To far more people than we would like to admit, the mystery of James
W. von Brunn, the alleged shooter at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is
not that he held such weird and depraved views about Jews and the
Holocaust but that those views are considered weird and depraved. In
vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the
Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible.
In his remarkable speech at Cairo University, President Obama only
inferentially mentioned this aspect of what has become an ugly part of
the Middle East: a tolerance for and advocacy of old-style
anti-Semitism. There is, in fact, nothing that von Brunn professed that
is not commonly heard or published in the Middle East. Do Jews control
world finance, media, international organizations, and the United
States itself? Of course. Are they capable of the most foul deeds,
including the infamous “blood libel,” which means using the blood of
non-Jewish children in the preparation of traditional foods? Again, of
course.
This is troubling stuff. But one only has to read the reports of the
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) to see that such views are
often expressed and popularly held. Does that mean they are universally
accepted? I doubt it. But they can be aired largely without fear of
condemnation or, more to the point, of ridicule. It was only two years
ago that I stood sipping a cup of coffee in Jordan and read a
syndicated column in an English-language newspaper about how Jews were
warned of the September 11th attacks — and none of them died. An
insane lie if there ever was one.
We have almost 2,000 years of experience with anti-Semitism and know
by now its immense power. It lays the groundwork for the horror that
inevitably follows. Obama acknowledged the most famous of these when he
went from Cairo to the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. It was a
particularly appropriate stop, for Buchenwald is right down the road
from Weimar, the city once renowned for its intellectual life and for
the interwar republic to which it lent its name. The proximity of
Buchenwald to Weimar tells you all you need to know about human
nature.
But I would have preferred for the president to have gone to Kielce,
the Polish city where 42 Jews were murdered after an allegation of a
blood libel. This did not happen in the Middle Ages but in 1946 —
14 months after Germany surrendered. The victims were all Holocaust
survivors. They were murdered, not by stereotypical Nazis but by
ordinary Poles. The Holocaust, with its “never again” vow, seems over
— a closed chapter. Kielce makes a different point: Anti-Semitism
moves on.
That anti-Semitism is now a part of Middle Eastern culture. It has
infiltrated textbooks; it is recited in mosques. It is aired on
television — for instance, the broadcast of a play produced at
Gaza’s Islamic University in which Jews were portrayed as drinking
Muslim blood. “You must drink from the blood of Muslims,” a father
tells his son. “Okay,” the son says, “but just one cup, because I’m
full.”
Such views are routinely espoused by religious figures. MEMRI quotes
an official of the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowment as saying
that all Jews are descended from pigs and can therefore be slaughtered.
This particular statement was rebutted by other religious officials
— such sentiments do not always go unchallenged — but it
remains remarkable and scary that they are aired in the first
place.
Obama was right to demand that Israel cease expanding or thickening
its West Bank settlements. He is right, too, in acknowledging
Palestinian aspirations and the wound that was opened in the Arab world
by the creation of Israel — the nakba, or catastrophe. But
the toleration of the vilest kind of anti-Semitism is not a
precondition for peace, only a warning to Israelis that the past can be
prologue. If Arab leaders do not attempt to rebut and eliminate the
hatred of Jews that is poisoning their societies, they will find that
the peace that most of them undoubtedly want will not be possible.
James W. von Brunn was quickly segregated from the American
mainstream and designated the crackpot he is. In the Middle East,
though, he would be no such thing — not some sort of reptilian
vestige of the past but an ordinary man, and therefore an extraordinary
threat to the future.
Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
