On Saturday I shared a cab into Amman from the Allenby Bridge with two Palestinians, a lovely grandmother from Beit Hanina who was very worried that I should get lost, and a Diaspora chemical engineer filled with theories about American Jewish power, which I half-agreed with, because I don't think the special relationship can be discussed without some reference to the remarkable American Jewish sociology of the last generation. I told him I'm Jewish and told him about non-Zionist stirrings inside the Jewish community, which impressed him, but as he got out of the cab he advised me not to advertise the fact that I'm Jewish in the Arab world. A few minutes later, in the city center, I passed this book stall. Can someone translate for me? Thanks. Update: commenters know the story!
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Looks like Mein Kampf to me. Above the red line is the name of the author “Adolph Hitler” The title eludes me, but interests me. What is the exact translation of Kampf- struggle? Then my jihad might be the exact translation. But the last syllable is the ya ending which indicates first person possessive so it is definitely my. The first three letters look like kafa, the fourth letter is tough to identify for a beginner.
The fourth letter is Ha which looks like this: ح
In Arabic abjad, it is the sixth alphabet
it says ‘Adolf Hitler,’ and the title is ‘My struggle,’ = Mein Kampf. (kifahi).
i just clicked on the photo and was able to see more details. the medallion says ‘the complete translation, for the first time.’ it was translated with an introduction by Ahmad Lutfi ‘Abd al-Salam and published by Maktabat al-Nafidha. I don’t know where that publishing house is based.
Maktabat Nafida is in Cairo, its a well known publishing house for translation of foreign language books into Arabic. I’ve seen Farsi translations from them.
It is Mein Kampf (translated here into Arabic as “My Struggle” – Kifaahee). Unfortunately, it is a best-seller in the Arab world. And your seatmate is right – best not to advertise it, unless you are comfortable with people you know. Just like people do everywhere, much easier to blame an amorphous “enemy” or scapegoat for your society’s problems than take the time and hard work to logically and intellectually dissect the historical, political, social, and economic reasons for the mess you find yourself in. And corrupt, oppressive, bankrupt Arab regimes, along with their clergy and media lackeys, encourage this one-dimensional and ultimately self-defeating “analysis” of the situation among their demoralized public. When all else fails, or you are just too lazy or gullible or ignorant or already a racist or narrow-minded person, blame a dehumanized “Other”, and all sides here (and humans in general) are guilty of this.
This is a complex situation. I think you should have some people writing cogently about the background and reasons for anti-Jewish sentiment in the Arab world in Mondoweiss.
Anti-Jewish sentiment in Arab world = Israel’s crimes and Zionist racism + (shitty) human nature + ignorance
Given how much damage people who happen to be Jewish, esp. in the US, have done to Palestinians and their struggle, it is not a surprise that such a sentiment among their kin is pervasive. It does not excuse it, but it is motivated by a reality.
If you examine how Israelis dehumanize Palestinians (“the Arabs”, “filthy Arabs”, “two-legged beasts”, “cockroaches”, etc. – I am not acquainted with particular Hebrew slurs used in Israel), you see the formula works on either side.
Seems to me that Hitler’s version of reality, his aggregate of reasons why Germany
was suffering so much (told in Mein Kampf) after WW1, is a reasonable subject for the
theory of scapegoat; OTH, I don’t think the Palestinians are engaging in scapegoat
theory anywhere near as much. Further, I think both the USA and Israel regimes have been, and are churning out scapegoat theory at the max. If anyone is aping Hitler’s
penchant for blaming others for their own terrible actions, it’s my own government and MSM, and Israel. Even the dumbest and most ignorant arab sees it. It’s sort of like Sarah Palin–uneducated, yes; limited in cosmopolitan experience, yes–but she’s also a fountain of what Bill Buckley meant when he said he’d rather take any 100 names out of the phone book to govern us than those who actually do. Remember “the best and the brightest?” So, what’s new?
Try mavet l’aravim.
link to youtube.com
This demonstration lasted for three hours in Jerusalem. Filmed on June 2nd, 2008, the anniversary of the 1967 ‘reunification’ of Jerusalem`.
link to kibush.co.il
disagree with the implication that it would be better if Arabs did not read what Hitler wrote — what are you afraid of, KatinPhilly, that persons who read Hitler’s own words will not come to the required conclusions? If Hitler is so universally and irredeemably odious, wouldn’t that be obvious to any person?
Bibi made a tremendous mistake when he started with the “Ahmadinejad = Hitler” gambit, because Ahmadinejad is clearly NOT Hitler; anyone who reads what Ahmadinejad says and writes can figure that out. But Bibi and those who think like him need — a scapegoat. Ahmadinejad is a useful idiot for the moment, but
1, the comparison fails on any and every level, and
2, Israel started gunning for Iran a full decade before Ahmadinejad appeared on the scene.
