The Debate Link

 

Today's entry will not be the first in the "Jews control the weather" subseries. It is only the latest. Tunisia's president, Kais Saied, has blamed the damage caused by a recent storm on a Zionist conspiracy. The proof? Well, "Daniel" is such a Jew-y name:

Tunisia's president on Tuesday blamed the destruction wreaked by the deadly storm which devastated North Africa in early September on Zionist infiltration and "attack on the mind and thought” as evidenced, he claimed, by the fact that it was named after the “Hebrew prophet” Daniel.

The president, in a sort of a "greatest hits" compilation, also has played an adaptation of the "migrant caravans"/"great replacement" charge,

Saied also made statements reminiscent of the antisemitic conspiracy “great replacement theory.” Speaking to his National Security Council on February 21, Saied claimed that “there is a criminal arrangement that has been prepared since the beginning of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia … There are parties that received huge sums of money after 2011 in order to settle irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia.”

The goal of the project, he said, after changing the demographic structure of Tunisia, was to continue on, infiltrating Europe and making it Black.

How nice to see that particular trope crossing international borders. (Cut to Mort Klein sweating furiously as he tries to decide whether Saied is an antisemite or his new best friend). 

Two French Jewish delegates were barred from an interfaith scouting meeting hosted in Tunisia, in response to demands from the Tunisian BDS movement. Neither delegate was Israeli, and the organization they were representing, the International Forum of Jewish Scouts, is an umbrella organization for Jewish scouts across the globe.

There does seem to be some confusion as to who was responsible for the exclusion: the JTA article attributed it to meeting organizers, but the IFJS statement contends that BDS activists and nationalist parties in Tunisia sought and received a judicial order barring the Jewish delegates from attending.

But nobody seems to be contesting that this was a consciously sought-after outcome by Tunisian BDS groups, who had explicitly condemned the participation of the IFJS as "disguised normalization" of Israel.

In conclusion, the BDS movement has nothing to do with antisemitism and Jews who think otherwise are simply incapable of tolerating criticism of French Jewish scouts Israel.

For whatever reason, an outsized number of interesting stories about Middle Eastern Jews are currently occupying my browser. I don't have time to write on them individually, so ... roundup!

* * *

A formerly-Islamist, now secular Tunisian political party places a Jewish candidate at the top of its list.

Interesting story of an Iranian Jew-by-choice, currently seeking legal status in America.

Libyan Jews worry that new American agreement restricting importation of ancient artifacts from that country will -- in effect -- ratify the expropriation of their property. This, incidentally, is a great example of "why intersectionality needs to include the Mizrahi case."

A step away from Middle Eastern Jews, but still germane: an interview with the Palestinian Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace.

Haaretz has an interesting piece up on the general failure to include North African Jews in our narratives about the Holocaust (despite the fact that Jews in lands occupied by Germany were interned in forced labor camps and later deported to death camps). The article runs through a variety of reasons why these stories aren't told (ranging from straight-forward Ashkenormativity, to cultural misunderstandings by largely European Jewish chroniclers of the Holocaust, to attempts by leftist Mizrahi activists to minimize the salience of the Holocaust to their own cultural narratives out of fears that it might shine light on pre-Independence Zionist ideologies within their community).

One thing I can recommend, at least on the cultural side, is the movie The Wedding Song, which is set in Tunis during World War II and traces the relationship of a Jewish girl and her Muslim friend as the Nazis began more aggressively targeting the local Jewish population. I saw the film at a screening sponsored by JIMENA -- Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa -- and it was quite illuminating.

There's a ton of talk out there about what Obama should or shouldn't have done with respect to the Egypt and Tunisian rebellions. One major refrain is that the success of the revolts in these two countries show that, had Obama pushed a little harder during Iran's 2009 Green Revolution, that country's dictatorship could have fallen too.

I'm dubious. The US didn't really do much of anything but watch and try and stay out of the fray in Egypt (Tunisia we barely even had time to react to). And when you think about it, how much can we do? Ultimately, any revolution is going to be in the hands of the people revolting -- it's their concerns and their conditions which dictate the course of the movement. Except where the US can credibly threaten to intervene militarily -- implausible in all the countries we're talking about -- there is very little we can do to influence the situation, at least overtly.

Actually, I think there is one very simple reason why Egypt succeeded where Iran failed. As LGM put it, the Tank commander said "no":

Last night, a military officer guarding the tens of thousands celebrating in Cairo threw down his rifle and joined the demonstrators, yet another sign of the ordinary Egyptian soldier's growing sympathy for the democracy demonstrators. We had witnessed many similar sentiments from the army over the past two weeks. But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

Thus when General Hassan al-Rawani told the massive crowds yesterday evening that "everything you want will be realised – all your demands will be met", the people cried back: "The army and the people stand together – the army and the people are united. The army and the people belong to one hand."

And that's the key difference. Protesters rarely stand any chance, pound-for-pound, against a halfway decent state military apparatus. The question is whether, when push comes to shove, the military is actually willing to crush the demonstrations violently, or whether they link up with them. In Egypt, they weren't willing to fire on their own people. In Iran, they were. And so we have our different outcomes.

In any event, we're going to get a bunch of new data points on this shortly. New protests are emerging in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran again. Obviously, I hope for the best in all of these countries. But I think the ultimate outcome is not likely to be contingent on what Americans say or do. It has to do with the nerve of the protesters, and the ultimate decisions of the country's military forces -- to join the revolution, or crush it.

Khaled Abdelwahhab is set to become the first Arab Muslim to be honored as a "righteous gentile" at Yom HaShoah. Abdelwahhab protected dozens of Jews in his compound during the German occupation of Tunisia.

Obviously, heroes like Mr. Abdelwahhaib deserve our respect and honor. But speaking more broadly, I hope this becomes an opportunity to bridge a gap between Jews and Arab Muslims.

Yad Vashem has so far honored 21,700 men and women with the Righteous designation. Among them are 60 Muslims, all from the Balkans, but none are Arab. As a follow-up to his research, Satloff is working with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to organize a conference in Morocco on the Shoah's impact on North African nations.
[...]
Satloff said in a phone call from Jerusalem, where he was visiting, that he hoped that his book and recognition of Abdelwahab by Yad Vashem would stimulate both Jews and Arabs to look at the Holocaust in "a different way, beyond the purely European narrative."

In addition to the dramatic Boukris story, Satloff's investigations showed that there were other individual Arabs who aided their Jewish neighbors, but, as in Europe, they represented a small minority of the population.

"The majority of Arabs, as the people in occupied Europe, were indifferent," he said. "A regrettably large minority of Arabs collaborated with the Axis powers. Many served as guards at forced labor camps, helped the SS hunt down Jews and even fought in the German army."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, urged that the deeds of Abdelwahab and other compassionate Arabs become "part of both the Jewish and Arab collective memories."

To the current Muslim rulers and media who denigrate and deny the Holocaust, Abdelwahab's deeds send a different message, Cooper said.

"If you deny the Shoah, you also deny that there were noble Arabs and other Muslims, those who put their lives on the line to rescue Jews."

When the President of Iran denies the Holocaust, he also denies the heroism of Khaled Abdelwahhab and every other human being--of all religions and creeds--who decided that they could not stand passively while their neighbors were being systematically exterminated. Far more than anything Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can offer, this man represents a legacy that the entire Arab and Muslim world can learn of and be proud of.

Via Opinio Juris