COMMENT: Arab Derangement Syndrome

Shaykh Musa bin Maymun, also known as Moses Maimonides

Arab Derangement Syndrome. Or ADS for short. An obsessive hatred of all things Arab or associated with Arab (or broader Muslim) culture.

No, I didn't make up this term. David Shasha did. And who is David Shasha?

David Shasha is the director of the Center for Sephardic Heritage in Brooklyn, New York. The Center publishes the weekly e-mail newsletter Sephardic Heritage Update as well as promoting lectures and cultural events. His articles have been published in Tikkun magazine, The American Muslim, the Christian Progressive and other publications.

In a recent piece for the Huffington Post on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy, Shasha argues:

In recent weeks, we have heard a number of prominent right-wing Jews like Bernard Lewis, Hillel Halkin, Daniel Pipes, and David Horowitz express their outrage over the use of Córdoba as a symbol of Muslim openness, arguing instead that Córdoba was a place of Muslim intolerance and fanaticism.

In the midst of this new ginned-up outrage over what Sephardic Jews see as their cultural home, we can discover a much larger problem that has surfaced in what has become "Arab Derangement Syndrome" among so many Zionists.

Over the course of many centuries, Sepharad/Al-Andalus was a marker of Jewish creativity and cosmopolitanism afforded by Islam in contrast to the prison that was Christian Europe. "Arab Derangement Syndrome" sees things in quite the opposite way.

Shasha goes further.

The current demonization of Córdoba stems from an irrational and fanatic hatred of all things Arab and is clothed in the disingenuous garb of academic expertise. European-style Anti-Semitism is back-referenced to the Arab world ...

In other words, the Spanish city of Cordoba under Muslim rule was and remains the cultural heartland of a large proportion of the world's Jewish population. Yet other Jews are engaged in a process of what Shasha describes as ...

... this recent demonization of Sephardic Jewry and its Arabic culture ...

The piece makes very enlightening reading, though I wonder whether Shasha's depiction of Ashkenazi Judaism as being ...

... caught up in its disdain for the outside world and conducted an internecine battle waged over strictness in the observance of Jewish ritual.

... is a little unfair.

Shasha also has some harsh words for Zionists who enter into alliances which the ideological descendants of their former persecutors.

Jews, in spite of their startling success in the Western world, feel more alienated and fearful than at any other time in their history. This is strange given the recent experience of the Nazi genocide. But what Zionism and the ongoing problems of the state of Israel have generated in many Jews is a sense of insecurity that has served to reframe and refocus the Jewish mindset. Alliances with fundamentalist Christianity serve as a marriage of convenience that strengthens the perceived vulnerable status of Israel in what is seen as a region of Arab-Muslim barbarians. This is back-referenced to the Middle Ages and to Islamic Spain and Córdoba, and ultimately linked to the Sephardic Jews and their Arabic culture ... The demonization of Córdoba is often accomplished with the help of the very Sephardim whose history is being ripped to shreds by their Ashkenazi brothers. This Jewish fratricide is not simply an obscene act of sociocultural violence by one part of the Jewish community against another; it is a sign of a much larger problem for the Jewish world.

Those nutty anti-Semites (sadly many of them Muslims) who still maintain fantasies of Jewish conspiracies should take their heads out of the sand.

REVIEW: Correspondent's ugly truth

Fit to Print: Misrepresenting the Middle East
Joris Luyendijk
Scribe, 243pp, $29.95

The Pope had just delivered his Regensburg address. The entire Islamic world (whatever that means) was up in arms. Churches were ablaze, nuns shot, flags and effigies in flames. Or so we in the West were told.

One such article reached my attention. It was accompanied by a photo taking up a quarter of the tabloid page and showing angry men in Basra burning effigies of the Pope and former President Bush. The caption read: “Muslims in Basra hold massive protest against Pope’s recent lecture”. The headline was “Muslim fury against Pope”.

It wasn’t until the 9th paragraph that the article noted that some 300 people had gathered at the protest. Basra is a city of some 3 million. As Americans would say: “Do the math”. This was no massive protest.

