Examples of anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world
   
 
Syria
 

The Syrian régime (both under the late President Hafiz al-Assad and his son and heir, Bashar) has always been infected with anti-Semitism, expressed not only in statements made by Bashar Assad but also by the frequent use of anti-Semitic references in the controlled Syrian media and culture. An anti-Semitic book about the Damascus blood libel (See below), called The [Passover] Matzo of Zion , was published in Syria during the reign of Hafiz Assad and written by Mustafa Tlass, the Minister of Defense. It has been reissued many times and has never gone out of print.

In Syria, anti-Semitic books , newspaper articles, cartoons and television shows appear regularly. In general they are inspired by classic Christian-European anti-Semitism . The anti-Semitic “products” are exported to the entire Arab and Muslim world; the two closest target audiences are in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority-administered territories.

The Syrian educational system is riddled with anti-Semitism. A study carried out by The (Israeli) Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) in Jerusalem of 68 textbooks 1 used in the 11 th and 12 th grades in all subjects did not find one single pro-Jewish statement. The Jewish religion, according to the books, is racist , and the Jews are portrayed as having always been enemies of the Arabs , of Islam , of the entire human race, of the prophets and of God . Therefore, according to the textbooks, the worldwide hatred for the Jews is justified, and the Holocaust, whose extent the Jews exaggerate, was also justified. These themes appear not only in high school text books but also in the Syrian printed and electronic media and in speeches of Bashar Assad .
1 The books examined were used in Syrian schools during the 1999-2000 school year.

 
A Quotation from Bashar As
 

Bashar Assad
   

Bashar Assad, though educated in a Western higher educational institute (in England), has made anti-Semitic statements. The most blatant was uttered during the Pope's reception in Damascus:

“We hear how they [the Israelis] kill the principle of equality even as they speak of Allah's having separated them from the other nations of the world. We see them damaging the Christian and Muslim holy places in Palestine. They desecrate the mosque of Al-Aqsa, the Church of the Sepulcher [Jerusalem] and the Church of the Nativity [Bethlehem]. They attempt to destroy all the principles of the monotheistic religions for the same reasons they betrayed and tortured Jesus, and for the same reasons they tried to kill the prophet Muhammad ” (Bashar Assad to the Pope on May 5, 2001, reported by Radio Damascus).
   
  Books

Anti-Semitic books are regularly published in Syria. One of the most barefaced was written by Mustafa Tlass, the Syrian Minister of Defense , and called The [Passover] Matzoh [unleavened bread] of Zion ; it was published while Hafiz Assad was president. The book, which details the 1840 Damascus blood libel 2, is still a best seller.

2The Damascus blood libel (1840) refers to the story of a Capuchin monk from Sardinia who disappeared in Damascus with his Muslim servant. The Christian community in Damascus, incited by the local French consul, accused the Jews in the city of killing the monk and using his blood in religious rituals. The local Ottoman governor arrested 7 respected Jews and ordered them to be tortured. Two died and one converted to Islam to save his life. The British demanded the release of the remaining 4, who were eventually released. The exploitation of this affair for propaganda purposes will be mentioned again in the section dealing with Jordan.

In the book's introduction Mustafa Tlass notes that the anti-Semitic blood libel has contemporary importance because the Jewish religion is full of “destructive perversions” and “dark hatred for all of humanity and all other religions.” Therefore, all Arab countries are absolutely forbidden to sign peace treaties with Israel – that was the fatal mistake of [the late Egyptian president] Anwar Sadat, who “sold his country to Satan.”
According to the October 22, 2002 edition of the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayyat , the book enjoyed great popularity at the international book fair held in Damascus , at which 38,000 books were exhibited. A source at the Tlass Publishing House for Research and Translation told an Al-Hayyat reporter that the book's popularity was the result of “ the younger generation's desire for information about the Jews [to learn] how they wronged and ill treated the Arabs and [sometimes] others , [and what] their motives were for killing non-Jews .”
In view of the great demand for the book, the eighth (!) Arabic edition was subsequently translated into other languages, including English , French and Italian . Mustafa Tlass promised that every new edition would contain an extra chapter or document which would shed light on the Jewish distortions of the Torah and on the criminal practices of the Jewish religion . He said the additions would be based on the words of Allah and quoted from the relevant verses of the Qur'an.
   
