Arab rights movements need to purify themselves of anti Semitism

[Carla786]

The historical roots of anti Semitism in Arab nationalist movements are very important. It does not make the cause itself wrong.

What it does do, though, is ensure that very unhealthy patterns are handed down.

A prominent example is Nasser's use of Nazis to write anti Israel propaganda.

I'm no fan (big understatement!) of Arafat, but I agree that him being born in Cairo doesn't rule him out from being Palestinian.

It's a bit more complex than Boris, though. Boris was born in the US, yes, but the same year, his parents returned to the UK. They moved back to the US when he was 2, returned to UK when he was 5, moved to France when he was 9, back to UK when he was 11 and stayed in UK for the rest of his childhood and uni years. So post-toddlerhood, all of BoJo's childhood was spent in the UK, aside from the 2 years in France.

Whereas Arafat spent 4 years in Palestine/Israel, from the ages of 4 to 8. But the rest of his childhood and University years were spent in Egypt, raised by Palestinian parents. This doesn't negate his Palestinian identity but it does make his formative national influences more complex than Boris'. It's fair to say Arafat saw things through a pan-Arab lens, whereas ordinary Arabs from Jaffa or Jerusalem or Nablus or wherever were more likely to think in terms of ancestral homes, culture etc in a more concrete way.

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice ,
Said's scholarship is not wholly reliable. Eg. He quoted the infamous 'A land without a people for a people without a land' as 'A land without people for a people without land', for one. The original was bad enough, there's no need to exaggerate dishonestly.

I agree with him (& others) though that Paleatinian Arab group identity is not a myth. It's important to remember that Iraqi, Jordanian etc identity are all constructs too, in the sense that these countries did not exist as modern nation-states until after Ottoman Empire (neither did several European countries in their modern form until after WW1 etc). Modern Israeli identity is also a construct : in the sense that modern secular, nation-state Zionism is distinct from earlier hopes of Messianic return, Modern Hebrew is a revival of a language that traditionally was used for worship but not everyday life (even in ancient Israel, Aramaic was the usual one for long periods), Israeli culture had to be designed to accommodate diverse groups of Ashkhenazi, Mizrahi, Ethiopians, Indians etc etc as well as non-Jewish minority groups.

This doesn't make any of those national identities illegitimate : it just exposes the unfairness of saying Palestinian Arab identity did not exist pre-1948 because it wasn't expressed in modern nationalist terms.

As I noted earlier: Palestinian nationalism, like other national movements, is rooted in specific land, villages, and family history — not just in generic Arab identity. This arguably made a secular pan-Arabist like Arafat a poor fit as leader.

That’s a slip of the tongue to drop one “a” and doesn’t change the meaning at all. It’s shocking that you are weaponising this to discredit Edward Said’s lifetime of historical and seminal scholarship on Palestine.

This was in one of the books he wrote : writing can be proof-checked in a way speaking can't.

I stress I'm not trying to discredit his entire body of work. I think his Palestinian scholarship has a lot of valuable material in (as does Orientalism). I'm a history student : saying a historian isn't wholly reliable doesn't mean discrediting their work as a whole.

I also have a great deal of respect for the joint Israeli-Palestinian orchestra he founded with Daniel Barenboim

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West%E2%80%93Eastern_Divan_Orchestra

Said was also an early scholar on the subject as a whole, which brings its own difficulties.

Oh, so he didn’t drop one “a” in a quote “to exaggerate dishonestly” …it was a typo that his publisher’s editor and proofreader didn’t catch or maybe even caused.

You’d be surprised how many minor typographical, spelling and grammatical errors are in published books.

If that is the only thing you can come up with, then you really should not be implying that Edward Said was anything other than a reliable historian. God forbid you ever have a typo published in any of your works.

The quote remained that way in subsequent editions, making it unlikely it was a typo- more likely for emphasis.

Someone can be generally reliable as a historian and still have made some assertions that aren't wholly correct : things aren't black and white.

I would also extend this point to the modern Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas' history of Holocaust denial and minimisation make it difficult to paint him as a moderate leader (aside from his clear incompetence, which paved the way for Hamas)

https://theintercept.com/2023/09/15/palestinian-authority-mahmoud-abbas-oslo-accords/
(I don't agree with all of this article but it's quite useful on Abbas imo)

This article is by a Palestinian who assisted the PA and is pretty critical of Abbas for the reasons above. Another case of the Palestinians being betrayed by their own leaders.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/palestinian-authority-gaza-hamas/675695/

I hope the new curriculum the UAE provide will include positive historical examples of Palestinian Arabs who rejected Fascism, Nazism and anti Semitism, too.

This book is good on Arab journalists & other figures who were directly opposed to the Mufti etc

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arab-Responses-Fascism-Nazism-Attraction/dp/029275745X

Some other stories of Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere who opposed the Nazis and helped Jews-

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3978445,00.html

www.ynet.co.il/articles/mobile/0,7340,L-3427804,00.html
(This one's about the Moroccan king who refused to implement anti Semitic laws ordered by Vichy government)

Robert Satloff's book and documentary Among The Righteous : The Holocaust in Arab Lands document more examples.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/documentary-examines-righteous-arab-actions-during-holocaust