Muslim anti-Semitism still flourishes
The expose by BBC1's Panorama documentary of Saudi run schools operating in Britain teaching lessons in Jew-hatred to six year-olds (as well as homophobia and instructions on how to amputate the hand of a thief) highlights several important themes.
Firstly, anti-Semitism (which, whatever the literal translation, in this context means attacking Jews) is rampant in the Arab/Muslim world. The text books being used at the "weekend schools" revealed by Panoramawere from the Saudi national curriculum and portrayed Jewish people as "monkeys and pigs" bent on world domination.
Building on the anti-Jewish strands that exist in the Koran, modern hate-texts, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, Did Six Million Really Die?, are widely promoted and consumed from Riyadh to Jakarta. The poison is pumped out to the masses looking for fantastical excuses as to why Israel has been able to defeat all the Arab armies sent against it and to channel rage over the dispossesion of the Palestinians.
Ironically, this toxic cocktail of enmity serves the ultra-Jewish nationalists. So lurid and bloodthirsty is much of the anti-Israel/Jewish rhetoric pouring from the Muslim world that it is easy to convince Jewish public opinion that "Arabs don't want peace" and are bent on "driving the Jews into the sea". (In fact, peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt have proven to be incredibly robust and should be seen as reassuring precedents.)
Secondly, the Panorama investigation touched on another anti-Zionist paradox. While opponents of Israel like to portray the Jewish Diaspora's Zionism in sinister term (the "all-powerful lobby" myth), the petro-power that the Saudis flex in London and Washington is unctuously indulged.
Hence, the British government – no doubt egged on by the Foreign Office's "camel corps" – caved when it came to pressing the corruption case of BAe allegedly greasing Saudi palms over multi-billion defence contracts, and the Bush family's close and profitable relationships with the bin Ladens remains shrouded in mystery.
Meanwhile, as Bush and Blair bamboozled us that the Iraq invasion was a battle for freedom and democracy, much of the military campaign was launched from a Saudi Arabia ruled by an absolute Muslim monarchy which holds and promotes anti-western values across the Muslim world.
This hypocrisy is echoed on the anti-Zionist Left that has sold out its core principles of anti-racism, feminism and human rights to support the fundamentalist Muslim terrorists of Hamas, generously funded by Saudis.
At least there is now some attempt to restore sanity on this front. The anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, which was behind the "Hope Not Hate" campaign to stop the British National Party, is to expand its operation to oppose the Islamophobic English Defence League and Islamic extremism itself.
Writing on his blog, Searchlight editor Nick Lowles attacked both the EDL and the Islamic extremists of Muslims Against Crusades, who burned poppies, denied the Holocaust and called for a new Muslim fascism.
Mr Lowles said: "Everyone knows it is wrong and it is actually part of the problem but people have either been bullied into silence or lack the confidence to speak out. Islamist extremism is no friend of a progressive society. Staying silent on attitudes and behaviour that is both wrong, offensive and downright dangerous is abandoning one's own progressive values and moral compass."
