A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (54 page)

It was the overwhelming popular reaction of a nation shocked to the core. Many, probably youngsters, too ashamed to reveal themselves
but still wishing to react somehow, expressed their emotions in various ways…. A girl wrote saying she had no uncles and aunts to visit on Saturdays and holidays, like other children, but had never understood before why they were all dead…. A girl of seventeen from Ramat Gan went further. “I could not honor all my relatives about whom I heard from my father. I loathed them for letting themselves be slaughtered. Thank you for opening my eyes to what had really happened.”
¹⁸

Most young American Jews in the 1960s also knew very little about the Holocaust. Brooks Susman, who would later become a rabbi, told an interviewer, “My parents hid it from us. They didn’t want us to be injured or brutalized by it. ‘We went to war. We beat Hitler. It can never happen again. You don’t need to know about it.’” His parents were not alone; many Jews in the years after the Holocaust were reluctant to discuss the genocide with their children. And yet, as adults, many of those children recalled that it “was hard not to stumble upon the Holocaust” in the 1950s and 1960s through books like
The Diary of Anne Frank
or films like
Judgment at Nuremberg
.
¹⁹

Jews in the United States and Western Europe held rallies demanding that the Soviet Union allow Jews to freely emigrate.

As these young Jews became more aware of the Holocaust, some formed study groups at synagogues and community centers to deepen their knowledge. Louis Rosenblum, a NASA scientist in Cleveland, Ohio, attended one of those groups. By the time the course ended, he and his classmates were convinced that their parents’ generation had not done enough to save European Jews. They were determined not to make the same mistake. So they decided to find out where Jews were still at risk. They quickly focused on the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union.

Rosenblum and other Jewish activists worked with many Catholics and Protestants to build a network that publicized the obstacles faced by Soviet Jews, pressured the Soviets to allow Jews to emigrate, and helped those permitted to leave to find new homes.
²⁰
These efforts were complicated by the Cold War. American officials endorsed the movement, but their Soviet counterparts viewed the calls for emigration as proof of Jewish disloyalty and even treason.

Jews in Arab countries were also seen as potential traitors. But the antisemitism they experienced was not exactly like the hatred that Soviet Jews encountered. In the Soviet Union, anti-Zionism was little more than a mask for antisemitism and a convenient tool for diverting attention away from problems at home and abroad. In Arab nations, many people opposed Zionism because they believed that the UN had no right to establish a Jewish state on what they considered Arab land. They also saw the Zionist claim to Israel as a continuation of Western domination. And, for some, anti-Zionism was increasingly rooted in a belief that God had given Muslims ownership and responsibility for all of the Middle East.

The fact that Arabs had reasons for opposing Zionism did not mean that their opposition was free of antisemitism. A closer look at Egypt between 1945 and 1967 suggests how an opposition to Israel as a Jewish state became entangled with antisemitism.

At the end of World War II, Egypt was independent in name only; the British controlled much of the nation’s foreign policy. Most Egyptians wanted real independence. Some took to the streets to express those feelings. On November 2, 1945—the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a document that promised British support for a Jewish
homeland in Palestine (see
Chapter 12
)—Hassan al-Banna, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood (see
Chapter 14
), gave a fiery speech at a rally in Cairo. Soon after, violence broke out as angry protestors went on a rampage in the city’s Jewish neighborhoods.

Why did anger at a declaration issued in 1917 result in an attack on Egyptian Jews 28 years later? Perhaps it was because the British had power and Egyptian Jews did not and so they were easier to attack. The answer may also have had something to do with the way Egyptians had come to define citizenship. In 1919, the slogan of one of the first nationalist uprisings was “Religion is for God and the homeland is for all.” That slogan included everyone in Egypt. By 1945, the motto had become “Egypt for the Egyptians,” and it referred only to Egyptians who were Muslim and Arab. Some groups, like the Brotherhood, wanted to narrow the meaning further to include only those who wanted an Islamic state—one governed according to Islamic religious principles.

The Brotherhood believed that European ways had corrupted Egyptians and degraded Egyptian society. Members called for a jihad to restore Egypt to “God’s rule.” The word
jihad
literally means “struggle” or “striving.” It traditionally refers to the struggle of believers to carry out God’s will. However, the Brotherhood used the term to refer to an armed struggle against the enemies of Islam.

The enemies in that struggle were “the Jews,” according to Sayyid Qutb, one of the Brotherhood’s leading thinkers. In his view, they had been the “enemies of the Muslim Community from the first day.” He added, “This bitter war which the Jews launched against Islam… is a war, which has not been extinguished, even for one moment, for close on fourteen centuries, and which continues until this moment, its blaze raging in all corners of the earth.”
²¹

The war to which Qutb referred was the conflict that resulted from the refusal of Jewish tribes in Medina to accept Islam in the 600s (see
Chapter 3
). In Qutb’s view, “the Jews were still fighting that war with the help of ‘agents,’” whom he defined as those who lead “the Muslim Community away from its Religion and its Qur’an.”
²²
As more and more imams (prayer leaders) and mullahs (religious scholars) incorporated Qutb’s ideas into their teachings, those ideas began to shape the way ordinary people regarded Jews.