My attempt at critiquing the work of the foreign correspondent reporting this story could be dismissed as the rant of a Crikey-reading (and in my case, writing) amateur. We know what good foreign correspondents do. As Joris Luyendijk notes, the occupants of editorial ivory towers want average punters like me to believe that

... [j]ournalists know what’s going on in the world … the news gives an overview of these events, and it is possible to keep that overview objective.

Journalists are the gatekeepers of truth and perspective on world events.

Luyendijk also shared this common person’s perspective when he was an Arabic-speaking anthropology graduate employed by a major Dutch newspaper and broadcaster to be their Middle Eastern correspondent in 1998. After 5 years, Luyendijk through in the towel just as American troops foolishly threw an American flag over the falling statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad after temporarily winning the war in Iraq. You’d think that would be the worst time for Luyendijk to leave the fray, just as all the uncivilised action was starting in the cradle of civilisation.

Here’s how Luyendijk describes CNN’s version:

We saw the colossal statue of Saddam Hussein being torn down in Firdos (Paradise) Square in Baghdad . Jubiland Iraqis screamed into the camera lens and struck the icon with their shoes. ‘Thank you, Mister Bush!’ The presenter solemnly described it as an ‘historic moment’ – the war was over. They could put the nightmare of Saddam Hussein behind them. Baghdad was celebrating its liberation …

And what about al-Jazeera? Luyendijk writes:

They were showing Firdos Square, too, but their montage offered a different slant. In the same square, we saw American soldiers triumphantly throwing an American flag over the statue of Saddam. Then we were shown feverish discussions and the American soldiers rushing to remove the flag. Al-Jazeera went on to show the jubilant Iraqis from CNN, only they were shot from a longer range: you could see how few there were actually standing in the square, and that most of the people were watching from a safe distance.

Joris Luyendijk provides a highly accessible, irreverent and light-hearted account of the realities of life as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. This is more a book about than of journalism. He describes the secrets, shortcuts and tricks of the trade used by foreign correspondents for both print, radio and television audiences. This includes regurgitating the content of wire service reports in a manner that, if done in an academic context, would almost certainly be considered plagiarism. Luyendijk’s news agenda about events in Baghdad or Ramallah would not be set in Baghdad or Ramallah but rather by a foreign editor in Amsterdam who had probably never been to Baghdad or Ramallah.

Luyendijk soon learns that

... the basic task of being a correspondent is not that difficult. The editor … called when something happened, they faxed or emailed the press releases, and I’d retell them in my own words on the radio, or rework them into an article for the newspapers.

Occasionally the correspondent would make use of the list of “talking heads” – diplomats (always Western ones), academics, UN workers and human rights activists on the payroll of Western countries - for obtaining “on the ground” perspectives. Otherwise, the role of a correspondent was merely to be the person at the end of the news assembly line.

Foreign correspondents and editors who take themselves too seriously may not enjoy reading Luyendijk’s descriptions about the insensitivity they show when checking into five star hotels whilst on assignment in impoverished war zones, or of their responses to the commencement of American bombing in Iraq in 2003:

... a wave of suppressed relief swept over the correspondents … No bombing would have meant no work, after money had already been spent on coming to Amman.

Or how about this hilarious description of Western journalists in the office of the Iraqi Consul trying to secure a visa to Iraq on the eve of the invasion:

We jostled [the Consul] like children clustering around a dubious-looking man with candy … I saw grown men in tears by the embassy gates when they discovered they’d be reduced to peering through the fence.

Luyendijk discovered that as he travelled to different hotspots and spoke to ordinary people, there were so many stories far more interesting and enlightening to tell than just which agreements were reached between what leaders and what accusations they made against each other when the deals inevitably became unstuck.

As a correspondent, I could tell different stories about the same situation. The media could only choose one, and it was often the story that confirmed a commonly held notion …

So the impact of conventional media processes was to confirm pre-existing stereotypes. Luyendikj’s book cleverly dispels not just our (generally negative) stereotypes about Arabs, Israelis and Muslims but also our (both positive and negative) stereotypes about journalists. A highlight of the book is the regular sprinkling of Arab jokes about dictators and secret police and even Israeli jokes about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. People don’t just weep and burn flags in this part of the world.

