On Tuesday 25 September 2001 15:56, you wrote:
> http://www.memri.org/news.html#1001445554
>
> I have, in the past, been a strong supporter of a peaceful settlement to
> the issue of Palestine. Here are some excerpts from the link above:
>
> *************
> As it does every week, Palestinian Authority Television broadcast the
> Friday sermon at the Sheikh 'Ijlin mosque in Gaza. This week, the preacher
> was Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi, who also lectures on water and ecology at Al-Aqsa
> University in Gaza. Following are excerpts from the sermon, which was
> interrupted in the middle due to technical problems.
The number of doctrinaire, conservative Muslims with backgrounds in
technology or hard science is really astounding. Note that a background in
the humanities or theology is even more a mark of relative intellectual
inferiority in the Arab world than in the west. The higher education systems
tend to be highly tracked. The brightest students go into medicine. The
next most accomplished into engineering. Middling students go into the
social sciences, humanities and law. The students that *barely* get into
university wind up in teaching, theology & arabic, fine arts, and at the very
bottom of the heap, physical education and recreation.
It is harder to get into public universities (because they are free and
people are poor) than into private universities. Therefore, degrees from
public institutions are more prestigeous.
This has the odd result that prestigeous religious authorities are often
a) well trained but not very bright, and maybe not that dedicated.
b) bright but with hopelessly inappropriate training and often
over-zealous.
> "Oh beloved of Allah, who are the Jews? Regarding their belief about Allah:
> The Jews have said that the hand of Allah is fettered in chains; [but] it
> is their hand that is fettered in chains, and they are cursed for their
> words... According to the Jews' belief, as it is written in some of their
> holy books, such as the Talmud, Allah divides his time into three parts.
> One third of the time he weeps. Why? Because his [chosen] people are
> dispersed in all directions. Another third he spends playing with the
> whales, and the final third he spends doing nothing in particular. This is
> their perverted belief about Allah..."
This sounds a lot like Jewish humor. It is possible this joke is in the
Talmud.
Of course it is not a "belief".
Two facts need to be borne in mind.
1) Jews (more accurately, Zionists) *ARE* the enemies of Palestinians; so,
it is manifestly unfair to expect accurate portrayals.
Zionists and Palestinians are engaged in a zero-sum game that the
Palestinians cannot win. Why? The Zionists and Palestinians both want
exclusive sovereignty over the same piece of land. In when the game started
(roughly 1900) the Palestinians had *all* the land. The best the
Palestinians can do is end the game exactly where they started.
2) I spend 15 months in Cairo and 10 months in Amman. In my field-notes
there is not *one* instance of an Arab Muslim making God or Muhammad the but
of a joke. I can't recall a single example in any of the literature I've
read.
They make jokes about companions of Muhammad, about other prophets--most
notably Moses, and attitudes toward religious authorities can be almost
contemptuous. But they never joke about God, the Quran, or Muhammad.
> "Oh beloved of Allah... One of the Jews' evil deeds is what has come to be
> called 'the Holocaust,' that is, the slaughter of the Jews by Nazism.
> However, revisionist [historians] have proven that this crime, carried out
> against some of the Jews, was planned by the Jews' leaders, and was part of
> their policy... These are the Jews against whom we fight, oh beloved of
> Allah."
I have no statistics.
However, my impression is that most Arabs are holocaust deniers. If anyone
wants to bet, I will gladly wager small sums of money that a super-majority
of Arabs believe the Holocaust was a hoax.
Even more believe that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are fact and that
there is a vast, global misanthropic Jewish conspiracy afoot. This is even
more widely believed than the un-fact of the ficticiousness of the Holocaust.
If you combine denial of the holocaust with belief in a conspiracy of elite
Jews then it is easy to believe that the Zionist Iluminati consipred to kill
a non-trivial (but non-genocidal) number of the European Jewish population to
further their evil misanthropic conspiracy.
-- The Holocaust has been a powerful rhetorical tool for the Zionists and it
is easy to see why Palestinians would want to deny its truth. From a
Realpolitical standpoint they almost have to. (But the denial is more
visceral than cynical.)
I still find the belief in Jewish hatred of humanity and of a Jewish
Illuminati pretty incomprehensible. Arabs are given to consipiracy
theories, but even so . . .
-------------
Perhaps more interesting is the fact that in the Arab equivalents of History
of Civilization 101 denial of the holocaust and Global Jewish conspiracy are
taught as historical and sociological facts.
> "Our belief is that this war, between us and the Jews, will continue to
> escalate until we vanquish the Jews and enter Jerusalem as conquerors,
> [and] enter Jaffa as conquerors. We are not merely expecting a Palestinian
> state with Jerusalem as its capital; we are heralding [the creation of] an
> Islamic caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital..."
What did you expect?
Gee, I so hate the fact that I am a Palestinian.
Now I see the light, three thousand year-old myths and histories
obviously give Jews the right to our land and resources. Surely we should
compromise and give up any national aspirations of grandure.
As if.
No people in the world would do that.
> ************
>
> I'm not exactly hopeful any more.
>
> I have to shake my head at the utter fools that think hateful crap like
> that is going to achieve anything good.
Well, it might inspire Palestinians to somehow destroy Israel. If you were
Palestinian that would be **V-E-R-Y** good.
> I don't think the idiot raving above is representative of *all*
> Palestinians,
I assure you that Ibrahim Madhi is most unlikely to be an *idiot*. In all
likelyhood he is highly intelligent.
> but I do think that cretins like him (or Jerry Falwell and
> Pat Robertson in the US) do nothing but sow seeds of discord.
Given the circumstances, please explain why Ibrahim Madhi should *not* sow
seeds of discord.
(I'll give you one. The Palestinians are the weaker party. They should quit
while they're behind.)
> I don't
> think censorship is the answer, but I'd be interested in seeing what
> messages are being broadcast to counter Sheikh Madhi's diarrhea of the
> mouth.
