A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (50 page)

Those who attended the conference did not see the Ten Points as a solution to the hatred that threatened Jews in 1947 but, rather, as the beginning of a process that they hoped would result in Christian thinking that was truer to the teachings of Jesus. It took more than 20 years before most churches accepted the principles outlined at Seelisberg. And even then, many of the old myths remained.

Antisemitism was also on the rise in the Middle East and North Africa in the late 1940s. Some have attributed the increase in anti-Jewish sentiment to Zionism—the nationalist movement that began in Europe with the aim of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Conor Cruise O’Brien, an Irish diplomat then based in the Middle East, strongly disagreed with that assessment:

As Britain and France disengaged from the Middle East and North Africa, around the middle of [the twentieth century], and were replaced by Arab nationalist Governments… Jews had to be at risk, throughout these vast regions, even if there had never been any Zionism…. Jews had helped the spread of Western influence, and had benefited from it. They had welcomed the coming of European rule, and benefited from that. With the withdrawal of the Europeans, and the coming to power of fervid Arab nationalist Governments, the Jews in every “decolonized” country were bound to be unpopular and in some danger.
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Jews in every country in the region have their own unique history, but a brief look at Iraqi Jews in the 1940s offers insight into the challenges Jews faced throughout the Middle East—challenges that had little to do with Zionism and everything to do with what O’Brien called “fervid” Arab nationalism. Naïm Kattan, an Iraqi Jew and writer, has described that nationalism as “wounded honor”—a fierce pride that was rooted at least in part in resentment and rage over colonial rule. To Kattan and other young Iraqi Jews in the 1940s, this nationalist pride was as central to their identity as it was to their Muslim classmates:

We were Iraqis, concerned about the future of our country and consequently the future of each one of us. Except that the Muslims felt more Iraqi than the others. It was no use for us to say to them, “This is our land and we have been here for twenty-five centuries.” We had been there first, but they were not convinced. We were different. Was our colouring not lighter than the Bedouins? Did we not know foreign languages? The fact that the best students in Arabic in the final examinations were Jews, that the Alliance Israélite School produced the best Arabic grammarians, changed nothing. Our identity was tainted.
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Despite that “taint,” Kattan saw himself as an Iraqi patriot. He recalled conversations with friends in Baghdad cafés:

We would liberate our country. Jews or Muslims, we had but one enemy: the English. The Englishman would be crushed. And with help from Germany we would be rid of him once and for all. The tall blond Germans were mythical figures, valiant saviours of wounded honor. Before the Muslims’ overwhelming enthusiasm we kept silent, but in the intimacy of our homes it was another story. My brother, my uncle, our neighbors, spoke of the Germans in low voices and cautiously, as of an imminent catastrophe. We knew how Hitler would treat the Jews, and the Nazis’ Iraqi disciples did not reserve a more enviable fate for us. But I did not share these old people’s fears. There was no possible comparison between Iraqis and Germans. Once we were independent, we would all work together, united in our desire to build a new society.
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Despite the threat that Jews faced in Europe, Kattan was confident that his classmates were attracted to the Nazis not because they were antisemitic but because the Germans were the enemies of Iraq’s enemies—the British. His brother, his uncle, and the family’s Jewish neighbors were less optimistic. They were aware that many Iraqi nationalists preached a form of Arab nationalism that was intolerant of religious minorities. In 1933—just one year after Britain granted Iraq limited independence—the Iraqi army had massacred 3,000 unarmed Assyrian Christians in northern Iraq. Many Jews saw the massacre as a warning to every minority.

In 1940, the same year Kattan viewed himself as an Iraqi nationalist, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, a popular Iraqi politician with strong Nazi
sympathies, became prime minister with support from the military. In April, he overthrew the regent who was ruling Iraq until the nation’s future king (then just four years old) was old enough to take over.

Almost immediately, Rashid Ali allied Iraq with Germany and declared war on Britain. It was a very popular move. The only Iraqis who were not enthusiastic about it were Jews. As a result, their loyalty was suddenly in doubt. Young Muslims now roamed the streets arresting Jews as spies and sometimes executing them on the spot.

Despite such incidents, Jews were relatively safe until the end of May, when the British regained control of the country and Rashid Ali fled to Nazi Germany. In the time between his departure and the arrival of the former regent, the nation was supposed to be under the temporary rule of a three-person Council for Internal Security. But Rashid Ali’s former minister of economics, Yunis al-Sab’awi, saw an opportunity to declare himself “the military governor of Baghdad.”

On May 30, al-Sab’awi headed for Baghdad’s radio station with plans to call for an uprising to rid the city of the “enemy within”—the Jews. Before he reached the station, the Council for Internal Security had him arrested and then forced him into exile.

Many Jews believed that the danger was now over; after all, the regent was on his way home and British troops were just outside the city. June 1 was the first day of Shavuot (the Jewish festival that marks the receiving of the Torah). That afternoon, a few Jews, still dressed in their holiday clothes, walked to the airport to welcome back the regent and their future king.

A number of Iraqis, who noticed how dressed up those Jews were, jumped to the conclusion that they were celebrating Iraq’s defeat by the British. In revenge, they attacked the Jews, killing one and injuring others. This time, neither the police nor the army intervened. Kattan recalled:

The city was left to itself…. And it took just one hour to stir up a sleeping, pent-up people. The Bedouins had heard the signal and they were prepared…
.

