When I was eight years old, my mother said that she'd never buy a German car, a reflection of her own childhood when the Nazis had forced her family to flee Austria for America. Whenever we were driving around in our big green '57 Buick and my mother saw a Volkswagen on the road, she'd say, "There's another one of Hitler's cars." I don't know what level of anti-Semitism still existed in Germany in the late fifties, but clearly, now, the most openly anti-Jewish vitriol spews from the Arab-Islamic world.
From Holocaust denial in the Syrian, Jordanian and Iranian media to the Saudi revival of the centuries-old libel that Jews bake bread with the blood of Arabs, the hate oozing from the Muslim Middle East rivals anything that ever came out of the Third Reich. The latest manifestation is a 41-part Egyptian television series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent nineteenth-century document that purports to be a step-by-step plan of the Jews to take over the world. The US spends billions to maintain Egypt's sewer systems, while raw sewage pours forth from that country's TV and other media.
Egypt's defense of this vile and hateful series is that it is a form of free expression. And so it is -- but an expression of what? The Protocols were Adolf Hitler's warrant for genocide; the scheming Jews, after all, had to be stopped. The government-sanctioned television series, then, seems a purposeful display of solidarity with the man who best knew how -- and why -- it was necessary to exterminate Jews. But then, admiration for Hitler is rampant in the Arab world. The Protocols is widely read there. So is Mein Kampf -- particularly popular in the Arab-occupied territories of Judea and Samaria. Can this be a surprise? It is counterintuitive that a dispute over land could adequately explain the depths of barbarity exhibited almost daily in Israel, as typified by the recent point blank murder of two cowering infants and their mother by an Arab who crept into their home, and the bombing of a Jerusalem bus full of children. The more plausible explanation is this: pure and simple hatred of Jews.
Which recalls another childhood incident some forty years ago, when my parents took me to the New York World's Fair. I remember an Egyptian exhibit that caught my interest -- I probably thought I'd see some mummies -- but my mother wouldn't allow us to patronize it. The reason, she said, was that "they hate the Jews." I had no idea then what she was talking about. Even in young adulthood, I didn't identify with the older Jewish generation's seemingly paranoid focus on anti-Semitism. I've since come to see, though, that my mother was right about a lot of things -- especially the Arabs, who have a long history of hatred toward Jews.
In 1921, twenty-seven years before Israel even existed, Arab gangs on a rampage through the holy land killed Jews by the dozens. They did the same for seven days straight in 1929, and again between 1936 and 1939, murdering hundreds. Those pogroms, of course, predated the Arabs' latest excuse, the 1967 war and the resulting "occupied territories" (an Arab euphemism for any area not judenrein). As did Arab support for Hitler as far back as 1933.
Which brings me back to my mother and those German cars. Over-analyzing, I once reasoned that, for her, they were symbolic -- a representation of the people who hated her, glass and steel objects against which to express her defiance in their stead. But now, I think she was just trying to make a simple point: You don't empower those who would have you dead.
I think about that often: Every time I read about another murder by Yasser Arafat's henchmen, or about a proposed "Palestinian" state. Whenever I contemplate September 11. And every time I see some fuel-sucking Hummer or Ford Excursion or the like rumbling down the road -- an occasion that may inspire me to mumble, "There's another one of Saudi Arabia's cars."
I don't hold answers to what specifically we -- Jews, Christians, Americans, Israelis -- should do, individually or collectively, about those who wish us ill. But I recently made one modest gesture: In mid-lease -- notwithstanding a substantial early-termination penalty -- I handed in the keys to my gas-guzzling truck in favor of a more miserly VW bug. I don't expect that single act, by itself, to change the world. However, like my family's refusal to patronize that exhibit at the World's Fair, it served to clarify the mind. And it felt right. So much so, that I don't even worry about explaining to my mother about the Volkswagen. She taught me to identify my enemies and to act accordingly. I know she'll understand
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Steven Zak is a writer in Los Angeles.
From Holocaust denial in the Syrian, Jordanian and Iranian media to the Saudi revival of the centuries-old libel that Jews bake bread with the blood of Arabs, the hate oozing from the Muslim Middle East rivals anything that ever came out of the Third Reich. The latest manifestation is a 41-part Egyptian television series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent nineteenth-century document that purports to be a step-by-step plan of the Jews to take over the world. The US spends billions to maintain Egypt's sewer systems, while raw sewage pours forth from that country's TV and other media.
Egypt's defense of this vile and hateful series is that it is a form of free expression. And so it is -- but an expression of what? The Protocols were Adolf Hitler's warrant for genocide; the scheming Jews, after all, had to be stopped. The government-sanctioned television series, then, seems a purposeful display of solidarity with the man who best knew how -- and why -- it was necessary to exterminate Jews. But then, admiration for Hitler is rampant in the Arab world. The Protocols is widely read there. So is Mein Kampf -- particularly popular in the Arab-occupied territories of Judea and Samaria. Can this be a surprise? It is counterintuitive that a dispute over land could adequately explain the depths of barbarity exhibited almost daily in Israel, as typified by the recent point blank murder of two cowering infants and their mother by an Arab who crept into their home, and the bombing of a Jerusalem bus full of children. The more plausible explanation is this: pure and simple hatred of Jews.
Which recalls another childhood incident some forty years ago, when my parents took me to the New York World's Fair. I remember an Egyptian exhibit that caught my interest -- I probably thought I'd see some mummies -- but my mother wouldn't allow us to patronize it. The reason, she said, was that "they hate the Jews." I had no idea then what she was talking about. Even in young adulthood, I didn't identify with the older Jewish generation's seemingly paranoid focus on anti-Semitism. I've since come to see, though, that my mother was right about a lot of things -- especially the Arabs, who have a long history of hatred toward Jews.
In 1921, twenty-seven years before Israel even existed, Arab gangs on a rampage through the holy land killed Jews by the dozens. They did the same for seven days straight in 1929, and again between 1936 and 1939, murdering hundreds. Those pogroms, of course, predated the Arabs' latest excuse, the 1967 war and the resulting "occupied territories" (an Arab euphemism for any area not judenrein). As did Arab support for Hitler as far back as 1933.
Which brings me back to my mother and those German cars. Over-analyzing, I once reasoned that, for her, they were symbolic -- a representation of the people who hated her, glass and steel objects against which to express her defiance in their stead. But now, I think she was just trying to make a simple point: You don't empower those who would have you dead.
I think about that often: Every time I read about another murder by Yasser Arafat's henchmen, or about a proposed "Palestinian" state. Whenever I contemplate September 11. And every time I see some fuel-sucking Hummer or Ford Excursion or the like rumbling down the road -- an occasion that may inspire me to mumble, "There's another one of Saudi Arabia's cars."
I don't hold answers to what specifically we -- Jews, Christians, Americans, Israelis -- should do, individually or collectively, about those who wish us ill. But I recently made one modest gesture: In mid-lease -- notwithstanding a substantial early-termination penalty -- I handed in the keys to my gas-guzzling truck in favor of a more miserly VW bug. I don't expect that single act, by itself, to change the world. However, like my family's refusal to patronize that exhibit at the World's Fair, it served to clarify the mind. And it felt right. So much so, that I don't even worry about explaining to my mother about the Volkswagen. She taught me to identify my enemies and to act accordingly. I know she'll understand
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Zak is a writer in Los Angeles.