 
The International Court of Justice and the Crimes of the Rulers of Israel
 


Author : Zafir bin Khadhra', Esq. (Legal counsel to the PLO, resides in Syria and is a member of the Palestinian national council; has expressed objections to the peace process)

Publisher : Dar Kan'an lil-Dirasat wal-Nashr wal-Tawzi', Damascus

Date of publication : 2001
The book preaches hatred for Israel, the Zionist movement and the Jewish people with added “ legal justification ”.
 
The first prominent feature of the book is its cover , which depicts Ariel Sharon, Israel's current prime minister, as looking “ typically Jewish ,” ugly and bloodthirsty (on his face and skull are bloodstains and a list of acts of slaughter); he is shown as behind bars. The illustration uses the familiar tactics of the Nazi publication, Der Stûrmer : The Jew is presented as ugly and evil with exaggerated, easily recognizable racial characteristics. That is done to de-legitimize him and his rights, to demonize him, to make him an automatic object of hatred and to prepare the ground for physical assault on and annihilation of the Jews as a whole.

The International Court is a propaganda pamphlet dedicated to “the heroes of the intifada” written “to prove to the world and the Arab and Muslim nations that Sharon and those in power with him [in Israel] are merely transitory and can be replaced, while Arab Palestine will remain forever… ” (p. 8). According to the foreword by Salim al-Za'nun, Chairman of the Palestinian National Council , the book presents material which will serve the International Court as grounds to indict Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, and other important Israelis, of committing war crimes against the Palestinians.

The book was written by a lawyer and has legal pretensions , but it merely an exposition in anti-Semitism and hatred for the Zionist movement. The introduction compares the figure of “ the ancient Zionist murderer ,” a legacy of the Old Testament, to “ the new Zionist murderer .” He accuses Israel, Zionism and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon of “crimes against humanity and genocide which are no less than the crimes committed by the Nazis .”
 
The Talmudic Perception – The Jewish View of the World

The Talmudic Perception was written by ‘Abd al-Majid Hammu , and is one of a series of anti-Semitic works by the same author. A review in the October 26, 2003 Internet edition of Al-Thawra, a government-affiliated Syrian newspaper, stated that the book exposed the Talmud's profound hatred for the world. It is the result, said the reviewer, of the distinction the Talmud makes between the Jews, as the chosen people, and the non-Jews, who are described as unclean animals created to live under Jewish rule. The Talmud serves the Jews, according to the article, as a source of inspiration for Zionist ideology, and teaches racism and hatred for non-Jews and humanity at large. It relates to non-Jews as animals created in the form of men whose only purpose is to serve the Israelites day and night and to praise the name of Israel .

 
 


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Articles in the Syrian media
 
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – the Syrian interpretation

The following excerpts come from an article in Al-Ba'ath, the Syrian establishment newspaper (Internet edition, May 10, 2002). It was entitled “ An investigation of Zionist ideology proves that Zionism is merely racism .” The author, Wahhib Saraj al-Din based his “investigation” on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and claimed that they clearly reflect Zionist ideology:

 
“This racism, which is worse than Hitler's, is derived from Zionist ideology, and particularly from the Old Testament and the Talmud. One Zionist book which reflects the extreme hatred the Jews feel for all humanity is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . The book is well known and studied, however it must be continually rewritten (sic). Anyone who reads the book immediately realizes he is reading ideas which are aggressive and frightening, empty of morality and humanitarianism.”

“ This book contains within itself a message of hatred and hostility toward mankind while desiring to control its resources. Actually, that is the sum total of Zionism's barbaric legacy . Inhuman Zionist ideology is conspiring to destroy the world, and to exploit and influence it to further its own [selfish] interests.”