They advanced. Armed with picks, daggers, sometimes with rifles, they unfurled in waves, surrounded the city, and beleaguered it. Rallying cries crackled on all sides. As they passed through, they brought along Muslims, spared the Christians. Only the Jews were being pursued. As they advanced, their ranks swelled, teeming with women, children, and adolescents.
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During the rioting, 179 Jews were murdered, 242 children were left orphans, 586 businesses were looted and 911 apartment buildings—home to more than 12,000 Jews—were destroyed. Order was restored only when Iraqi troops entered the city on the evening of the second day. Iraqi Jews were outraged. Why, they asked, didn’t British soldiers intervene? The British claimed that they did not want to “embarrass” the Iraqi army. Although peace was eventually restored, life was never the same for Jews in Iraq. Kattan noted that “[e]very year our chances dwindled and the screws were put on our prospects for the future.”
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The Nazis were also popular with Egyptian nationalists in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1933, Ahmad Husayn, an Egyptian lawyer who wanted to free his nation from British influence, created a movement known as Young Egypt and modeled it after Hitler’s Nazi Party. Approximately 2,000 members participated in the 1936 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, Germany. Although Husayn was somewhat disillusioned with Hitler after he invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938, Nazi ideas continued to influence Young Egypt.

Those same ideas also influenced the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in 1928 by an educator named Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood, like Young Egypt, wanted the country to be independent of foreign rule. Unlike members of Young Egypt, the Brothers were suspicious of modern ways and determined to apply Islamic law to all parts of Egyptian life, including government. That combination of religious and national fervor struck a chord; by 1938, the group had about 200,000 members and had spread to other countries, including Lebanon and Syria.

During World War II, members of Young Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood tried to overthrow Egypt’s king, much as Rashid Ali did in Iraq. Among the conspirators were Gamal Abdul Nasser, a member of Young Egypt who would later become the second president of Egypt, and Anwar Sadat, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who became the nation’s third president. Although their effort failed, the movement continued to grow.

The British, who controlled much of the Middle East, had been struggling to contain the wave of nationalism that had been sweeping the region since the 1920s. Nowhere was their task more difficult than in Palestine, where Arab nationalism collided with Jewish nationalism.

In 1919, the League of Nations divided parts of the old Ottoman Empire into “mandates”—territories held “in trust” by a European power until they were “ready” for independence. Palestine was one of those mandates; it was placed under British rule. At the time, it was home to approximately 512,000 Muslims, 66,000 Jews, and 61,000 Christians.
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Britain was the dominant power in the Middle East throughout the early 1900s. As a result, Arab and Jewish nationalists worked separately during World War I to persuade the British to recognize their claims to Palestine. Both succeeded to some extent. In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which promised Jews a national homeland (see
Chapter 12
). At about the same time, Britain made a similar promise to Hussein bin Ali, a descendent of Muhammad and the powerful head of the Arab clan that guarded Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina, in what is now Saudi Arabia (see
Chapter 3
). Hussein was told that he could establish an independent Arab kingdom under his family’s rule.

In 1919, Hussein’s son Faisal met privately with Zionists, including Chaim Weizmann, who later became Israel’s first president. As a result of those meetings, the two groups agreed to aid one another in the development of a Jewish Palestine and an independent Arab state. The two also agreed to take “all necessary measures… to encourage and stimulate the immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land.”
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Faisal described that meeting to Felix Frankfurter, a member of the American Zionist delegation to the Paris peace conference after World War I. Frankfurter was then a professor of law at Harvard University; he later became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Faisal assured the professor that Jews and Arabs could work together to achieve their goals. Faisal’s letter was later printed in the
New York Times
:

With the chiefs of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we have had and continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and revived [Middle East], and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria [Palestine had been part of the province of Syria in the Ottoman Empire] for us both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other
.

People less informed and less responsible than our leaders and yours, ignoring the need for cooperation of the Arabs and Zionists have been trying to exploit the local difficulties that must necessarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of our movements. Some of them have, I am afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab peasantry, and our aims to the Jewish peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make capital out of what they call our differences
.

I wish to give you my firm conviction that these differences are not questions of principle, but on matters of detail such as must inevitably occur in every contact of neighboring peoples, and as are easily adjusted by mutual goodwill. Indeed nearly all of them will disappear with fuller knowledge
.

I look forward, and my people with me look forward, to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once again take their places in the community of civilised peoples of the world.
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As the letter reveals, the ability of some Arab nationalists and Zionists to work together was complicated by two facts: both had associates who were unwilling to negotiate, and neither side had control over the British. Faisal recognized those facts when he added a condition to the agreement: it would be binding only if Britain kept its promises. Those promises were not kept, and in 1929, Faisal denied the agreement.

The British tried to quiet the outrage of Faisal and his family by making him king of Iraq. (He ruled until his death in 1933, when his son, and later his young grandson, became king.) The British also took land from Palestine to create a new country that they called Transjordan (now Jordan). They named Abdullah, one of Faisal’s brothers, king of the new nation. Everyone knew, however, that Britain still controlled both nations. Britain’s refusal to end colonial rule fueled resentment, anger, and a strong sense of betrayal throughout the region. In the late 1920s and 1930s, new leaders emerged; many of them, like their counterparts in Egypt and Iraq, found inspiration in the writings of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers.