence of Asian Jews
(such as the Thirteenth Tribe) and black Jews (Flasha).
Strangely enough, ‘anti-Semitism’
often became an exclusive term for the anti-Jewish! Semitism has
subsequently become used in reference to Jews only, as if the Arabs were not
Semites! Such semantic confinement was obviously driven by political and
ideological motives, such as ensuring optimum profit by causing the term to
gain wide currency (Note the use of the polysemic word ‘išhār’ in the
original Arabic version of the Statement: it means ‘making known’ and also
‘drawing a sword against the opponent’) ; and eschewing internal
contradictions whenever a dispute with the Arabs arouses, otherwise it would
be a mere domestic problem that would not draw global concern, which is an
alleged concern that gives erroneous cause for fostering the state of Israel
(that oasis of democracy surrounded by Arab barbarians !) It is widely
known, though, that Western support of Israel does not spring from a
‘sincere concern for the besieged Jews’, but from a desire to promote
Western interests in the Arab region, or rather the former ‘Arab’ region
today known as the Middle East. It is noteworthy that the Middle-Near-Far
classification is valid only from the ‘geographical’ Western view of the
East.
In summary, the anti-Semitism slur has
become a trump card that is being extensively and successfully used by
orthodox Jews, although it incidentally fails under inappropriate
circumstances. Israel has reaped and is still reaping a fortune out of this
card. Nevertheless, indulgent use of such ‘libel’ shall inevitably lead to
the loss of its effective magic touch. The Jews have excessively used
anti-Semitism inasmuch as it seems today to have lost much of its
effectiveness and, in return, new terms such as ‘anti-Semitism mania’,
‘overuse of the anti-Semitism slur’, etc have cropped up. As an Arab
purportedly belonging to the Semitic race, I believe orthodox Jews are the
most anti-Semitic, for they hurl that ready-made accusation against whoever
argues with them, and because that libel denies my ‘Semite-ness’ (Semitic
lineage), despite its being a genetic trait of ours - we the Arabs - and a
questionable attribute of the Jews. Clear and cogent proof of orthodox
Jewish anti-Semitism is their changing the issue into a profitable industry,
where Semitism lost its ethnic linguistic significance and turned into a
commercial, political venture. In consequence, ‘Semitism’ no longer carries
a meaning, save in context of exoneration of the anti-Semitism slur.
Hence, I believe that the Jews should
quit using this abhorrent accusation, as it shall eventuate in further
unsolvable critical situations; what if a fanatic Jew, or some funny Israeli
writer comes one day calling for the confiscation of the Holy Quran as an
anti-Semitic book! Such claim can be supported by many Quranic verses
underlining enmity against Jewry and, thus, alleged enmity against the
alleged Semitism. A point in case can be found in the following verses:
They
were covered with humiliation and misery: they drew on themselves the wrath
of Allah. This is because they went on rejecting the Signs of Allah and
slaying His Messengers without just cause (al-Baqara, verse 61)
Then
woe to those who write the book with their own hands and then say “This is
from Allah” (al-Baqara, verse 79)
They
say “Our hearts are the wrappings (which preserve Allah’s word: we need no
more)” Nay , Allah’s curse is on them for the blasphemy: Little is it they
believe. (al-Baqara, verse 88)
But
because of their breach of their Covenant, We cursed them and made their
hearts grow hard (al-Maida, verse 13)
Men
who will listen to any lie, will listen even to others who have never so
much as come to thee. They change the words from their (right) times and
places. (al-Maida, verse 41)
The
Jews say: “Allah’s hand is tied up.” Be their hands tied up and be they
accursed for the (blasphemy) they utter. (al-Maida, verse 64)
Curses
were pronounced on those among the Children of
Israel who rejected Faith, by
the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary: Because they disobeyed and
persisted in excesses. (al-Maida, verse 78)
Strongest among men in enmity to the Believers wilt thou find the Jews and
Pagans. (al-Maida, verse 82)
The
similitude of those who were entrusted with the (obligations of) Torah, but
who subsequently failed in those (obligations), is that of a donkey which
carries huge tomes (but understands them not) (Jumu‘ah, verse 5)
There is explicit reference to the
Jews in tens, if not hundreds, of Quranic verses (appended to this
Statement) including the aforementioned ones that perhaps one day an
‘anti-Semitism’ maniac might demand proof of the veracity of those
‘cut-out-of-context’ verses, which would be completely unacceptable by all
Muslims, and then the blazing fire of the conflict aggravates even more.
