[Gilbert] Achcar guides the reader through an intellectual history of the Arab Middle East in the twentieth century. He identifies four dominant strains of political thought—liberalism, Marxism, nationalism, and pan-Islamism—and explores the connections of each to anti-Semitism and fascism.
The Arabs and the Holocaust is a valuable contribution to the field of Holocaust studies in the Arab world....But the book also suffers from some significant shortcomings. Its treatment of Arab anti-Semitism is incomplete, and the book is weighed down by a strong bias in favor of secular movements and a ferocious anti-Zionism that distracts from the main topic.
...Because the Middle East was under colonial domination by the Allied powers, Achcar points out, Arabs were naturally inclined to sympathize with Germany according to the simple logic of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”...As a result, Arabs have been mistakenly branded as anti-Semites, Nazis, or fascists when in fact they were guilty of reluctance to privilege universal moral concerns over immediate self-interest...
...For Palestine, he cites a Zionist intelligence report from December 1941, which estimated pro-Nazi sympathies among Palestinian Arabs at 60 percent, but claims the number is exaggerated. He does not mention the poll carried out by Sari al-Sakakini, which, in February 1941, put the figure at 88 percent. Achcar also neglects to mention the prominent Palestinian educator and liberal, Khalil al-Sakakini, Sari’s father, who, in his diary, expressed repeated support for the Nazis.
...In a telling section, Achcar recounts an incident that took place in 1936 during the Arab Revolt in Palestine. During a street demonstration in Tulkarm, a passing car was stopped, and one of its passengers, wearing a western-style hat, was assaulted. The man got out of the situation unscathed, however, by making the Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler!” Having hoisted a Nazi flag over his car, the man drove off while the crowd cheered. Achcar does not deny that it was the man’s Nazi credentials that saved him. Nor would he deny, presumably, that had the man been Jewish, he would have been killed on the spot (as happened on numerous other occasions). Nevertheless, this does not qualify as anti-Semitism, according to Achcar. “The Arab population of Palestine would doubtless have detested Hitler had it known the real content of his doctrine,” he writes. The people acted out of simple “stupidity.”
...Achcar calls for paying greater attention to the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. For instance, the Protocols, which have gained widespread currency in the Arab world, need not necessarily be understood as an indication of anti-Semitism. Though an unequivocally anti-Semitic text on its continent of origin, in the Arab world, Achcar claims, the Protocols are understood to refer only to Zionists.
Be that as it may, the claim raises another, more difficult question, which Achcar does not address. If, in the Arabic language, it is common practice to use “Jews” and “Israelis” interchangeably, and if the anti-Zionist rhetoric in the Middle East is itself based on anti-Semitic calumnies, such as the Protocols, and patently anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, like Roger Garaudy, are celebrated across the region, how then are we to determine where anti-Zionism ends and anti-Semitism begins? Even if we accept that anti-Jewish stereotypes in the Arab world are understood to apply only to Israelis, does it stand to reason that people will be able to maintain the distinction? The increase in Europe of anti-Semitic violence committed by Muslims outraged by the Israeli occupation suggests otherwise.
...Achcar devotes a considerable portion of the book to the leader of the Palestinian national movement, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Spending the war years in Berlin, in close proximity to the Nazi top brass, Hajj Amin remained his “hosts’ Arab/Muslim collaborator par excellence.”
While in Berlin, the Mufti did more than merely oppose Jewish immigration to Palestine. Hajj Amin actively participated in the war effort on behalf of the Nazis, including setting up an SS force of Bosnian Muslims. In a letter to the Hungarian minister, in June 1943, Hajj Amin urged him to prevent Jews from leaving for Palestine and went on to suggest that “it would be indispensable and infinitely preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland, in order thereby to protect oneself from their menace and avoid the consequent damage.” He mentioned Poland, as Achcar points out, knowing full well about the concentration camps in operation there. Even after the war, Hajj Amin remained steadfast on the matter of his wartime support for the Germans. Had they won, he once lamented after the war, “no trace of the Zionists would have remained in Palestine and the Arab countries.”
...Considering the symbolic force of the Holocaust, it is crucial to maintain the distinction between a neo-Nazi shouting “Death to the Jews!” and a Palestinian shouting likewise, but who by “Jews” means “Israelis.” Context—political, cultural, or linguistic—matters. And while Palestinians have a legitimate gripe with Israel, the notion that they have one with world Jewry has to be rejected in the strongest possible terms. This requires an evenhanded approach to the issue. Mistakenly labeling something anti-Semitism that is not is as grave an error as failing to properly identify the real thing.
Achcar’s book does not fully succeed in dealing with this problem. In addition to its unhelpfully narrow understanding of anti-Semitism, it suffers from a strident anti-Zionism that sits uneasily atop the book’s primary topic. As a result, one is left with the impression that Achcar succumbs to the very malady he purports to write against. And we continue playing politics with the Holocaust.
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