This book was first published in Dutch as Het zijn net mensen (roughly “People Like Us”). A veteran correspondent who had seen his best friend had died in the Iraq-Iran war gave Luyendijk this piece of advice:

If you want to write a book about the Middle East, you’d better do it in your first week. The longer you hang around here, the less you understand.

After finishing this book, readers will be glad Luyendijk didn’t take this advice. This is an outstanding book on the limitations of reportage in the world’s perennial trouble spot. Or as Luyendijk repeatedly reminds us, in the Middle East

... good journalism is a contradiction in terms.

Irfan Yusuf is the author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist. An edited version of this review was first published in The Australian on 3 October 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf

Apologies for the corny retro music in this video!




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CRIKEY: On the perils of vilification - the warped logic of banning al-Manar ...

There are many good arguments for and against allowing the Lebanese Hezbollah-run TV station al-Manar to be broadcast in Australia. One good reason not to allow al-Manar to be broadcast is the possibility that programs inciting racial hatred or racist violence could be broadcast.

Hence Colin Rubenstein, Executive Director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), pointed out in The Age last week that

[t]he station broadcast a 30-part series in 2003 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan based explicitly on the famous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The broadcast of myths about ethno-religious groups is hardly a good idea.

Yet sadly, just as Jews are vilified in Arab media, similarly persons of Arab and/or Middle Eastern heritage are vilified in Hollywood and in television. As Dr Jack Shaheen illustrated in his book and documentary Reel Bad Arabs, for over a century American movie goers have been subjected to a barrage of images portraying Arabs as violent, ruthless, savage, evil. He says:

Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. They are portrayed basically as sub-humans.

Such stereotypes are repeated in print. Last week Andrew Bolt wrote on his blog:

The rise of yet another Islamist terror group suggests there is something in Muslim or Arabic culture peculiarly susceptible to the call to violence … While false, there is yet a grain of truth in the maxim that while not every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist is a Muslim.

And today that same ignorant stereotype is repeated by Bren Carlill, an analyst at Colin Rubenstein’s organisation. Writing in The Australian, Carlill claims:

…while a majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists, the majority of terrorists are Muslim, an uncomfortable fact that shouldn’t be ignored for the sake of political correctness. It is rare to find a Muslim terrorist who acts only for a secular, nationalist cause.

Yes it is if you’re selective about whom you label terrorists.

Like all stereotypes, Carlill’s analysis doesn’t quite make sense. Most Muslims aren’t terrorists. Most terrorists are Muslim. Most Muslim terrorists are terrorists because they are Muslim. The logic is too warped to be even considered circular. And so we have one AIJAC person telling us that we should ban al-Manar for promoting ethno-religious stereotypes while another AIJAC person tells us we should ban al-Manar on the basis of an ethno-religious stereotype. Go figure.

First published in Crikey on Tuesday 11 August 2009.

CRIKEY: Obama self-flagellating in Africa?

Some Africans weren’t happy that US President Barack Obama overlooked their country and selected Ghana for his first tour of sub-Saharan Africa. You can imagine how the Kenyans must have felt by Obama’s excuse:

In my father's own country of Kenya, I'm concerned about how the political parties do not seem to be moving into a permanent reconciliation that would allow the country to move forward. And Kenya is not alone in some of the problems that we've seen of late, post-election or pre-election.

Though Obama did have some nice things to say about Kenyan civil society.

Obama told the AllAfrica.com website he deliberately chose Ghana because of its stable democratic institutions:

Ghana has now undergone a couple of successful elections in which power was transferred peacefully, even a very close election ... by travelling to Ghana, we hope to highlight the effective governance that they have in place.

There was also an emotional visit by the Obama family to the Cape Coast Castle -- a former holding area for slaves to the Americas. The castle is lined with cannons, and slaves were kept in squalid dungeons before being shipped off to captivity or death.

Obama later remarked:

I'll never forget the image of my two young daughters, the descendants of Africans and African-Americans, walking through those doors of no return but then walking back (through) those doors.

He then compared slavery to the Holocaust, a comparison that has already upset some if the comments here and here are anything to go by.

But the most hysterical response to Obama’s speech to the Ghanaian Parliament came from the neo-Conservative Hudson Institute’s Anne Bayefsky, whose anger was unleashed at Forbes and The Australian.