Bibi’s use of the “Ahmadinejad = Hitler” rhetoric appears to be exactly an attempt to
Yes, indeed, the Arab world is ruled by “corrupt, oppressive,” tho not “bankrupt” regimes — Israel and the US regularly trade with them, prop them up, and attempt to pit them against one another for Israel’s and the US’s own purposes.
Indeed, the Arab regimes have “clergy and media lackeys who encourage [a] one-dimensional…analysis…” — but that statement also defines Israel to a T.
BUT, none of these judgments applies to Iran! Iran has been struggling to establish its own, unique form of representative government, economic sovereignty and accountability, for over 100 years. For some precious portion of those years — years BEFORE Reza Pahlavi, the US was an invited, welcome and friendly partner in Iran’s attempts to organize its finances equitably and prudently. Israel’s record of interaction with Iran is not quite so friendly: Israel spent at least 40 years disguised as friends to Iran but cheating the Iranian government, spying on it, and training it in brutality and torture.
“When all else fails, or you are just too lazy or gullible or ignorant or racist….” — or, perhaps, to censored by Israeli interests, including an Office of AntiSEmitism paid for by US taxpayers, or too bullied by Israeli interests who will destroy your career if you fail to toe the Israel line — you mean that sort of gullibility?
This is a complex situation indeed. Understanding WHY Hitler thought as he did can only aid in a “non-ignorant” analysis.
Nice explication of your internet handle, PG. It did dit quelque chose when I first read it, but I didn’t recall the reference.
…the “Ahmadinejad = Hitler” rhetoric…
It seems to me that the overblown “equivalence” is bound to have the opposite effect from what is intended, if someone is unfamiliar with Hitler but familiar somewhat with Ahmadinejad, which I would think would be the case for many in the Middle East. The thought would be that if Hitler is just like Ahmadinejad, and Ahmadinejad is not considered a particularly evil or powerful leader, then likewise that must mean that Hitler wasn’t particularly evil or powerful. The “equivalence” in this case doesn’t hurt Ahmadinejad’s standing in the Middle East, it just serves as an unintended “rehabilitation” of Hitler.
I think that is correct. Associating Mahmoud Ahmedinejad with Hitler has made Hitler a sympathetic figure, rather than the other way around. I’m sure there are people who think he too was unfairly demonised like Ahmedinejad has been.
In India, for example, Hitler is more of a comic figure [due to our movies, where bumbling authority figures are portrayed with a Hitlerian moustache and forelock]. You’d see Mein Kampf all over the place and people would read it with the same interest they reserve for Lee Iacocca’s biography. Recently, a restaurant in Mumbai achieved international notoriety after the owner made it a tribute to Hitler. It was all in red and black with a giant swastika and a giant portrait of Hitler. He called it “Hitler’s Cross”
He thought it would be a good theme to attract attention.
He was right.
The owner was mystified when Jews in Mumbai were offended. To him it was just a novel theme restaurant. He changed the name and removed the offensive material after Jews in Mumbai protested against him. It was probably the first time he connected the Jews in Mumbai to Jews elsewhere.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Its always a shocker for us in the West to see Hitler being treated as anything but a demon monster.
But we have to remember that most people outside of the West didn’t receive the same history lessons that we got. Yes, most people learn that Hitler was a bad man, many languages including Arabic have a verb for the word “Hitler” which often means going bat shit crazy. But in the end, most nations around the world tend to stress events that were more meaningful to them, like the liberation of their particular nation from the powers that largely fought in World War 2.
Anyway, most people around the world don’t get the in depth history lessons about the holocaust or how the rise of Nazi Germany is any different from any other brutal regime in world history.
Also, aside from the school curriculum is the simple fact that WW2, Nazi Germany, and the holocaust are still topics of huge discussion in our national discourse. Just turn on the History Channel and you’ll almost always find a documentary about WW2 playing, a show dealing about Hitlers personal life/psychology/pathology etc, or something else related to this particular period in human history.
This is of course on top of Hitler and Nazi analogies being thrown around all the time.
Yes I noticed that, its equivalent to the evil white man in our histories. However, although we do some post colonial handwringing [much of it justified although the last 60 years have shown we are just as capable of dispossessing and starving the poor as the British] I don’t think we are in danger of building our entire national narrative around it.
There are twelve holocaust memorial museums in the US. Its become a deity.
Correction, there are 25 holocaust museums in the US.
link to science.co.il
I find it highly absurd
It is a test book and study guide for the International Computer Driving License.
Oh, you mean the other one?
I lived in Egypt for a year, saw copies of Mein Kampf everywhere, but also never experienced any problem telling everyone I was a Jew. Got much more of a reaction out of telling people I was an atheist.
So, is there a lesson there for us readers of this blog, Ethan Heitner?
Here in Cairo, practically every bookshop, and every bookseller in the street, carries Mein Kampf, as well as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Educated Egyptians have been surprised to hear from me that the Protocols are a forgery. In 2002, Egyptian state TV broadcast a miniseries called Horseman Without a Horse that revolved partly around the Protocols and presented them as authentic.