“The book [ The Protocols ] is made up of 24 chapters written and edited by the members of the first Zionist Congress, which was held in Basle in 1897 and led by Theodore Herzl. There were 300 rabbis present, all of whom sanctioned the plan to take over and enslave the world . Their motto was ‘Judaism above all alse'. The participants chose the snake as the symbol of the Zionist movement… ”
The article then analyzes The Protocols which, it claims, show the Jews conspire to “destroy all other religions,” “enslave all other nations” and “destroy world economy.” That is to be done by causing strife, inculcating distorted values, misleading the younger generations, and by the use of aggression, wars and hatred causing death, poverty, famine, disease and alcoholism.
According to an article in Al-Ba'ath published on April 28, 2003, the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the Talmud preach hatred of humanity. In accordance with Judaism's racist perception of the world, states the article, [non-Jewish] people are [no better than] animals and should be killed and gotten rid of . The Jews wrote the Talmud because [for them] “a dog is better than a foreigner [non-Jew]. A Jew may feed a dog on a holiday, but not a foreigner [non-Jew]. Meat should be given to a dog because it is better than [a foreigner].” The Jews claim Allah told them that “the more they killed non-Jews the closer they would be to God…”
Holocaust denial and the identification of Zionism with Nazism : excerpts from “The connection between Zionism and Nazism,” a program broadcast by Radio Damascus on May 9, 2002.
 

“The documents published regarding the connection between Zionism and Nazism are factual and reveal one of the historical lies which have aided Zionism and Israel throughout their career… The connection refutes all the claims and lies of Zionism and the leaders of the Zionist occupation [of Palestine] that the Nazis persecuted the Jews. If such persecution did exist, it was done in accordance with a contract signed by the Zionist leaders and the Nazis to force Zionists to emigrate to Palestine.”

“Many scholars have gone further and asserted that Hitler was a disciple of Zionist terror and that despite his cleverness he was incapable of surpassing his [Zionist] tutors, who obsessively searched for the racist laws which would permit destruction and murder. [The Zionists] leafed through [Hitler's book] Mein Kampf to find support for their racist ideology and to distort historical and geographical Arab facts.”

According to a Radio Damascus commentator, incitement to commit acts of violence and destruction is a theme running through the Old Testament and the Talmud and is the basis for the "Zionist entity" [the State of Israel]: “The Zionist entity was established on a series of religious and political claims which are empty of meaning and have no historical basis . The Zionist aspirations are terrorist and racist, and are in favor of discrimination, racism and the collective liquidation of all non-Jews. They are rooted in the Old Testament and in the Talmud , which regard the Jews as God's chosen people. Zionist racism stems from Jewish ideas which are replete with violence, vengeance, discrimination, feelings of superiority… The Old Testament teaches its believers that the Jews' only hope is the annihilation of all non-Jewish peoples … The Talmud calls for all nations to be bent to the will of the Jews… Incitement to commit acts of violence and destructions are the leitmotif running through the Old Testament and the Talmud. The Old Testament and the Talmud fuel the terrorism , racism and tendencies to plunder and murder found among Jewish intellectuals and politicians… Zionism is worse than Nazism …” ( Radio Damascus , April 21, 2002)

According to the Syrian daily establishment newspaper Teshreen , the Zionist entity is artificial, incidental, racist and feeble, and will eventually cease to exist: “They, the Jews, have always lived in a closed socio-religious environment and are a parasite on the body of the culture which gives them refuge. Extremist Zionist-Israeli society, by means of killing, terrorism and deportation, constructed itself on conquered Palestinian lands as an artificial entity . The real danger threatening Israel comes from the same harsh ideological contradictions on which it was founded. It is an artificial entity, extremist and feeble …which was established as a result of [an international] decision on Arab lands to which people who have nothing binding them together were brought… [and it] exists by virtue of foreign money and stolen treasures, and on the logical foundation of cheap political blackmail… It is racist in the extreme and based on a hostile philosophy… [of] expansion and colonization, rejection of the rights of others, cold-blooded murder …History cannot secure [to such] a Fascist racist entity…the conditions for [its] continued existence ” ( Teshreen , June 16, 2002).