We conclude from this that accusing me
of anti-Semitism was quite a ridiculous accusation. My call for the
cessation of using such an accusation is for the benefit of all parties. Let
us move on to the other issue that I promised to discuss – the denial of the
Holocaust.
Jewish historian and intellectual
Gabriel Piterberg begins his New Left Review article by defining the three
foundational myths of Israel, that “underlie Israeli
culture to this day”. These three myths are:
(1)
Negation of exile, and the devaluation of the importance of time that
extends between their Exodus and their return to
Palestine.
(2)The
return to the land of
Israel, and the divine promise of the Promised Land, and considering this
land “empty” till they return to it. This, of course, necessitates the total
cleansing of the Promised Land from its present occupants, the Palestinians,
who happen to be mere intruders that must be expelled out of the land.
(3)
The return to history. In other
words, the Jews were in the Diaspora outside the universal history of the
world, and there is no way to re-enter this history but to return to the
land. Land, to them, was history itself and thus, it is nothing but a
‘transient’ station for the Palestinian Arabs.
But I see a fourth
myth no less important in the founding of
Israel, this is the myth of the interminable weeping over the
injustices the Jews had been exposed to along the course of their history.
It is, I think, a more important myth because it is much older in time and
much more formative in the moulding of Jewish conscience. It has been used
in a large-scale fashion during ancient times. This had its first
manifestation in the journey of Philo-Judaeus to the emperor Caligula, to
plead the cause of the Alexandrian Jews against Apion, and in which the
emperor Caligula interrupted Philo-Judaeus dismissing him out of his court.
Again this weeping manifested itself in the bitter correspondences between
Moses Maimonides and the Jews of Yemen, and presently with the revival,
glorification and utilization of the “Holocaust”.
The word Holocaust comes from Greek
origins meaning “the complete burning of the offering”. Its Hebrew
equivalent is “Shiwah”. According to the
Oxford Encyclopedic Dictionary and Eric Partridge’s
Origins, and in the second half
of the 20th century the word shifted its original denotation to
mean the current meaning that refers to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The
Auschwitz concentration camp then became a living
symbol of the holocaust that itself became the pinnacle of human tragedy. It
is worth mentioning that Theodor Adorno, the celebrated Frankfurt School
Jewish philosopher once said “No more
poetry after
Auschwitz”.
What a dramatic and emotional phrase! It instantly reminds me of the famous
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his exquisite poem “Praising
the Exalted Shadow” about “Sabra” the site where one of the
Israeli massacres against the Palestinians took place, he says:
Sabra is one crossroad on a
body,
Sabra! … No one and nobody,
Sabra is what we are to
eternity.
One day I said in
an article that the Jewish victims of the Nazi were only one million
persons. This was many years ago, and today it is used ferociously against
me by Jews to ascertain the repugnant accusation of anti-Semitism. Now I
will clarify my stance as to the issue of the Holocaust.
Jewish claims have
repeatedly affirmed that Jewish victims of the Holocaust who have been
killed inside gas chambers amount to six million Jews. Yehuda Baur, head of
the Holocaust Studies in the
Hebrew University affiliated Institute of
Jewish Studies in Modern Times, has himself said that the six-million number
is quite groundless, and that the true number is less than this.
