I haven’t been there, but I hear that the newspapers in many countries in the ME are awash in lurid anti-Semitism, offering wild conspiracy tales and chock full of references to the Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc. I hear that some of this is to redirect anger away from various autocratic regimes, but it begs the question: do they buy that crap? Many are highly educated and while I see a lot of “9/11 was an inside job” bumper stickers in my own country, that remains a fringe viewpoint and by and large not adopted by highly educated people. Are Arabs, Persians, Pakistanis, et al. that credulous or do they roll their eyes at this stuff too?
I can’t find it right now, but there is a website out there that offers English translations of Arabic papers, most of the articles seemed to be Egyptian. The site was run by volunteers who did the translation, and I seem to recall that they needed help.
There were a LOT of anti-Semetic tones to the articles, and some articles seemed to be straight out of “Protocols”, urban legends repeated as fact.
That said, there were also tons of excellent articles about the west and the world in general, many trying to correct misconceptions held in the minds of Middle Easterners.
Arabs are not Westerners in robes. Their culture is very different from ours.
They very much identify with their family, their tribe (I want to join a tribe!) and their religion. They look at everyone else the same way. Talking about “The Jews” is like a Frenchman talking about The Germans.
Next, they look back on their past days of glory and wonder what went wrong. The idea that they were tricked or cheated is very strong. Great events must have great causes. It was all a conspiracy to rob the Muslims.
Further, conspiracy theories are fed by the lack of trust in the media. Anyone my age in this neck of the woods remembers when the papers and radio said the Arabs were beating the Jews. Then they discovered they were lied to. When CNN talks about (almost anything) why believe it? All lies! Only trust your relatives, neighbors and friends.
Arabs have a chip on their shoulders. They (especially Saudis) suspect the whole world is laughing at them. Why this disrespect? It must be a tactic of their enemies.
In my early 20’s I knew a Lebanese exchange student who had had time to “aclimatize” to western culture. He told me that when he was young, they played “Arabs and Jews” the same way we played “Cowboys and Indians” Ie- running around with toy guns pretending to shoot each other…
Palestinian Media Watch translates Palestinian media into English. It’s instructive, sobering and frightening. Yes, I think the ordinary Arab man-in-the-street really does buy into crap like this, unfortunately.
It’s been a few years since I worked in Saudi Arabia, but at the time (late 70s - early 80s) there were pretty clear distinctions between the “man on the street” (tribesman with goats in the cab of his pickup) and the educated elite.
But on the whole I would say the “average” level of wisdom compared pretty favorably with the worldview of Americans. You have to remember that “average” Americans get their information about things from supermarket checkstand tabloids. That’s roughly equivalent to the mechanisms for mind-formation in the rest of the world.
Saudis in particular didn’t really give a darn about Jews one way or the other until the Arab world had to take in the Palestinian refugees resulting from the creation of Israel. I suppose young Arabs are less likely to have this historical perspective.
I have worked with many Arabs and they all believe in the 1967 war Israel was helped by the United States. They simply say Israel couldn’t have been strong enough to beat the Arabs without actual military help. They also are taught and believe the United States militarily (with troops and air cover) supported Israel in 1973 as well.
So even if they don’t overtly believe in the Anti-semetic rhetoric, they believe the revisionist history.
The pretty small sample of Arabs I have ever discussed things like this with, all more or less long in the U.S. are very careful to make what they realize is a PC distinction between a hatred for Israel which they equate to something akin to Saddam’s Iraq vis a vis warring with and invading its neighbors and what we in the West call anti-Semitism (defined here as ethnic/religious hatred of Jews). Their views are very different than our standard history on who started what, who committed what acts etc. They seem to be immune to the “facts” that a Westerner might have and don’t seem to fully be able to discuss the issues because (this very small sample of Semites) rejects much of the counter-arguments as irrelevant or beside the point. Still, seeing them interact with Jews in a work and school and social environment I am hesitant to throw the “anti-Semite” card around at least at them.
I would be unsurprised if some portion of what we see as happening in the ME is this writ large: That some hate Israel for political reasons, that Israel hate is deep and scary & not always fully rational to us - but some portion of them would want Palestine as a Lebanon 1980-like state, secular but probably run by Muslims & it would be OK with them for Jews to be one ethnic group there.
This is just one possible element of what we see - clearly there is official on going and harsh “Jew” religious and ethnic hatred going on there - rightly called anti-Semitism. Just saying one smaller possible element I have observed is an anti-Israel hatred, that while a little irrational IME, is not (really) anti-Semitisim.
Look - “anti-semitism” means “Jew-hatred”. The various PARTS of the term “anti-semitism” may have different meanings, but together, they mean “Jew-haterd” and nothing else.
I suppose that next you’re going to ask why we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway.
Well, you’re right, a little web browsing seems to turn up references to “anti-semitism” that, as far as I searched, describe sentiment directed against Jews, not against Semites. I’m surprised and wonder how the term came to be.
A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.
[Semite Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster]
Sem·ite
Function: noun
Etymology: French sémite, from Sem Shem, from Late Latin, from Greek Sem, from Hebrew Shem
Date: 1848
1 a: a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs b: a descendant of these peoples
[Semite Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com]
Sem·ite
–noun 1. a member of any of various ancient and modern peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including the Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs.
It’s simple. Back in the late 19th century, certain Eurpopeans tried to redefine bigotry against Jews in the racial/genetic terms that were in the vogue at the time. As the only Semitic people common in Europe at the time were Jews, they coined the term “anti-semitism” as meaning “hatred of Jews because of their inferior race.” The term stuck, and as time went by began to apply to any hatred of Jews for any reason.
So strictly speaking, an Arab using late 19th Century European racialist terms cannot be called an anti-semite; however, as often is the case, the meaning of the term has broadened a bit.