According to an article by Dr. Bashir Khalaf which appeared on the Teshreen Internet site, the Jews stole the Canaanite and Babylonian heritage : “The documents [which were discovered during the excavation of an Ugaritic city in 1929]… proved that the beliefs found in the Torah were plagiarized from ancient oriented Arab Mesopotamia. What the Jewish sages added was the aspect called “divine,” which separated [Jewish] men from their brothers and the cultures of humanity by means of a racist ideal devised by them … The Jewish presence in the Land of Canaan included groups whose livelihood was based on theft and which tried to destroy Canaanite culture… The first theft was the Canaanite language … It is possible that their contact with the Canaanites might have made them more humanitarian, but apparently their mental, emotional and social makeup prevented them from entering the framework of Middle Eastern Arab cultural life … The Torah claims that Solomon wrote a thousand poems and composed three thousand proverbs. However, in fact most of them belonged to the Middle Eastern, Canaanite, Babylonian and even Egyptian traditions . It is written in Samuel II that [King] David danced before the Ark of the Covenant… The dance was part of a Canaanite agricultural rite” ( Teshreen Internet site, July 6, 2002).

 

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Cartoons

The Jews as inferior animals

The Zionist Jewish snake planning to take control of the region's natural resources ( Al-Thawra, October 10, 2003 )
 

The Jewish wolf gobbling the dove of peace
(Al-Thawra, October 11, 2003 )


Teshreen, December 15, 2003

The Jews are behind American policy in the UN

The Jews are responsible for American vetoes in the United Nations ( Teshreen, October 29, 2003)


Teshreen, February 17, 2003
 

Teshreen, December 10, 2002
     

Teshreen, December 19, 2002
 

Teshreen, December 18, 2002
     

Teshreen, October 31, 2002
  

Teshreen, December 17, 2003

     

Teshreen, October 30, 2002
 

Teshreen, October 24, 2002
 
  TV Movies
The Syrian film industry produces anti-Semitic movies such as the TV series called "Al-Shatat" - The Diaspora, which was produced in Syria and broadcast by Al-Manar, the Hezbollah TV station in Lebanon (See below, the section dealing with Lebanon). Another clearly anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli film was “ The Garden of Death ” (See below).
In 2001 a Syrian company called Al-Sham International, Movie and Television Productions, Inc. , produced a strongly anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic film directed by Naji Ta'mi. It portrayed the Israelis as a mob of killers who sought to kill all Palestinians for religious reasons, and encouraged continued bloodshed and the continuation of the Al-Aqsa intifada . It was broadcast in Syria, in Lebanon via Al-Manar, the Hezbollah TV station, and even by the Palestinian TV station on the eve of Eid al-Adha (The Festival of Sacrifice) (February 11, 2003).
 
Some of the film's “highlights:”
 
A female reporter for one of the American news networks asks one of the series' heroes, an Israeli officer named Yossi, “Is it true your orders are to kill between four and seven Palestinians during the intifada?” and Yossi answers, “I don't have the authority to answer that question.”

Yossi's father tells him what the best policy is for dealing with Arabs: “History has taught us one thing: Killing [Arabs] is not a crime. The crime is feeling compassion for them in wartime.”

“Moderate” Yossi answers Benjamin, another character in the series, saying, “New York has a Jewish minority. Does that mean we're supposed to kill all the other people living there to take control of the city?” and Benjamin answers, “ The time is not ripe for that …”
Benjamin's wife asks him where he is going, and he answers, “I'm going to pray and ask God to wipe all the Palestinians [off the face of the earth] so that our children may live in peace and happiness. Goodbye.” On his way to the Wailing Wall [in Jerusalem] Benjamin meets Yossi and says, “Now is the time for every Jew to show what he's made of. The Temple awaits us . We must [re]build it to be worthy of God's love.”

Benjamin says to his wife, “The Palestinians must leave this land… We must erase every trace of them as though they had never existed. We did it in the past and will have to do it again… So let's wipe them off the face
of the earth .”

 

The figure of a bloodthirsty Israeli the movie tries to inculcate into the minds of its viewers
 
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