As to my belief, I think that the
problem resides not in the contentious nature of the precise number, but
rather in the signification of genocide itself, which is, by all means, a
hideous criminal act whether the victims were one or six millions. As
Muslims, we believe in what the Holy Quran revealed; the Quran says “Whosoever
wantonly kills a human being, will be as if killing all mankind”.
(al-Maida, verse 32) In this context, it is not number that matters.
On the other side,
it is well known that the victims of the Nazi Holocaust are arranged in a
descending order as follows: the Poles; the Slavs; the Jews; the Gypsies;
the crippled; and homosexuals. Arabs would have, inevitably, been included
in the list, had the Nazis won El-Alamein battle
in Egypt. The Arabs would
have, of course, topped the list because they outnumber all the
abovementioned groups. Hitler would not discriminate between the Jews and
the Arabs: because for him both of them were equally Semites.
It is noteworthy to
mention that Karaite Jews, according to the Nazis, did not deserve to be
burned or eliminated in gas chambers. Quite to the contrary, the Nazis
considered the Karaites worthy of establishing
good relations with, for they were close to the nature of the noble Aryan
race! It is also worth mentioning that some of the Nazi soldiers were
themselves Jews. It also behoves us to mention that when Moroccan monarch
King Muhammad V refused to submit the Jews to the Nazis, making
Morocco their last haven. I wonder
if the day will come when filmmakers in Hollywood make a movie about this
very humanistic stance along the lines of Stephen Spielberg’s masterpiece
“Schindler’s List”.
It seems that
humanity has been always afflicted with an interminable series of
spine-chilling holocausts; the
Jews were only one episode in the series. Before them there were many
holocausts old and new, of them we may mention: Hulagu’s massacring of one
million and eight hundred thousand Muslims in Baghdad; Tamerlane’s
conquests and the heaps of hundreds of thousands of
skulls and corpses he proudly left behind him; the extermination of
aboriginal Indian tribes by white settlers in North America; the Serbian
massacres of Muslims in Bosnia; Cambodian Massacres; Saddam Hussein’s
massacres of Kurds; blood shed in Afghanistan; the daily treadmill of
Israeli army soldiers killing Palestinians including infants.
However, I call
upon our Jewish neighbours to cease weeping over the Holocaust, the Nazis
are gone and done with more than a half century ago. During this period,
Jews have wrung myriads of compensations out of their historical tormentors.
But what about us, the Arabs, the Muslims? And what about the
incessant holocausts that kept and keep on finishing us off? The last of
these is what the State of Israel commits against the Arabs in the occupied
lands. But are we to be compensated? I am afraid not.
To wonder, the Jews
did not take their revenge from those responsible for their torture; they
were supinely satisfied with only collecting as much money as possible from
Germany. According to some
accounts these compensations amount to one hundred billion dollars paid so
far by Germany to Israel to atone for one deplorable moment in the long and
glorious history of Germany! Today, Jews take their revenge from the
Palestinians, and the Arabs in general, for a crime they had nothing to do
with. Every year Israel commemorates the Holocaust on the fourth of May, and
on the fifth,
Israel celebrates its national day marking the establishment of the State of
Israel in Palestine. Paradoxically interesting.
On the other side, we (Arabs and
Muslims) will not be compensated for all the multifarious Holocausts that
were adamant on exterminating us and are still. Even if we were to be
compensated, no one would ever accept such compensation for those who have
been, and are still, slaughtered before the gazing eyes of the world: we
have been transformed into news promulgated and transmitted throughout the
entire world via TV news bulletins. And except for our faint and muffled
voices, no one else dares to speak.
