The big lie, revisited

I find myself extremely surprised at the reaction to my article “The Zionist big lie and the task ahead”, published in The Jordan Times on April 28, 2014. 

The protestations of both the Israeli embassy in Amman and the Israeli foreign ministry to the Jordanian ambassador to Tel Aviv were that I quoted a line from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, which says that in a big lie is always a force of credibility (that) the broad bases of a nation… any nation will eventually accept if repeated by a state’s propaganda machine over and over again.

Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda lieutenant, was a master propagandist who made an art of the production of lies.

The big lies of Hitler and Goebbels were behind the atrocities against the Jewish people in the West, which led to the trauma not only of the Jews but also of the Arabs, especially the Palestinians who until this day pay in sweat, blood and agony in the refugee camps in their own country or wherever in the diaspora they find themselves.

The writings of Nazi leaders are often quoted in the teaching of courses on political science and psychological warfare, and other such disciplines, to demonstrate the depths of hatred and depravity to which the human mind can be driven.

Perhaps Israel should attempt to censure the contents of the Jewish Virtual Library on Nazi Literature, which can easily be retrieved on the Internet.

As an Arab and a Semite, I wonder whether the Israelis have forgotten that the Jews are a minority in the Semitic race and that Western Jews, the Ashkenazim, are not Semites at all, but tribal Khazar converts to Judaism, and have no historical connection to Palestine or the Middle East.

Arthur Koestler, himself and Ashkenazi, chronicles the details of that conversion in his controversial book “The Thirteenth Tribe”.

From ancient times, Palestine was described as a “land of milk and honey”. 

It was not ever “a land without a people”, as Zionist propaganda has succeeded in convincing millions of people in the West.

The Israeli foreign ministry’s protest to our ambassador against what they claimed was “rude anti-Semitic language” attests to the assumption that perhaps Israel is still traumatised and caught up in the throes of that Nazi atrocities, even after the passage of so many decades.

As a professor and man of peace, I wonder about the thought process of the Israeli people. Coming, as they claim, from a cultured, free, democratic society with respect for human rights and international law, how can they explain their behaviour towards the Palestinian people and the Palestine conflict, which remains intractable because of their refusal to reach peace?

Israel’s security cannot be achieved until and unless it reaches a settlement that will, at least, meet the minimum requirements of the Palestinian people.

If all the armed forces of every Western nation were, somehow, to be stationed in Israel, they would not secure it. 

Real security can only be achieved when Israelis reach an agreement with the Palestinian people, including those who inhabited the land when Israel came to the so-called “land without a people”.

Seeing those behind the Holocaust industry accusing others, including the Arabs, the greatest and most numerous Semites, of being “anti-Semitic” is ludicrous and an indication that the current Israeli right-wing political establishment is out of touch with reality.

Few in the Arab world today are talking about the rights and wrongs of the past, or even the blatant Israeli disregard, not only of international law, but also of the Geneva conventions and humanitarian law.

But it remains that Palestine was “a land without a people” is not true.

It seems that it is time for Israel to realise the limits of its power, for while the Arabs are, for the moment, weak and disunited, this may not be the case for long.

If the Arab Spring has proved anything, it is that our Arab/Muslim civilisation still has life in it and that, while the violence of this round has remained contained within the boundaries of the Arab world, the next one might not be so contained.

This past week, under the patronage of King Abdullah, a very important conference titled “The road to Jerusalem” was held.

The title should prod Israel to start thinking seriously about the future and the need to begin to act more responsibly and humanely.

In l947, only two years after the end of World War II, the American Magazine published an article by King Abdullah I in which he explained his attitude towards Jerusalem and the Palestine question, and strongly deplored the Nazi atrocities against the Jews.

He went on to say that, historically, Damascus, Baghdad and other Arab cities always contained prosperous Jewish communities living normally and amicably near their Arab neighbours.

While he reminisced about the great Arab Jewish partnerships in Andalusia, in Spain, he emphasised that the Jew’s claim to Palestine ”falls in the realm of unthinkable illogic”.

“The Arabs have no hand whatsoever in the terrible discrimination against the Jews that was carried out by a Western Christian nation… we are humanists and were shocked by the atrocities and terror of Hitler, he said, adding that “the religious and historical Zionist claim to Palestine is totally untrue and unfounded.”

The writer is former director of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies and former foreign minister of Jordan. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.