Bayefsky compared Obama’s Ghana speech to his recent address in Cairo. Her conclusion? That Obama loves to ...

... [s]trok[e] Muslim and Arab nations" and that this "has become the hallmark of Obama's foreign policy.

Meanwhile ...

... Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation ... The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

The problem with this thesis, like so many things emerging from neo-Conservative thinktanks, is that it doesn’t involve too much thought.

Sub-Saharan Africa includes Muslim-majority states such as Djibouti (94%), Senegal (95%), Guinea (92%), Gambia (90%), Sierra Leone (65%) and Burkina Faso (65%).

Among African member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference are: Uganda, Chad, Togo, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Mozambique.

So African Muslims were well-represented in both the Cairo love-in and the Ghana self-flagellation. Either that, or Bayefsky might learn some high school geography.

First published in Crikey on Tuesday 14 July 2009.

CRIKEY: From peacenik to IDF promoter ...?

How did an undergraduate peacenik morph into a spokesman for the Israeli army?

The Guy Spigelman I remember was a long-haired hippie-type affiliated with the Labor Students Club (controlled by the Socialist Left faction) and was elected to the Macquarie University Students’ Council on a ticket entitled "Students Against Racism", his number two being a female student of Jordanian background.

Though active in the Macquarie Uni branch of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), Spigelman was despised by Jewish members of the Liberal Club who saw him as too wishy-washy and too pro-Arab. Spigelman actively sought dialogue with students of Palestinian background.

In 1992, well before the Oslo accords and at a time when Palestinians were still regarded as a nation of terrorists, at a debate organised by AUJS on the topic of whether Israel should withdraw from the West Bank (or as some rightwing AUJS apparatchiks called it, “Judea and Samaria”) and Gaza, Spigelman supported Israeli withdrawal. Admittedly the reasons he used were more to do with Israeli security (he argued that a survey of retired Israeli generals showed most believe that holding onto the territories didn’t palpably increase Israel’s security) than with any right of Palestinians to a homeland. But he did hack into one Jewish student who made some racist remarks suggesting Arabs were inherently irrational and violent.

A 2006 post on Spigelman’s Australian Jewish News blog speculates on the factors that might affect support for Israel in Australia:

Another scenario - and this has been identified by polling undertaken in Europe - is that the world is becoming increasingly concerned with Islamic Fundamentalism and terrorism - and while there is no great love for Israel, there is less love for the Arabs.

This should not provide us with much comfort. We should not rely on the problems the other side has in order to better our position.

The other side? Maybe Spigelman wasn’t as inclusive and ecumenical in his thinking as I may have thought. Still, Spigelman does have some good advice on how supporters of Israel can help their cause:

...I believe the best advocacy is one that is vigilant in engaging all sectors of the society – from the left to the right – combined with encouragement (and not stifling) of informed debate – including criticism when it is warranted.

It’s advice ignored by Israel’s own ambassador in The Age today.

The author is a former Macquarie University Liberal student. First published in Crikey on Friday 16 January 2008.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism ...

I've been impressed with the work of British sociologist Frank Furedi ever since I saw him speak at a symposium on Enlightenment values organised by the (right-of-) Centre for Independent Studies last year.

Furedi is hard to pidgeon-hole. He skirts around the edges of liberal, conservative and libertarian. Perhaps the best way to describe him is independent. He doesn't treat issues like so many cultural warriors do - as if every issue has to be treated as a choice between binary opposites, as spectators in some kind of ideological footbal match where one must barrack for one side or the other. At least that's my assessment in the brief time I've been following his work.

I don't agree with Furedi on many issues, but I can't also help noticing him often displaying the kind of consistency that can pierce through layers of rhetoric and popular hysteria. This is on display in his most recent column published in The Australian today.

Anyone who follows this blog will know that in the current crisis between Israel and HAMAS, my sympathies are firmly with civilians of both sides. I believe the greater aggression is being committed by the Israeli Defence Forces, and Israeli spin-doctors are lying through their teeth.

But how should we respond? Do we automatically assume criticism of Zionism or Israel's actions necessarily represents anti-Jewish sentiment? I agree with Furedi when he writes:

I HAVE always criticised the tendency of some Zionist commentators to dismiss all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.

