Imprimir

It was only a matter of time. We knew it was coming.

Anyone even superficially aware of the dominant themes in Arab media knew that sooner or later they would blame the Sept. 11 attacks on the Jews. And, in vintage fashion, they have.

Take Egyptian sheik Muhammad Al-Gamei’a, Al-Azhar University representative in the United States and imam of New York’s Islamic Cultural Center. In early October he said, «All the signs indicate that the Jews have the most to gain from an explosion like that. They are the ones capable of planning such acts.»

The evidence? «It was found that the automatic pilot was neutralized a few minutes before the flight, and the automatic pilot cannot be neutralized if you don’t have command of the control tower,» reasoned the sheik.

So how do the Jews fit in? In case you didn’t know: «Jews control decision-making in the airports.»

For his part, well-known Islamist Egyptian journalist Fahmi Huweidi wrote in the Saudi press that the Israeli secret service was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Hezbollah’s television channel reported that 4,000 Israelis who worked at the World Trade Center were warned by the Israeli Mossad of the attack in advance. And of course, according to this report, none of the 4.000 went to work that day.

What’s more, some Jews rejoiced in the streets the day of the attack, but you didn’t know about it because «the Jews who control the media acted to hush it up,» in the candid words of the above-quoted sheik.

America itself is not let off the hook. When New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rejected a $10 million donation from Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, the Saudi press called him a «homosexual» guilty of «»idiotic behavior,» whereas Hafez al-Barghouthi, the editor of the Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper, added that the mayor «hides his first name, chosen for him by his Italian father, so as not to remind the Jewish voters of the infamous Rudolph Hitler [sic]. This is why he prefers to shorten it to Rudy.»

There’s more: Palestinian official Adli Sadeq charged that «the U.S. is the enemy of the democratic aspirations of the Arab peoples,» and that «it is the No. 1 schemer against development in the Arab world.»

It does not stop even here. Ibrahim Nafi, editor of the government-owned Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, called the American humanitarian food drops over Afghanistan a «crime against humanity,» given that U.S. planes were dropping food «in areas full of land mines, which cause damage to the Afghani citizens trying to gather it up.» He went on to claim that «there were several reports that the humanitarian materials have been genetically treated with the aim of affecting the health of the Afghani people.»

For years, Israelis and Jews have been subject to this kind of treatment. The official Syrian daily Tishrin once accused Jewish and Israeli organizations of colonizing «100 percent» of the Internet, and as a result, no material on the information highway could be defined as «benign to Syrian interests.»

When Time magazine chose Albert Einstein as scientist of the century in late 1999, the largest Egyptian weekly charged that Zionists had «resuscitated the dead» in order to prevent an Egyptian scientist from being awarded the distinction.

What can we say about all this? First, the Bush administration may want to revisit its coalition politics. All of these quotes came from Arab countries that, save Syria, are regarded as «moderate» by official Washington.

But can America really trust partners this delusional?

Second, it is to be hoped that advocates of political negotiations between Arabs and Israelis now understand why peace has remained so difficult to achieve in the Middle East. The real conflict is not about land and settlements, but about a colossal clash of cultures.

This harsh fact no longer can be ignored, and policy should be constructed accordingly. After all, as Saudi columnist Suleiman Al-Nkidan courageously asked last October:

“If this is the condition of the enlightened elite (of the Arab world), what can be said about the cave-dwellers?”

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.