My impression from living in Cairo for three years is that prejudice against Jews here is widespread, but far from universal. It’s not difficult to find people who reject it. It’s also a fairly recent phenomenon, for the most part. There used to be a sizeable Jewish population in Egypt, and there’s plenty of historical evidence that they were a well-accepted and largely prosperous minority until the conflict over Palestine got into full swing. Egypt’s state of war with Israel from 1948 to 1979 undoubtedly has a lot to do with the transformation of anti-Zionism into prejudice against Jews in Egypt, and with the emigration of most Egyptian Jews. Joel Beinin’s book, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, which you can read for free online, has the details. He notes: “Before the 1936–39 Arab Revolt in Palestine, the dominant current among literate Egyptians regarded Egyptian Jews as full members of the [Egyptian] nation. Secularist political commentary carefully distinguished between Judaism and Zionism.”
Ahmad Abdallah’s beautiful recent film Heliopolis alludes nostalgically to this history by including the sympathetic character of an elderly Jewish Egyptian woman who lives in a world of memories and doesn’t want the neighbours to know she’s Jewish.
Now that there are practically no Jews left in Egypt, the only Jews most people here ever see are the Israeli soldiers who appear in TV news reports, killing Palestinians. This surely doesn’t help anyone make a distinction between Judaism and Zionism.
Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski have just published a book called Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship Versus Democracy in the 1930s; I’ve only skimmed it, but it looks as if they found considerable expression of negative attitudes towards fascism, as well as some positive attitudes towards it.
i think the lavon affair in 1954 greatly impacted egypts relationship w/israel.
The Lavon affair (“Esek Habish” – the shameful affair) was one of the most bizarre chapters in Israeli history. In 1954, the Israeli secret service set up a spy ring in Egypt, with the purpose of blowing up US and British targets. The operation was code-named “Susanah.” The terrorist hits were to be blamed on the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, with the purpose of alienating the US and Britain from Egypt and Nasser and somehow preventing Egyptian nationalization of the Suez canal. The ring was discovered. Strict censorship ensured that that the Israeli public officially knew little or nothing of the affair for many years. Names were not mentioned, the affair was called “Esek Bish” – the affair of shame, and key protagonists were referred to as “X” and “the third man.” Unofficially and through leaks, most people knew at least the outlines of the affair.
here is the beginning of thewiki version
The Lavon Affair refers to the scandal over a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah, in which Israeli military intelligence planted bombs in Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954 in the hopes that “the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, ‘unspecified malcontents’ or ‘local nationalists’” would be blamed.[1] It became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the Unfortunate Affair (Hebrew: העסק הביש, HaEsek HaBish). In 2005, Israeli President Moshe Katzav honored the nine Egyptian Jewish agents who were involved.[2]
Naturally, Israel lied and tried to cover it up, at the time.
The affair essentially concludes Morris’s Israel’s Border Wars.
every time it is repeated “Protocols… if a forgery,” the amusement occurs anew.
What is “forged” about it? Is it a work of fiction? Yes. Is it propaganda? Yes. Is Leon Uris’s Exodus a work of fiction? Yes. Is it propaganda? Yes.
Apparently, all people are not to be trusted to be able to read and think and process for themselves the truth-value of a work of fiction, or even a work claimed to be history.
That’s the ultimate insult of censorship: it makes the implicit assumption that the reader is too stupid to discern reality. Either that, or the censorer fears that an uncomfortable reality will be revealed.
Annie, yes, and Beinin’s book has more details about Operation Susannah and its effects.
PG, Protocols is a forgery because it claims to be something it isn’t; its authors wrote it for the express purpose of making readers believe that it was written by others and that it isn’t fiction. Exodus, in contrast, is a novel and doesn’t pretend to be anything else, or to be by anyone other than its author.
True, BG, but the relative influence of the Protocols and Exodus in terms of
fashioning perceptions of reality is the same. The Protocols were let loose before the age of film influence; Exodus took full advantage of the power of film to paint a particular vision of actual history, in its case, the power of Hollywood–which continues down to this day. In this day and age of multiple electronic images and canned dialogue from many sources, Exodus is right up there at the top of the propaganda heap, right along with anything the US Army-Hollywood film industry produced in WW2. Kudos to Bernays, and his student Goebbels.
Sure, lots of things are propaganda, but that’s neither here nor there. I enjoy debunking Zionist propaganda as much as anyone, but here we’re talking about anti-Jewish propaganda in the Arab world.
Yes Ben, I bet you like going after that nasty Zionist propaganda
Maybe I’ve missed something, but I see no reason to doubt him on that.
Perhaps you have missed something Donald -
“Here in Cairo, practically every bookshop, and every bookseller in the street, carries Mein Kampf, as well as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Educated Egyptians have been surprised to hear from me that the Protocols are a forgery.”
