SeCTION 1: (Continuation: G: ISRAELI ZIONIST RACISM IN THEIR OWN WORDS)
A: The case of Barbara Kay
In a
recent email exchange, Barbara Kay asked one of us, Kim Petersen, to read an
article by Bernard Lewis on �population exchanges.� [1] The reply:
Kim
Petersen: On 11-Dec-07, 9:18 PM, �Hi Barbara, Edward Said already exposed the
animus of Bernard Lewis years ago. Why should the existence of a Jewish state
take precedence over a Palestinian state? I am doing a series with BJ Sabri
that will explore much of the nonsense Lewis has written here. It should start
on Saturday. Kim� [2]
On Dec
12, 2007, 11:25 AM, Barbara Kay replied, �And at that time you will explain why
all these other population exchanges are irrelevant and only Israel is wrong.
The Palestinians had their own state and rejected it. Why should Israel be
destroyed for them? Are you saying Jews have no claim to their ancestral lands
which they never stopped living in? If so, don't bother replying.�
[italics added]
Comment:
This is how we read the exchange: because Kay could not keep up with the cogent
questions posed by Petersen, she proposed to end the exchange on her terms,
that is, to cease the discussion if Petersen does not agree to her terms and
vision of history. In the ample sense, this means that the truth that Zionists
seek is a truth tailored to their story. Meaning, if a story requires
verification, for instance, the ultimate test for its acceptability is whether
the Zionists approve of it. Otherwise, all discussions cease! How did Petersen
reply to Kay?
On 11-Dec-07, at 9:36 PM, Kim wrote: �Dear Barbara, First,
your premise that because a crime was carried out in one location and succeeded
that crimes should be permitted to be carried out in other locales is
dangerous. Second, the Palestinians never had a chance to state what they
wanted. It was a take-it partition shoved down their throats by imperialists.
Third, who is talking about destroying Israel for anyone? Supposedly, it was
okay for Zionist Jews to destroy the millennial long life of indigenous
Palestinians in their homeland, but that their destruction of another should be
protected? Fourth, Let's make a distinction here for accuracy: Mizrahi Jews
(and some Sephardic Jews) who are indigenous or long resident in Palestine have
the right of continued secure residency free from discrimination; Ashkenazi
Jews have no connection to historical Palestine; their ancestral land is in
Europe. Kind regards, Kim�
On Dec
12, 2007 11:38 AM Barbara Kay wrote, �The Jews are a people and have been dispersed for many centuries, but
we are a people made up of different cultural traditions and we all recognize
Israel as our ancestral home. My ancestral home is not Europe, and it is not
for you to tell me where my ancestral home is. I can see this is not a
fruitful conversation.� [italics
added]
Comment: Again,
because Petersen challenged the historical validity of Kay�s Zionist theses,
she decided to truncate the discussion because it is �not a fruitful
conversation.�
Conclusion:
we do not need to generalize;
but the replies of Kay are indicative of a mentality that is common to most,
if not all, Zionists. That is, to
be accepted, all quotations, tales, anecdotal stories, witnessed events,
analyses, and history facts must conform to Zionist dogmas and promote Zionist
issues. If this does not happen, then whatever was negatively said about
Israeli Zionist racism and history is fake!
B: The case of Raphael Patai
Patai is
a Hungarian-Israeli-American lecturer and author. In his book The Arab Mind, Patai, animated by extreme
anti-Arab racism and by intense prejudice against Islam and the social culture
of the Arabs, improvised himself as an �authoritative Psychoanalyst� of the collective
Arab mind, although he was targeting the Palestinians in particular. [4]
Interestingly, while he concentrated on Muslim Arabs, he spared the Christian
Arabs for obvious tactical reasons intended to isolate Islam as the only source
of discord between the West and Israel from one side and the Arabs on the
other. Patai, the editor, or a reviewer wrote the following on the book�s back
cover:
� . . . In the �Arab Mind,� Raphael
Patai unravels [sic] the
complexities of Arab traditions and their effect on the Arabs� social and
political behavior in the twentieth century. . . . The �Arab Mind� discusses
the upbringing of a typical Arab boy or Arab girl, the intense concern with
honor and courage derived from Bedouins, the Arab tendency toward extreme
behavior and to substitute words for deeds, and their hostile attitude toward
the West. . . . The �Arab mind� provides
additional conclusions about the Arab personality based on the effects in
the Arab world in the past decade. . . . It shows how despite the wealth and
power brought to the Arab world by their new weapon -- oil -- these rich
nations maintain largely illiterate, at war with each other.� [italics added]
This is
how the above �unraveling� of the �Arab Mind� relates to our discussion: to
prove that the racist dissertations he made against Palestinians and other
Arabs were right, Patai provided testimonials. In the preface to the 1983
Edition, pages ix and x, Patai wrote the following: �The
critical reception of the first edition was overwhelmingly favorable.
