Truth and consequences

by Saul Singer
The Jerusalem Post
January 13, 2005 

We know anti-Semitism is wrong, but does it have consequences? 
On January 5, the US State Department released a report, mandated 
by Congress, on global anti-Semitism covering 62 countries. 

Before complaining, we must pause with wonder and admiration that 
there is a nation in the world that has undertaken such an effort. 
Even Israel has not, but we should. Given that every nation assumes 
the right to criticize us, no country will be in a position to object to 
our publicly judging them. If we want other countries to take more 
action, we need to raise our own standard of seriousness and 
awareness with an official report. 

Credit should also be given to the US report for refusing to paper over 
anti-Semitism in its latest guise, the delegitimization of Israel. 
As the report states: "The demonization of Israel, or vilification of 
Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders... 
indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy." 

The report's main shortcoming is structural. As Jewish groups have 
pointed out, it contains 42 pages with much detail on Europe and 
Asia, but only seven more circumspect pages on the Middle East 
and North Africa. 

Part of this may be a reluctance to offend, but on reading the report, 
another explanation became clear: There are very few Jews living in 
Muslim countries. 

The irony, then, is that European countries may be criticized for not 
doing enough to protect the Jews who live there, while countries that 
are too hostile for Jews to live in seem to have a cleaner record. 

It gets worse. The most fundamental distinction between countries 
can be derived from the report, but is not explicitly made, and is even 
somewhat obscured. While Europe may have much work to do in 
combating anti-Semitism, at least it is officially, and often strenuously, 
doing so. In the Arab world, it is almost the opposite: Governments 
are directly culpable for allowing rampant anti-Semitism in their 
fully-controlled media. 

In Europe, governments are part of the solution; in Arab states, 
they are at the heart of the problem. 

Further, the report tends to disconnect anti-Semitism from terrorism 
against Israel, leading to this sort of bizarre statement: 
"Palestinian terrorist groups carried out attacks against Israeli 
civilians. While these attacks were usually carried out in the name 
of Palestinian nationalism, the rhetoric used by these organizations 
sometimes included expressions of anti-Semitism." 

Are we to understand that if you yell "kill the Jews," you're an 
anti-Semite, but if you do kill the Jews you might be a nationalist? 
"Nationalism" that denies Jewish national rights is in practice 
genocidal, and employs a double standard so grotesque that it 
becomes indistinguishable from "purer" forms of anti-Semitism. 

Let's get this straight. Just as Nazi anti-Semitism led to the 
Holocaust, Arab anti-Semitism produces jihadis and "nationalists" 
with genocidal goals, blowing themselves up literally side by side. 

When clerics are, in just the last few days, calling Jews "brothers 
of apes and pigs" in Saudi Arabia and "a cancer spreading in the 
body of the Arab nation" in Gaza (see www.memri.org), 
we should not pretend that hatred and terrorism are disconnected. 
On the contrary, we need to require Arab governments to combat 
anti-Semitism as part of the war against terrorism and the quest 
for peace. 

If a European country were engaged in half the anti-Semitism that 
Arab regimes have been helped to propagate, they would have 
suffered intolerable diplomatic damage - such as when Austria's 
Jorge Haider cryptically associated himself with neo-Nazis. 

What good is a report if it mainly serves to reveal that Arab nations 
can continue to spew poison without it having any impact on their 
relations with the West? 

Anti-Semitism is to the Arab world what free emigration was to 
the Soviet bloc: a fundamental litmus test for what is wrong and 
dangerous about an entire region. The United States won the 
Cold War in part by linking trade relations with the Communist 
countries to their emigration policies, and by creating the 
"Helsinki process" to monitor human rights. 

This means the proportions in the State Department's report 
should be flipped: Rather than focus on governments that are busy 
combating anti-Semitism, countries that incubate anti-Semitism 
should be singled out for particular scrutiny. 

Even more importantly, such scrutiny must have consequences. 
To varying degrees, Arab countries engage in anti-Semitism, 
anti-Americanism, and support for terrorism. More reports only 
help if they lead to more linkage. Why should the Saudis, 
for example, move against all three phenomena when they get 
invited to the president's ranch regardless? Or why should Egypt, 
when its massive economic assistance remains untouchable? 

Speaking after the latest Osama bin Laden tape was released 
just before the election, President George W. Bush said: 
"Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of 
our country." He was right, nor should anyone take this for 
granted; Spaniards were intimidated into ousting their government 
and running from Iraq. 

But is America being intimidated by its Arab "friends"? 

So long as virulent hatred - of Americans and Jews - has so few 
visible consequences, it is hard not to conclude that the 
answer is yes. 
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saul@jpost.com