It seems as if Mr. Geer wants us to believe that people are running up and down the streets hawking this book and the Protocols. That even “educated” people do not know that the Protocols have a dubious authorship. However, I have not seen the book literally everywhere, nor have I noticed the educated in at least the university areas have a fond liking for the Protocols (this is supposed to convince you of the poor quality of education in Egypt), the Protocols are not the rage on the streets (because we know “everyone” has read and believes the Protocols are true, it is so supposedly pervasive, this is the impression you are supposed to get). Although earlier he does make a distinction between “widespread” and universal, which is like being partially pregnant – set side by side with the absence of Jews.
“…but when you notice that sidewalk booksellers in downtown Cairo, whose book selection is very small (often only fifty titles or so), invariably carry Mein Kampf…” There is no quarrel with the books presence, it is just the qualifier of it “invariably” being there, just like it is supposed to be everywhere else.
Also within the first post a paragraph is found toward the end –
“Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski have just published a book called Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship Versus Democracy in the 1930s; I’ve only skimmed it, but it looks as if they found considerable expression of negative attitudes towards fascism, as well as some positive attitudes towards it.”
It would behoove some to ask the question, wither the dictatorship? It is much more the work of foreign influence, for the maintenance of the current enterprise. Fully supported by the USA to the tune of over a billion dollars per year, rather than “rising naturally” from the people. It bears striking resemblance to the same process all over the world, where imperial interest can be found. It is there that you can find fascism in force, with classic characteristics – not as a result of it arising from the people.
I find these arguments somewhat subtle, sort of Bernard Lewis like, and have faced similar innuendo in academic circles – meant to leave a certain color in the mind. Spoken in an almost casual fashion, backed by certain references to imply objectivity, giving the appearance or carriage of a type of humility. Than again, I might be completely wrong :)
VR,
respect, man!
yes Eva he he he
No, I saw all that. One reads similar things in Western newspapers all the time and it would be good to know how much Holocaust denial there is in the Middle East, if there are any polls on the subject. I got the same impression from him that I’ve received elsewhere–that Holocaust denial in the Mideast is widespread though not universal.
Hell, there are Holocaust deniers in the West, where we are virtually raised on the subject–I would expect that there’d be more in Egypt, precisely because the Holocaust is used to justify Israel’s actions and it would be human nature to rebel against that and be tempted to think that everything one is told about the Holocaust is propaganda.
Have you ever wondered how much denial of the native American genocide there is worldwide? I wonder how much denial there is of the Victorian Holocaust in the UK. I haven’t seen a single memorial to it in London.
BenjaminGere: a forgery is a copy of something else. You would be better advised to claim the Protocols is a work of fiction, since the very purpose of all fiction is to make the reader believe in a forged reality. (You can see this talent at work in Hollywood, and we all know who the best story-tellers are.) By your definition, Shakespeare was the greatest forger of all time!
Jews like it when wee gentiles waste our time on bullshit like the above discussion. It side-tracks the whole subject into useless activity, like arguing over when life actually begins while your tax moneys are spilling gallons of blood of the children of a lesser god in Gaza.
The major question (never raised in public) is: How much truth is there in the Protocols about the Jews and their modus operandi. Every intelligent thinker since Chaucer has commented on the Jews, and the Protocols is an historical summary of the subject. Anyone with real-world experience can see that the Protocols contain a lot of truth, beginning with the obvious one: Jews are a formidable “one for all, all for one” tribe that has a Nietzsche-like “will to power”.
VR, I can’t believe you read all of that into my comment. Actually, I’m opposed to Zionism, and to all nationalisms. I can’t stand Bernard Lewis. If you can read Arabic, please go read my Arabic-language blog, where you’ll find me discussing social-science research on Israel’s injustices, as well as research showing what a disaster the whole concept of “nation” is, including of course the concept of “Jewish nation”. You could also read my recently published article in International Journal of Middle East Studies, which makes the same argument.
You seem to think that discussing the social problems that exist in an Arab country automatically makes one a vile racist or imperialist. On the contrary, I think that if you want to understand human society as it really is, rather than through the distorting lens of racist or nationalist categories, you need to acknowledge social reality in its entirety, including the problems.
Maybe I’m wrong about Mein Kampf and the Protocols “invariably” being on display on Cairo’s pavements, but I’ve seen them countless times. Maybe they’re occasionally out of stock, but these books are definitely part of the standard product line of booksellers in several of the busiest streets in downtown Cairo. No, nobody is running up and down the streets hawking them, nor did I say they were, and maybe university students don’t buy them, but these books must be selling pretty well (along with the self-help books, Dan Brown novels, popular religious texts, and other mass-market paperbacks that the pavement vendors sell), otherwise they wouldn’t be there taking up display space.
Surely it’s significant that state TV broadcast a programme presenting the Protocols as authentic. It’s not plausible that television producers would have made the series if they had thought that most of the audience would reject it as a lie.
Of course, it’s important to keep this in perspective. The book market in Egypt is small. About 30% of the population is illiterate, according to government statistics. Egyptian novels rarely sell more than a few thousand copies. These books aren’t a huge social phenomenon in any case.