The very few negative reviews that came to my attention were penned
by writers uncritically committed to the radical-leftist point of view of the
Palestine Liberation Organization and similar groups, and were more in the
nature of personal attacks than dispassionate evaluation of my findings.�
[italics added]
Analysis
In analyzing the reviewer or Patai�s summary one cannot but
notice a Zionist deception at work:
1.
The most notable thing about The Arab Mind is the fact that the author adheres to the
racist ideology of Zionism. As such, his vantage point is structurally
adversarial to the Arabs; hence, thematically it is tendentious and worthless.
In addition, a patently chauvinistic author such as Patai is neither qualified
nor trustworthy to be an independent observer of the Arab mind (or any other
mind) since deep-seated prejudice impedes a minimum level of objectivity. On
the other hand, being an adversary of the Arab nation and, specifically of the
Palestinians, Patai, as an emigrant Zionist to Palestine, is, unavoidably, in
the business of denigrating his adversaries and victims alike. Lending credence
to this point, we have never heard that Patai wrote a book about the minds of
Japanese, Bolivians, Danes, or Canadians. He only abused and denigrated the
Arabs. And that is targeted racism.
2.
To further reveal Patai�s Israeli racism thus
demonstrating how Zionists think, we would like the reader to know that in
1977, Scribner�s Son published another book of Patai's, entitled The Jewish Mind. In contrast to The Arab Mind, where he reduced
the Arabs to nothingness, The Jewish Mind exalts the
�extraordinary character of the Jews.� Here is how a sycophant from �Wayne
State University Press� with clear connections to Zionism comments on the
butter-and-honey story told by racist Patai [5]:
The Jewish Mind is a sweeping intellectual history of the Jews.
Raphael Patai takes readers on an insightful journey through three millennia;
examines six great historical encounters between the Jews and other cultures;
and analyzes the manner in which each of them left its mark on the Jewish mind.
This historic venture is followed by another journey, perhaps even more
fascinating: a journey into the depths of the contemporary Jewish mind,
involving the exploration of Jewish intelligence giftedness, and genius; of the
phenomenology of special Jewish talents; of Jewish personality and character;
and of the physical and mental health of the Jews. Patai concludes with a note
of optimism by emphasizing that basic Jewish values, which for two thousand
years have been constants in the Jewish mind, contain the promise of the Jewish
future.
3.
In The Arab Mind, the reviewer (or
Patai himself as own reviewer) tossed all Arabs (wherever they are) into one
category, despite the fact that the author based his so-called study on
�observing� the Arab Palestinian Bedouins, which, of course, are a fraction of
the totality of Arab peoples. For starters, this cannot be true because the
socio-economic and social behaviors of the Arab peoples vary from country to
country; therefore, they are neither uniform nor inherently identical, although
similarities may exist. Conclusion: the reviewer�s statement is false.
4.