In spite of all
this, the nature of the historical relationship between the Jews and the
Arabs dictates upon “God’s Chosen People” to deal with the Arabs, and
Egyptians in particular, in a much better way than they do today. I do not
even exaggerate if I say that the Jews should be thankful and even grateful
for the Egyptians. In Jewish
scriptures, it was
Egypt that embraced the ancestors of the Jews for many
centuries. Indeed, they suffered the injustices of some of the Pharaohs, but
they were not the only ones. In return, they stole gold from the Egyptians
and ran away with it. To date, nobody seriously asked them to return it
back. According to accounts of our common history, Egypt witnessed the
resuscitation of Judaism on its land many times. The Septuagint was
accomplished in Alexandria, and it is well known that if it had not been for
this Alexandrian translation, Judaism would have perished away. From this
translation the Alexandrian philosopher Philo-Judaeus knew Judaism,
producing his hermeneutic interpretations of the texts of the Torah, which
were on the verge of fossilization. He breathed into these texts the soul of
the philosophical heritage known in ancient Alexandria as Neo-Platonism.
Religious scriptures if deprived of interpretation and renewed semantic and
hermeneutic
exploration, gradually wither away. At this point religion itself turns into
a ritualistic procedure that takes no part in the shaping of the culture of
those who believe in it. Philo-Judaeus was Jewish by religion, Greek by
culture, Alexandrian by birth, education and residence. He gathered all this
in one harmonious intellectual mixture that, through him, enabled Judaism to
exist for centuries after him. This Alexandrian philosopher was admittedly a
great and luminous hallmark on the historical procession of Judaism. Some
scholars saw him as one of the presages of Christianity because of the
influence of his contributions and writings on the Fathers of the Church
such as the Alexandrian Saint Origen.
It is in the
land of Egypt that the most
important of medieval Jewish philosophers lived. Moses ben Maimon (better
known as Maimonides) escaped to Egypt from Andalusia (former Spain under
Muslim rule), he resided there and wrote all his major works, gaining an
unprecedented fame among Jewish philosophers as the Second Moses. From this
time on we get the expression “From Moses (the Prophet) till Moses (the
Philosopher) nobody came like Moses (the Philosopher)”!. Maimonides, an
Egyptian by residence, was a Jewish intellectual, a rabbi
even, with an
unmistakable Islamic essence. To the extent that some of our Islamic
Philosophy scholars and professors like Prof. Ibrahim Bayyoumi Madkour
consider him an Islamic, however non-Muslim, philosopher, because of the
immense influence of Islamic thought evident in his writings and his magnum
opus “The Guide of the Perplexed” (Arabic, Dalālat al-Hā’irīn; Hebrew, Moreh
Nebuchim). The works of Maimonides played quite a revitalizing role in the
Jewish heritage that remained many centuries after his death. What applies
to Maimonides applies also to the less known Ibn Kammūnah the Iraqi Jewish
philosopher. (There is a short introductory article on Ibn Kammūnah placed
as the third appendix of this Statement)
In modern times
till the establishment of the State of Israel in the
land of Palestine, the Jews were safe in Egypt, leading a
normal life unharmed and unperturbed. Modern history witnessed no such thing
as a Jewish mass slaughter in
Egypt or in any other Arab country.
From this angle, I
do not exaggerate saying that the Jews of today
should be duly thankful and grateful to
Egypt, especially that Egypt was the first to think of
peaceful coexistence for all the peoples of the region including the
Israelis.
I would like to conclude my last clarification with the
following:
Things should not
be going the way they are now. True, there was a cauterising war between us
years ago, but the war is over and we then made our initiative for peace,
and there was peace. So let peace prevail in the
weary land, for there are so many human affairs, much more important than
struggle, that we have to achieve.
In my own view, I
see the only solution between the two parties in one bilateral move: the
Jews should renounce some of their myths; the Arabs should condone some
facts. This achieved, the two parties will meet
halfway between fact and fiction. However, heading towards this halfway zone
is quite a perilous move from the points of view of both parties: the Arabs
are adamant not to sacrifice the status quo for it is their only pretext for
existence; while the Jews refuse the idea of renouncing myths for it is
their only pretext for the return Jews have dreamt of long time ago.
Nonetheless, it is with the mutual renunciation of some of the issues both
parties believe inalienable and sacrosanct that we may get round this
impasse. Regrettably, a hard and painful renunciation.
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