Your assertion that “widespread but not universal” is like “partially pregnant” is just silly. “Widespread but not universal” means that many people are prejudiced, but not everyone is. Perhaps I should also make it clearer what sort of prejudice I’m talking about. A couple of anecdotes might help.
An Egyptian friend of mine, a writer, once asked me for a copy of the Roman Polanski film The Pianist; I gave it to him, he liked it very much, and proceeded to show it to some of his relatives. They reacted with a vitriolic diatribe against Jews, saying that the film was Zionist propaganda intended to distract people’s attention from Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, and that Jews were an inherently evil race; even if you took a Jewish baby from its family at birth and raised it as a Muslim, they said, it would still turn out to be a bad person. My friend was astonished at this reaction, because he saw the film as a universal statement about cruelty, compassion and the will to survive.
I once helped out another Egyptian friend of mine, a playwright, with a production of one of his plays. Another playwright, who had some grudge against my friend, found out that my ancestry is Jewish, and used this piece of information to launch a smear campaign against my friend’s play, alleging that it was “Jewish theatre”. (There wasn’t the slightest reference to Jews or Judaism in the play.)
Maybe a comparison will help put this in perspective. In the UK, prejudice against Muslims is also widespread but not universal, but I think it takes a different form. A Palestinian friend of mine who lives in London is exasperated with the huge amount of scorn and prejudice she’s experienced from people there in her daily life. Not everyone is prejudiced; she has friends and a fairly normal life. In contrast, I’ve never been scorned or treated as inferior to my face in Egypt; my daily interactions with Egyptians are almost always friendly and positive. I think anti-Jewish prejudice here is mostly abstract, and easily overridden by the hospitality, friendliness and curiosity towards foreigners that are common here. I suspect that if I had been in the room while my friend was watching The Pianist with his relatives, things might have gone differently; they might have even changed their views.
As for the quality of education in Egypt, it really is low, and you don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask any Egyptian state university student; they’ll gladly tell you about the overcrowded lectures, the reliance on rote memorisation, the lack of discussion and critique, the avoidance of any topic that might be politically sensitive, the corruption, the need to pay the professor for private lessons in order to pass the course.
Basically you missed the whole point of my comment above: here as in other parts of the world, prejudice exists for historical and political reasons. You also missed the point of my reference to Gershoni’s and Jankowski’s study on attitudes towards fascism in Egypt. At least read the publisher’s description of the book; it’s exactly the opposite of what you seem to have assumed: “this enlightening book seriously challenges the recent assumption of an inherent Muslim predisposition toward authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and ‘Islamo-Fascism.’” And yes, the US currently supports dictatorship in Egypt, but that’s irrelevant in this context, because their book is about the 1930s. As for the reasons why fascism appealed to some people in Egypt during the 1930s, this can’t simply be ascribed to “foreign influence”; Egyptian nationalist groups, such as Young Egypt, borrowed some aspects of fascism in order to mobilise resistance against British colonial domination. This bit of Egyptian history is more complex than you think.
noticed that you referenced “Hollow Lands: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation” in you blog. The link you supply includes this explanation:
So, is zionist Israel a “forgery because it claims to something it isn’t” — namely, a democracy and moral but which is in its very landscape and bones an enterprise calculated to destroy one group in favor of another, or is it a fiction, according to at least one writer, a fiction that has evolved into a reality based on a novel, “Exodus” link to jpost.com
I don’t think you can call a state either a “forgery” or a “fiction”, except perhaps metaphorically, but you can say that the Israeli state misrepresents itself as democratic and moral, and that the whole idea of a “Jewish and democratic” state is an inherent contradiction.
goshes, that sounds like something Ahmadinejad said: the zionist state will disappear from the pages of history, as did Soviet Russia, due to its internal contradictions.
” I wonder how much denial there is of the Victorian Holocaust in the UK. I haven’t seen a single memorial to it in London.”
That’s actually one of the things I check in libraries whenever I pick up a book about India or British imperialism in general–how do they treat the famines in India under the British? I read Mike Davis’s book “Late Victorian Holocausts” when it came out. Anyway, for the most part the famines are treated with antiseptic brevity. It’s exactly as though one wrote a book about Stalin or Mao and never once mentioned the famines that occurred under their rule.
I do something similar with books on the Korean War–how many discuss the hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of Korean civilians who died under our bombing campaign? Bruce Cumings spends a lot of time on it–other authors allude to it sometimes, or not at all. I once saw a book on the aerial bombing campaign–the author said no one really knew how many civilians died (hence the range of estimates), but there was no doubt that much of the area of Korean cities was bombed or burned to the ground by US bombing.
Atrocity denial is pretty much the norm in the West. It’s probably the norm everywhere to be at least somewhat oblivious to crimes that are ideologically inconvenient to acknowledge. It’s human nature.
It’s for that reason it would not surprise me if there’s a higher percentage of Holocaust deniers in countries that have been bombed by Israel.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Benjamin, and the story of your experiences.