Patai then went on to extract a conclusion based on his
Zionist vision of the Arabs and call them extremists since they �substitute
words for deeds.� This conclusion, of course, is the core of crusade that the
author wants to affirm. But Patai�s principle objective was also to give
another conclusion based on his �observations� which decried notions such as
�honor� and �courage� etc., thus explaining the Arabs� �hostility to the West.�
In other words, Patai claims that the Arabs (meaning the Palestinians) are not
hostile because of Jewish Israeli-western colonialist imperialism and
usurpation of land, cities, and the destruction of the Palestinian identity and
social structures but because of their social notions of �courage� and �honor.�
Incidentally, the Zionist Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie went as far as
he could to state that the cause of Arab and Islamic extremism is due to a
repressed sexuality and deformed sexual behavior [6]. Once he rose from
obscurity to fame with his anti-Muslim and anti-Arab stance, and despite his
shattering political mediocrity and lack of imagination for the social problems
that affect his native Bombay, Rushdie, who sided with Bush�s war in Iraq,
became the darling of Zionism. As a reward, British racist colonialism knighted
him, US imperialism gave him faculty tenure at Emory University in Atlanta,
Georgia, and Bill Gates� MS Word spelling program corrected the misspelling in
Rushdie�s last name as we're typing it!
Once Rushdie wore the �sexo-psychoanalyst robes� and unleashed his anti-Islamic
sexuality themes, Zionist websites were already behind him to for the next
move. Rushdie, however, was not even original in his anti-Muslim sexuality
charge, as he did not set the trend for tying so-called Arab-Islamic terrorism
to the passions of troubled sexuality. It was Zionists who set that trend much
earlier [7] as appeared on FrontPageMag,
the website of the hard-line Zionist David Horowitz.
5.
Patai�s
fanatic journey in racism is unparalleled. Aside from hatefully attacking the
Islamic traditions, he went as far as to indict the Arabic language, its
syntax, grammar, idioms, and figures of speech, and decreed that they are the
sources of Arabs�s �exaggeration� and �extremism.�
6.
Patai
speaks of the Arabs�s oil wealth. But, since he wrote his book in 1973, he alluded
to the Arab oil-weapon consequent to the Israeli-Arab war in October of the
same year. With this, he meant to instigate Western citizens against the
�extremist� Arabs who caused the price of oil to soar consequent to Arab
boycott of the countries that supported Israel in the war. However, the major
point here is that Patai with direct racism depicted the Arabs as being
illiterate despite wealth, then continued by generalizing the Arabs� oil
wealth, while indeed, not all Arab states have oil and most of them are
resources-poor.
Aside from the explicit racism of Patai, his remarks about
the reception of his book is relevant to our discussion about the Zionist way
of debating historical truth and other matters that relate to Israel,
Palestine, and the Arab states. Patai divided his critics in two groups: he
characterized those who approved of his thesis as being �critically
overwhelming� and those who disapproved as, �The very few who uncritically
disapproved.� [italics added]
Conclusion: The
above discussion is unequivocal: Zionists move in one direction only. Those who
oppose their ideology and the state of Israel are dubbed �minority,�
�uncritical� thinkers, and leftist-leaning pro-PLO. One more note: imagine an
Arab writer using the Zionist tactics in writing a book with the title: The Israeli Mind. Now, imagine the
frenetic Zionist reaction assuming
that such an author could ever find a publisher . . .
Next: Part 8 of 12
NOTES
[1] Bernard Lewis, �On the Jewish Question,� Washington Post, 26 November 2007. Available at the Wall
Street Journal.
[2] Edward Said, Orientalism
(Vintage: 1979), 315-321. Said dissected Lewis�s work and compellingly revealed
it to be �aggressively ideological,� in the sense that the purportedly �liberal
objective scholarship� is �in reality very close to being propaganda against his subject material�: �the
culmination of Orientalism as dogma that not only degrades its subject matter
but also blinds its practioners.� [Italics in original]
[3] Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind
(Charles Scribner�s Sons: 1983).
[4] Edward Said, op. cit.,
illustrated a �particular sort of compression and reduction� in the writing of
Patai (309).
[5] Wayne States University Press, Review of the Jewish
Mind, Column: about the book
[6] �It's
all about sex: Rushdie's ruling on Islamic fanatics,� Sunday Morning Herald, 20 January 2006.
[7] Read
Jamie Glazove, �The Sexual Rage Behind Islamic Terror,�
4 October 2001.
Kim Petersen is co-editor
of Dissident Voice and B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American antiwar activist
Email them at Petersen_sabri@yahoo.com.