In 1945, however, few Egyptians supported such ideas. Indeed, a number of Egyptians tried to protect Jews from the rioters. King Farouk and other officials expressed sympathy for the victims and offered to rebuild a synagogue burned in the riots. Despite such expressions of concern,
however, one observer noted, “The critics of the riots did nothing to stop the distribution of anti-Jewish propaganda in Egypt.”
²³

Despite—or perhaps because of—the propaganda, Farouk offered Jews his protection soon after Egypt led an Arab attack on the newly declared State of Israel in May 1948. But his prime minister, Mahmud Fahmi al-Nugrashi, did not. Instead, claiming that all Jews were “potential Zionists” and “potential traitors,” he ordered that every Jewish organization provide the names and addresses of its members. The Muslim Brotherhood went further by calling for a boycott of all Jewish businesses. Some members went further still. In July, they set off a bomb in Cairo that killed 22 Jews and wounded 41 others.
²⁴

At first officials blamed the explosion on “an aerial torpedo from Jewish aircraft.” But witnesses disagreed. As more bombings took place over the next few months, the prime minister had to confront the Muslim Brotherhood. He banned the group, and the Brotherhood retaliated by assassinating him. In response, government agents killed al-Banna, the group’s leader.

Nevertheless, soon after Egypt signed a formal cease-fire agreement with Israel in 1949, about 20,000 Jews—25 percent of the nation’s Jewish population—emigrated. Among them were a few Zionists, but most were from families that had lived in Egypt for generations and regarded it as their home but could no longer earn a living there. A 1947 law required that 90 percent of workers in almost every business and 51 percent of owners had to be Egyptian—and this now meant a person born in Egypt who was Arab and Muslim.

In July 1952, the revolution that King Farouk and his supporters had long feared finally came. It was led by a group known as the Free Officers, nearly all of whose members had fought in the 1948 war against Israel. They blamed the king and his advisers for their losses. Now the Free Officers declared Egypt a republic with Muhammad Naguib as its first president; in 1954, he was ousted by Gamal Abdul Nasser.

Before the revolt, Naguib, Nasser, and 8 of the other 14 leaders of the revolution had vowed to carry out the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood. Once in power, however, they concentrated on promoting Arab nationalism. Nasser also wanted Egypt to become a socialist state much like the Soviet Union.

In 1956, Nasser nationalized hundreds of foreign-owned businesses, including the Suez Canal Company (most of whose stockholders were British and French). Almost immediately, he closed the canal to ships going to or from Israel. Israel viewed the closure as an act of war. On
October 29, the nation invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and pushed toward the Suez Canal. Two days later, Britain and France joined the invasion.

As the Suez crisis was turning into a war, a revolt against Communist rule was taking place in Hungary. Although the Soviets brutally crushed that uprising, they loudly condemned France, Britain, and Israel for their occupation of the Canal Zone and threatened to use “modern weapons of destruction” if the fighting continued. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower also expressed disapproval. He thought that the invasion was ill-considered and should be undone. Within days, the fighting ended.

During the Suez crisis, Egyptian Jews were not harassed by mobs as they had been in 1948. This time the threat came from a government that no longer distinguished Zionists from other Jews. As Lucette Lagnado, an Egyptian Jew, explained, “Families who had lived in Egypt for generations, whose children were born there and knew no other way of life, were escorted to the airport and, as squads of rifle-toting soldiers watched, put on planes bound for Europe.”
²⁵

Within a year, another 30,000 Jews had left Egypt. By 1967, only 4,000 remained. Even as Jews fled or were pushed from the nation, antisemitism increased. The spread of Arab nationalism, the influence of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the ongoing conflict with Israel all played a part in blurring the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Bookstalls in Egypt now featured the writings of Qutb along with dozens of newspapers, books, and magazines that demonized Jews. There were also Arabic translations of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
, as well as Soviet propaganda. Arab leaders like Nasser praised these works. He claimed that the
Protocols
proved “beyond a shadow of doubt that three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continent.”
²⁶
Although Egypt and Saudi Arabia were at odds during these years, King Saud of Saudi Arabia also recommended the
Protocols
to foreign visitors.

In the late 1940s and the 1950s, Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab nations in the Middle East took the lead in the continuing conflict with Israel. They claimed that it was only a matter of time until they drove out the Israelis and established an Arab state (see
Chapter 14
). By the early 1960s, however, some Palestinians were tired of waiting and decided to
take matters into their own hands by raiding Israeli settlements. In time, these raids became a new “front” in the Cold War.

Israel tried to convince Arab leaders of the need to stop the violence by retaliating after each raid. The strategy persuaded President Nasser of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan; neither wanted another war. But the Soviet Union and Syria saw the raids as an opportunity to expand their influence in the region, so they provided the Palestinians with money and arms.

Fatah was one of the groups the Soviet Union and Syria supported. It had been founded in the 1950s by Yasir Arafat and several other young Palestinians; by the early 1960s, the group was taking credit for dozens of raids into Israel. Its popularity and the rise of even more extreme groups worried Egypt and other members of the Arab League. In 1964, the Arab League decided to unite those groups into a single organization under their leadership—the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The league hoped the new group would keep young Palestinians in check.

If the Arab League had been united, the plan might have worked. However, Syria had no interest in halting the raids on Israel. In 1965, with its help, Fatah claimed responsibility for 35 raids; in 1966, 41; and in the first four months of 1967, 37. As the attacks continued, Israel clashed not only with Fatah but also with Syrians in the Golan Heights (which bordered Israel). The Soviets also contributed to the rising tensions by supplying Fatah and similar groups with money and arms and spreading false rumors that Israeli troops were gathering near the Syrian border.

By mid-May, Nasser was convinced that war was inevitable and began making plans for the coming conflict. He closed the Straits of Tiran to ships going to or from Israel, demanded that UN troops leave the Sinai Peninsula, and stationed troops along Egypt’s borders with Israel. Those acts, in turn, convinced the Israelis that war was inevitable. On June 5, 1967, war began. It became known as the Six-Day War, or the 1967 War. By the time the UN arranged a cease-fire on June 11, Israel held Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights.