Washington — Thousands of people converged on Washington in recent days to let the government know what it should do in the Middle East.
Partisans from both sides mobilized impressive numbers of supporters to call for getting rid of the other side’s leader, asserting more pressure, increasing or cutting aid and intervening more or less.
All said they wanted peace, if only the other side wasn’t so violent and intransigent. Each side was convinced it is fighting for survival while the other is massacring innocents and winning the propaganda war.
Despite the similarities, a look at the Washington demonstrations reveals a disparity between the two sides and some of the causes. Friends of Israel turned out about 100,000 people on the Capitol grounds Monday, April 15.
Palestinians and their supporters called their demonstrations for the following Saturday. Coincidentally, that was Adolf Hitler’s birthday, which calls attention to what has become a persistent theme in the Arab media: likening Israel to the Nazis.
The Arabs and their backers know how such rhetoric gets under Israeli skin. But they miss the irony that many Arab leaders, from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Mufti of Jerusalem, openly sided with the Third Reich, and many today profess admiration for the Nazis or bemoan Hitler’s failure to finish the job of murdering the world’s Jews.
Comparisons of Jews to Nazis and references to a “new era of Hitleric Zionism” abound in the state-controlled Arab media, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said last week at a Congressional hearing on the anti-Semitic and anti-American incitement in the Arab world.
The theme, often accompanied by Holocaust denial, and the shift in rhetoric from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism is being reflected beyond the Middle East.
On Sunday, Jean-Marie LePen, the head of the extreme right wing National Front party, scored a stunning upset in the first round of voting for president of France. LePen beat Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and faces President Jacques Chirac in a May 5 runoff.
Chirac has insisted there is no anti-Semitism in France and has denounced the recent wave of violent anti-Semitic incidents there. In truth, he and his government have made intense attacks on Israeli policy that have fueled anti-Semitism in France, where Moslem voters outnumber Jews ten-to-one.
France was also one of the European countries that watched without protest as the United Nations Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, was hijacked by Israel’s enemies and turned into an anti-Semitic free for all.
France last week joined such human rights defenders as Syria, Libya, Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia in voting in the U.N. Human Rights Commission to endorse “all available means, including armed struggle” to establish a Palestinian state. This amounted to a “thinly veiled endorsement of Palestinian terror attacks,” said the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
Hate won’t translate
Most Arab-American leaders say they reject anti-Semitism, but the Nazi comparisons were blatant at their recent rallies. Marchers carried signs showing an Israeli flag with the Star of David replaced by a swastika.
While pro-Arab groups here have denounced suicide bombings and acts like the Passover massacre in Netanya, too often their statements have been couched in “yes it’s bad, but I understand why” or “the Israelis are worse.”
In Washington, the pro-Palestinian rally attracted 10,000 supporters along with several thousands more who were in town to demonstrate against corporations, globalization, the World Bank and aid to Colombia.
The anti-globalization movement, which has been foundering, appears to have latched on to the Palestinian cause and merged some of the rhetoric and anti-colonial themes.
The Arabs succeeded at Durban in reviving the old theme of “Zionism is racism” and portraying Israel as the world’s last colonial power.
They distributed anti-Semitic tracts and tales of Israeli oppression of Palestinians — themes that resonated with leftist forces around the world. International human rights groups, disgracefully, failed to raise strong objections to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic thrust of the conference.
The anti-Israel demonstrators — some chanting “Death to Israel” and “Long live the intifada,” slogans that seemed out of place at an event billed as a peace rally — were outnumbered by a massive police presence and kept well away from the convention site.
So long as the debate sticks to the issues — there are abundant legitimate grievances on both sides to go around — it is healthy and should be welcomed.
But when anti-Semitism, Nazi comparisons and Holocaust denial are part of the Arab message — whether from American groups or Arab governments — it will have little resonance on Capitol Hill. That message may work in Paris, but it does not translate well here.
The failure of Arab-American groups to reject and disassociate themselves from it will thwart their efforts to match the clout of pro-Israel groups.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to hear from constituents — especially when they can turn out thousands of supporters — what they stand for, not whom they hate and what punishment they want meted out.
That applies equally to both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there is a special burden on those who support Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat so long as he continues to glorify the “martyrs,” preach anti-Semitism and refuses to dismantle the terror infrastructure.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is a Washington, D.C.-based syndicated columnist and a former chief lobbyist for AIPAC.
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