It’s unfortunate when some people here resort to stereotyping comments.
BG (short form), I will certainly read you’re articles, and should have done a little more of this previous to my comment. The points that I made were part of the rarefied atmosphere we live in the states, as you well know – where the comments you made could be used for other purposes (and similar comments have been used in such fashion) for the purpose of vilification of the ME (a Zionist stock and trade in the states) without question because of gross ignorance of the audience and ulterior purposes.
This naturally flows into your next point of the assumption of automatic imperialism and vile racism. Thought influenced by elite ideas found in imperialism and even racism is not necessarily a conscious exercise in many instances, but an unconscious assumption – systemic fallout. Even living many years (many more than five) by a great number of scholars and romantics does not necessarily exempt them from the influence of their formative years (for easy reference see Edward Said’s Orientalism). I have no problem embracing Egypt warts and all, but just demand clarification in the fact of the discussion (see my previous paragraph). This falls into the category of your accusation of simplicity which you dislike.
I have no difficulty giving you the fact of Mein Kampf and the Protocols presence in a popular venue, I just do not like the inference that this is the stock and trade of all reading, or for that matter of the production of scholarly literature in Egypt. It may have not been your intention when you posted, but it is a derivative of impression when you are talking about entire publishing industries (regardless of how resistant the industry might be to statistics). It may be a state subsidized program to have this book published and distributed as puppet dictatorships are wont to do (numerous examples), hence the malaise over statistics because of the obvious influence. Also, the appearance to the people must be given of this antithetical and adversarial relationship to Israel because of the Egyptian people and their dislike of their government, rather than the appearance of reality that they work hand in glove together because both are beneficiaries of the largess of US hegemony (billions of dollars).
This naturally flows into the popular media (TV) reference you make about the Protocols being authentic. Of course, all media especially of dictatorships and of imperial design are nothing but the regurgitation of propaganda. To give the idea that all hands are free in major media in Egypt is just as ridiculous as that being the case in the USA (“It’s not plausible that television producers would have made the series if they had thought that most of the audience would reject it as a lie.”), and popular TV is nothing but the reinforcement of the status quo (the appearance of being an adversary of Israel).
I will have to come back and follow up on the rest of your post, because I have run out of time and have to do other things. However, I will return and finish off my reply.
I’m feeling guilty.
________________
here comes a generalization: Hitler is used as THE reason for the Holocaust.
I believe this is a mistake, if we really mean “never again” when we say it.
It is a mistake because it fails to understand the actual causes that set in motion the Holocaust, and in unearthing those causes, the Jewish people must recognize that things that some Jews did were part of the constellation of causes. If you don’t want something to happen again, don’t do the things that caused it to happen in the first place. Instead, Jewish people have a tendency to try to shape the perception of the reality rather than change behaviors. This is not ever going to work.
For that reason, both Protocols and Mein Kampf have value: they chip away at the shell of resistance to honest acknowledgment of causal behaviors. Common people observe patterns that are offensive, but they are forbidden from speaking about it. The more people are criminalized for giving voice to a reality that they cannot help but observe, the greater will be the bottled up pressure; eventually, it will explode. Better to have creative, honest means of pressure relief than to punish and criminalize those who feel or observe the conflict.
That’s one reason why Phil’s earlier discussion about American Jewry’s internal dispute about the antisemitism czar is a distraction: the real issue is why the US should have such a person in the first place.
VR, the relationship between the state and the media in Egypt is more complex than that. The media do have to respond to the public’s demands and expectations; that’s precisely why the state tries to use the media to pretend it’s doing things to help the Palestinians. TV is full of propaganda, but it still has to sell advertising and therefore it has to attract viewers. If people found the programmes utterly unappealing, they wouldn’t watch; producers must therefore try to make programmes that people will enjoy watching, while still obeying the constraints and agendas imposed by the state. Moreover, public controversy over the contents of TV series is a common occurrence, and sometimes results in modifications of the storylines. For an example, as well as a look at relationships between writers, publishers and the state, I recommend Samia Mehrez’s excellent recent book Egypt’s Culture Wars.
No one denies the complexity of media in Egypt and the TV audience having demanding expectation BG. This is precisely the point i am making, the TV is nothing but a reinforcement of whatever states line, all it does is reiterate what it has been using as propaganda. In fact, even commercials on TV are nothing but the continuation of what “life is supposed to be like,” what you are supposed to desire and strive for, rather than any critique of the damnable status quo. What you have to ascertain is whether this is the process, or is it because they just despise Israel so much or hate Jews, so it is even more complex than what you communicate – a symbiotic complexity. Quite frankly it is the irreducible minimum of a country’s usage of media (many merely being these Hegelian monstrosities). This denotes also the complexity of the media even in the USA, because i maintain what is merely assumed to be “normal and natural” is subtle manipulation and one of its worst attributes is someone owning their sentiments as arising from themselves rather than by influence –
MEDIA
Now, on to the continuation of my previous response that I promised earlier. I suppose the “widespread/universal” is a play on words, simply because they are almost definitively indistinguishable. Than again, the “widespread” acceptance of Mein Kampf or the Protocols, because this is what we are talking about, is at best suspect. Over your protest I will say that it is merely the reinforcement of what I see as state propaganda, whether it reflects the interest of some or not. You continue on with personal anecdotes but I fail to see how they bring life to some of your claims outside of a couple of incidents, or comparisons with Muslim prejudice across the pond (the Pianist and playwright, etc.).
