... Captain Sayyed Shahada, a member of the Egyptian Unique Mustache Association ... opined as follows on Egyptian TV on July 11, 2008 (the clip may be viewed at the end of this post):
I respect the mustache of this Hitler, because he humiliated the most despicable sect in the world. He subdued the people who subdued the whole world—him with his ‘11′ mustache.… The generation of this Hitler… When I was little, my father, may he rest in peace, grew that kind of mustache, and so did all his classmates. They all had this ‘11′ mustache. That was in the days of Hitler.... deeply rooted and pervasive antisemitism.
...Classical European antisemitism—blood libel, world domination and all—has migrated to the Arab Middle East. Interestingly, it got there way before the founding of Israel, let alone the taking of the West Bank. And so did the admiration of Adolf Hitler....
...The Israelis have vacated Gaza, they might yet pull out of the West Bank, but how will they, qua Jews, ever manage to escape from the obsession-filled mind of Captain Shahada and millions of his kind? ...
One Response to “Can antisemitism be amusing?” on 08 Aug 2008:
... Can there be a more powerful confirmation of how ordinary, and therefore how basic and deep, antisemitism is in the Arab world? And how widespread? ...
... Jokes aren’t funny in a society unless there’s a general recognition of, and usually an agreement with, their premises. Captain Shahada’s premises—that the Jews are “the most despicable sect in the world,” that before Hitler they’d “subdued the whole world,” and that Hitler is to be praised for having had the guts to kill them—are considered quite ordinary by more than a few people in the Arab world. If they weren’t considered ordinary, they wouldn’t provoke laughter.
...the fact that antisemitism is so pervasive in the Arab world makes the possibility of a lasting peace with Israel, and a lasting acceptance of the Jewish state, all the more challenging.
Diplomatic geniuses who think that a durable Arab-Israeli peace will be achieved simply by signing agreements on borders and on the status of Jerusalem and refugees are, to some extent, whistling into the winds of history, religion, culture and deep prejudice.
2 comments:
On a grass roots level you're right. It will be very difficult to create a shift in attitudes regarding Israel and the Jews in a scoiety that enjoys repeating and educating in the old ways of classical anti-semitism.
However, on a diplomatic and national level peace and recognition can be achieved - after all, the ironic thing about this video and where it has come from is that Egypt is one of the two countries that actually does have a peace agreement with Israel.
How can anyone speak favorably Hitler? Much less want to model themselves after him. He was a madman...a monster. Even the mention of his name should be outlawed.
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