Ehud Ya'ari reviews the message of Arab anti-Semitism:
Ehud Ya'ari: Not Just Anti-Semitic Lies!
The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews
"Horseman without a horse," the Egyptian TV hit series being broadcast by 14 Arab TV networks, is not the only anti-Semitic production to be galloping across the screens each evening this Ramadan. For viewers looking for more than the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" can offer, there’s no shortage of alternatives. Anti-Semitism has become the last word in the Arab entertainment industry.
Al-Manar, the Hizballah TV station broadcast from Lebanon, features Dr. Ghazi Hussein, a veteran salaried PLO lackey and a former adviser to the late Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad. Hussein sits in the studio and knowledgeably defines the typical characteristics of the Jew, including "lying, treachery and greed" and goes on at length to describe Jewish baseness. The program, incidentally, is called "The Spider’s House," a reference to the remark by Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah that Israel is doomed to fall apart like a spider’s web. The program’s promo includes video clips promising that "Israel will be obliterated," with appropriate images for illustration.
Syrian TV is running the dramatic locally produced series, "The Collapse of Legends." Its central premise is that there is no archeological evidence to support the stories of the Old Testament; that the Torah we hold holy is nothing but one big forgery made up by rabbis; that it has no connection with the Ten Commandments, but is rather a fabrication of history designed to give the Jews a claim to the Land of Israel. So in the dramatized serial, a group of Syrian archeologists sets out on a campaign to expose a group of Zionists who have infiltrated their party with the aim of tampering with the ancient antiquities at the famous archeological site of Ebla, in order to give some scientific basis to the forged scripture.
And in case you were worrying, Arafat is not being left behind. Palestinian TV is broadcasting a series of documentaries with one single objective: to disprove the "myth" that any Jewish Temple ever stood in Jerusalem, and to present any historical reference to that claim as an act of deception. The message is that the Jews have no business in the Holy City.
And as most of our readers will already know (see pages 28-31 of this magazine), the Egyptian series "Horseman without a Horse" is reviving the "Protocols," albeit in a dreadful, painfully slow-paced production with laughable acting. The Jews in the series look like they’ve jumped straight out of Der Sturmer and behave like devil’s advocates, scheming, sowing corruption and generally encapsulating all that is ugly about humanity.
The inevitable conclusion is that significant numbers, though by no means all, of the young generation of Arab artists, a stratum that usually represents liberal trends and openness, have volunteered their services to sharpen and stylize the message that up until now has been promoted by fundamentalist movements such as Hamas. The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews -- not because of any political argument or clash over territory, but because that nation is a priori unfit to be counted among the human race. The Jewish religion is one big, ongoing lie, and Jewish history is the fruit of a consistent distortion of the past. Furthermore, the Jewish people present a future threat to the rest of the world.
For some time now I, along with a few colleagues who lend their ears day by day to the voices coming from the other side, have been asking ourselves: Where is this campaign leading? After all, this is not about withdrawing from the territories or granting Palestinian refugees the "right of return." Rather, it is a far-reaching, dangerous rationale laying the ground for the justification of a mass exile of Jews from Israel -- "ethnic cleansing" in contemporary terms -- and even beyond that, it is gradually building a case for justifying genocide!
At the forefront, of course, are the Muslim holy men and clerics whose poisonous fatwas flood the Internet. According to them, the Jews, by their very nature, corrupt their environment, are "prophet killers" and are the "sons of pigs and monkeys." They point out that there is a promise in Islamic tradition that the stone behind which the Jews seek refuge on Judgment Day will break its silence to give them up.
It is not the approval to fight against Israel that is being sought here, but rather the religious authority and "moral" basis for much more than that. Sure, there are more than a few Arab intellectuals raising their voices in protest against such declarations. But no number of nicely written articles can counterbalance the effect of a dramatic, well-promoted, prime-time TV series screened right after the break-fast meal.
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