As far as the general quality of the education (class size, non-critical, rote memorization) that was not the original query, it was that “even educated people embrace the Protocols, etc.” which you wrote. The inference was that even educated people embrace forgeries, to impy a pronounced backwardness – this is not the case in general. Hell, I am not satisfied with education in the states generally speaking, it is every bit the same as you describe in Egypt – if you want to switch to that topic rather than the original premise.
I will skip some of the rhetoric about what I missed in your last paragraph, because I did not miss it, I just did not mention it. Lets zero in on this -
“As for the reasons why fascism appealed to some people in Egypt during the 1930s, this can’t simply be ascribed to “foreign influence”; Egyptian nationalist groups, such as Young Egypt, borrowed some aspects of fascism in order to mobilise resistance against British colonial domination. This bit of Egyptian history is more complex than you think.”
I think it is interesting that you mention fascism in the context of colonial activity, and yet say there was no connection to “foreign influence.” How you come to this conclusion is quite beyond me. Unfortunately fascism is always rearing its head during imperial incursions and domination – no matter what part of the world you look at. It becomes part of the dynamic used in the repertoire of resistance, it always becomes a temptation.
I appreciate the exchange, and look forward to more from you in the future.
VR, the state can’t simply impose whatever it wants on the media; there’s a market, and the products have to sell. This isn’t rocket science. All you have to do is imagine the outcry that would be provoked in the US by a TV miniseries presenting the Protocols as authentic, and to notice that no such outcry occurred here in Egypt, to realise that there’s a big difference, in general, between the attitudes of American and Egyptian viewers towards Jews. TV viewers in Egypt are not passive consumers of state propaganda; they react when something offends them. Cultural producers anticipate this and try hard to avoid doing things that might offend the public. For that reason, the series wouldn’t have been made in the US, but it was made in Egypt and no outcry ensued.
This point applies even more to books. My understanding is that street vendors are in general operating illegally, and bribing police to be allowed to occupy space on the pavement. They carry books that are critical of the regime, or even that directly attack the president. This suggests that they’re not exactly tools of the state propaganda machine. I’ve read a good deal of research on the publishing industry in Egypt, and it seems to me that in general, the state isn’t particularly interested in book publishing, because relatively few people read books. Censorship of books is fairly light; writers can get away with a lot. The state mainly tends to intervene when there’s a public outcry about a book, e.g. to ban novels that are accused in the press of being offensive to religion. A good source here, in addition to Mehrez’s book Egypt’s Culture Wars, is Richard Jacquemond’s Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in modern Egypt.
You’re making a huge leap from my observation that (in my personal experience) educated Egyptians tend to believe the Protocols to be authentic (my friends had never heard anything to the contrary), to the inference of “pronounced backwardness”, which you won’t find in anything I’ve said. My inference, as I’ve said here repeatedly, is simply that negative stereotypes of Jews are widespread in Egypt. Viewers accepted the Protocols miniseries as credible because it fit those stereotypes. This has nothing to do with “backwardness”, whatever that is; it has to do with the political history that I keep referring to (the conflict over Palestine, the wars between Egypt and Israel and the resulting emigration of Egyptian Jews), and the almost complete absence of any effort, in schools or in the media, to counter those stereotypes. My Egyptian friends, I might add, readily agree with me on the prevalence of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Egypt.
About fascism: It’s one thing to say some Egyptians attempted to use fascism in the 1930s to combat colonialism, and another thing to say that fascism in Egypt was a product of “foreign influence”. The latter phrase suggests that foreigners somehow brainwashed Egyptians into adopting fascism, and that the Egyptians were completely passive. On the contrary, Egyptians had been actively reflecting on different ways to deal with colonialism since the beginning of the British occupation in 1882, and their responses were very varied; fascism was only one of many different options that some people tried, and it appeared rather late in the game and only for a short time. So I think it would be hard to argue for a necessary cause-and-effect relationship between colonialism and fascism. Moreover, neither Germany nor Italy were under colonial domination, yet somehow fascism was very successful in those countries. I think you really need to take a close look at the relevant history in order to try to understand why fascism appeared in any given context, rather than just blaming it on “foreign influence”.
Donald, you asked about Holocaust denial in the Arab world; I forgot to mention that Gilbert Achcar has a new book out on this subject. Here’s an interview with the author.
Apparently BG one of two things are happening in this exchange, either you are not reading what I have written or you are misreading what I have written. Your arguments are circular.
