Muslims misinterpreted

Editorial

Jews are "the brothers of monkeys and swine," according to a Vancouver area Muslim cleric. The Vancouver Sun reported Oct. 22 that Sheik Younus Kathrada preached that all good Muslims want to be martyrs and stated: "When we hear of our fellow Muslims in Palestine and what they're going through to try and defend that great land for us, the Muslims, that individual should wish that he was there."

Coincidentally, the head of the Canadian-Islamic Congress, Mohamad Elmasry, declared every Israeli citizen over the age of 18 a legitimate target for terrorism. According to the Canadian Islamic leader, Israel's near-universal military service means every citizen is a legitimate target for Islamic militants – whether the Israelis are in or out of uniform.

When the remarks were met with national outrage, both men declared themselves misunderstood.

The furor that has accompanied the reporting of these remarks is encouraging to people who cherish Canadian values of tolerance. But here's a question that has not yet been asked: These men thought they could express these views with impunity. Why?

Because even Canadians of goodwill have allowed extremist condemnations of Israel and Jews to go relatively unchallenged because very frequently genocidal or at least bigoted assertions against Jews have been carefully couched in the acceptable guise of anti-Zionism. Repeated slanders and even violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in Canada have been excused as an unfortunate but understandable by-product of the Middle Eastern conflict. When Israel stops behaving abominably, many decent Canadians seem to believe, anti-Jewish acts in Canada will recede. This "logic" is little different from ancient anti-Semitism, which always found justification for attacks on Jews - "If Jews hadn't killed Christ..." "If Jews didn't control the economy..." "If Jews didn't spread the Black Plague..." Of course, critics will contend that these ancient anti-Semitic assertions were false, while complaints against Israel are (completely or mostly) legitimate.

The problem with this logic is that the Islamic world's obsessive concern with things Jewish predates the "occupation." The Six Day War of 1967 – an Arab-initiated war that Israel survived miraculously – occurred not because of Israel's oppression of Arab or Muslim people, but because of the Arab world's inflexible position that a Jewish state has no place in the Middle East. This position, which was explicitly adopted in 1947, has been officially abandoned by Egypt and Jordan, but remains a central position of every one of Israel's other Middle Eastern neighbors.

Most telling of all is that the Muslim concern with Palestinian nationalism did not emerge until after the 1967 war. Before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, Gaza was occupied by Egypt, and the West Bank was occupied by Jordan. The imperative for a Palestinian homeland had no traction in the Muslim world until the Jewish state found itself in the difficult position of holding the land the Palestinians claim. Then, suddenly, Palestinian nationalism emerged as regional issue Number One.

Perhaps more alarming than the extremist language itself is the nonchalance with which some "moderate" Canadians accept it. Anyone who has followed the trajectory of anti-Israel venom in this country over recent years would not have been surprised at the turn taken by the local imam and the national leader of the Canadian-Islamic Congress.

The idea that the entire Arab and larger Muslim worlds are enflamed to the point of murderous rage by the Israeli occupation of legitimately Palestinian (or, according to the imam, "Muslim" lands) is too facile an excuse for Jew-hatred. The occupation of Palestinian land raised not a ruffle on the feathers of the Arab or Muslim world when that land was occupied by Egypt and Jordan.

The sovereignty of the Palestinian people has been offered repeatedly since 1947, first by the United Nations, then by successive Israeli governments. It has been rejected repeatedly, most recently in 2000 by the resumption of violence that continues today.

The vast majority of peace-seeking Canadians continue to ascribe to a flawed narrative that somehow positions the tiny Jewish state of seven million as a universal threat to 1.3 billion Muslim people. Who, in this ratio of 2,000-to-one, is David and who Goliath?

We are supposed to accept that the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish fanaticism sweeping the Arab and Muslim worlds is due to nothing except the situation of the Palestinian people – a people whose historical statelessness and exploitation is due mostly to their betrayal at the hands of their Arab and Muslim "allies." Then, when the language of anti-Zionist maniacs turns explicitly genocidal, we are expected to believe they are misinterpreted.

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