Such a defensive knee-jerk reaction simply avoids confronting the issues and undermines the possibility of dialogue.

If all you can do is place labels on those who disagree with you, it's obvious you aren't terribly interested in dialogue. However, we also need to recognise prejudice wherever it is found. We need to call a spade a spade. If Israeli racism toward Palestinians (where it exists) is evil, so is racism toward Israelis and/or bigotry toward Jews.

In fact, the very notion that the actions of Israel necessarily reflect the sentiments of those who tick the "Judaism" box on their census forms is grossly offensive, even if it is something which some unconditional defenders of Israel regard as an article of faith.

Supporters of the Palestinian cause need to recognise and root out anti-Semitism wherever it exists on their "side". Similarly, Zionists must root out anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and/or anti-Palestinian prejudice where it exists on there "side". When it comes to fighting racism and bigotry, there must be no sides.

So it should be of great concern when someone as independently-minded as Furedi writes paragraphs such as these:

... in recent years, especially since the eruption of the latest conflict in Gaza last month, anti-Israeli sentiments often mutate into anti-Jewish ones. Recent events indicate that in Europe the traditional distinction between anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish feelings has become confusing and blurred.

During a demonstration earlier this month, the Dutch Socialist Party MP Harry van Bommel called for a new intifada against Israel. Of course he has every right to express this political standpoint. However, he became an accomplice of the anti-Semites by choosing to do nothing when he heard chants of "Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas" and similar anti-Jewish slogans. Many people who should know better prefer to keep quiet when they hear slogans such as "Kill the Jews" or "Jews to the oven" at protest demonstrations.

At a demonstration in London, such chants provoked little reaction from protesters who otherwise regard themselves as progressive anti-racists. Nor did they appear to be embarrassed by the sight of a man dressed up as a racist Jewish caricature - wearing a mask with a long, crooked nose - pretending to eat babies.

Increasingly, protesters are targeting Jews for being Jews. The demand to boycott Israeli goods in practice often means a call to boycott Jewish shops ...

And in case you thought this was limited to some crazy Muslim types, consider this:

European anti-Semitism is not simply a rhetorical act confined to a minority of Islamists or pro-Palestinian protesters. In Britain, Jewish schoolchildren have been castigated for belonging to a people with "blood on their hands". Their elders sometimes encounter intimidation and regularly report having to face verbal abuse ...

There is no doubt that the conflict has intensified the frustration and anger of supporters of the Palestinian cause. But it is important to note that the rise of European anti-Semitism is not a direct outcome of the fighting between Israel and Palestinians.

Muslims themselves are not immune from this, often hiding it as anti-Israel feeling.

During the past two decades, and particularly since 2001, anti-Western feelings among European Muslims are often expressed through the language of anti-Semitism. Denunciations of the US are frequently accompanied by the targeting of the Jewish lobby's alleged influence. Such attitudes have gained momentum throughout this century.

For example, one survey carried out in 2002 indicated that 25 per cent of German respondents took the view that "Jewish influence" on American politics was one important reason why the Bush administration invaded Iraq. The association of Jews with business, finance and the media has encouraged current anti-consumerist and anti-modernist sentiments to regard the influence of "these people" with concern. Is it any surprise that last year there was an explosion of conspiracy theories on the internet which blamed Jewish bankers for the financial crisis?

Muslims don't like it when people make up generalisations about them. It is true that some of those generating prejudice against Muslims are themselves of nominally Jewish heritage, including those behind the Obsession DVD that was distributed during the last US elections. But how reflective are these people of mainstream Jewish opinion? And if it is reflective (something which I strongly doubt), does that mean Muslims should replicate? How effective is it to fight prejudice with prejudice?

Around 50% of Gaza's population are children under 18 years. Some 80% live below the official UN poverty line. But before you get angry at Israelis, remember the name of Amira Hass. And before you become angry at Jews, consider all the millions of Jews who refuse to openly support this bombardment.

A seventh century Arab Sage named Ali bin Abi Talib once remarked:

A believer is your brother in faith. A non-believer is your brother in humanity.

A Jewish Sage named Hilel who lived just before the time of Christ once remarked:

If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I care only for myself, what am I?

The wise ones of either "side" are in fact on the same side.