I am well aware of what media requires to function, I have been involved in the process. Your repeated denials that media cannot be influenced by the government notwithstanding, cultural producers not only reflect the views of the people but help to mold the perceptions of the people. You do not need to announce propaganda when it is being disseminated, and you do not need to announce that you are shaping opinions – propagation of propaganda is quite at home with commercial media. Take for instance here in the states, people repeatedly voice that the News (MSM) is complete bunk, but they keep repeating their incessant chant. You do not need to offend people if you have helped to form their views – repeat that several times to yourself.
If you are talking merely about street vendors and the contraband they carry (to the Egyptian government) they are not major publishers. Major publishers are held to a higher standard, and are subject to the whims of a dictatorial state, as well as a democracy in name only. Are Mehrez’s books published by the same publishers as what street vendors carry? I don’t think so. However, resistance takes many forms in writing, some spurious and some valid.
“You’re making a huge leap from my observation that (in my personal experience) educated Egyptians tend to believe the Protocols to be authentic (my friends had never heard anything to the contrary), to the inference of “pronounced backwardness”, which you won’t find in anything I’ve said.” – I see, like –
“Educated Egyptians have been surprised to hear from me that the Protocols are a forgery…”
“About fascism: It’s one thing to say some Egyptians attempted to use fascism in the 1930s to combat colonialism, and another thing to say that fascism in Egypt was a product of “foreign influence”.”
Nice of you to bring that up, but this is not what I said – the “foreign influence” was merely the presence of imperialism/colonialism which gave occasion to the rise of fascism. In that fashion there was influence, not that they taught them fascism. This is just a more glaring example of how you respond to things not written.
VR, I’ve said repeatedly that TV has to please both the state and the market. State propaganda has affected people’s perceptions about lots of things, and attitudes about Jews are no doubt among them. My main point, which perhaps you’ve now accepted, is that negative stereotypes about Jews are widespread in Egypt, and that the media reflect this. No doubt the media have also helped to promote those stereotypes and shape people’s attitudes about Jews. (Though I think other factors are at work as well, as I’ve said.) If so, they’ve been successful, and the book sales and TV programmes we’ve been talking about reflect this. Will you grant me this so we can end this discussion?
Street vendors sell books published by all sorts of publishers. The size of a publisher is not necessarily correlated with the success of its books; small publishers can publish books that sell well. You talk as if you know a lot about the publishers who are publishing Mein Kampf in Egypt (and selling it via street vendors as well as ordinary bookshops), and how much state control they face. When you have some empirical data on this, let me know. In any case, what matters for the purposes of our discussion is that Mein Kampf seems to be selling well, regardless of who is publishing it, and that this reflects the prevalence of negative attitudes towards Jews.
The sentence “Educated Egyptians have been surprised to hear from me that the Protocols are a forgery” is simply a statement of fact. That’s my personal experience; you can’t deny it. There’s nothing in that sentence about “pronounced backwardness”. Educated people all over the world are misinformed about all sorts of things; it doesn’t mean that they suffer from “pronounced backwardness”. I’ve gone out of my way, throughout this discussion, to give examples of tolerance and intellectual brilliance among Egyptians, and to ascribe anti-Jewish attitudes in Egypt to historical and political factors (foremost among them Zionism) rather than to “backwardness” (a word I find meaningless in any case).
It seems strange to me to call colonialism an “influence”; your use of the word was confusing. In any case, as I’ve said, colonial domination can’t, by itself, explain why some Egyptians adopted some aspects of fascism, though it’s certainly a factor.
transport and translate that same point to American
1. popular media/culture/entertainment:
link to mondoweiss.net
2. and to what passes for news in the US:
Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to US, on NPR Weekend Edition this morning (Jan 16 2010):
link to npr.org
NPR is predictable: lauds for Israel, softballs to its mendacious ambassador, followed by a hit piece on Iran.
The difference between Egypt’s state-sponsorship of (BG implies) anti-Jewish propaganda and the persistence of evidence of pro-Israel, anti-Arab and anti-Iran propaganda on US media is that Americans are not in charge of their own propaganda, Israel is.
“Either that, or the censorer fears that an uncomfortable reality will be revealed.”
Is there some uncomfortable reality you think people are learning when they read the anti-semitic work of the Czar’s secret police?
Donald – I’ve not read Protocols but I am working through Niall Ferguson’s 3-volume history of the Rothschilds: Ferguson had access to the Rothschilds’ private papers UP TO 1914. Ferguson reports great sympathy with his subject (why wouldn’t he? the access created a lucrative career and lifestyle for Ferguson). The bare facts, however, seem to reveal an “uncomfortable” pattern of financial manipulation as well as a system of gaining access to government power, treasure, and, very importantly, information.
The 1881 “Eclectic”, an annualized volume of Eclectic magazine issues, includes an article titled “The Jews in Germany.” The article is a present-tense narrative of the perceptions of at least some German people — certainly the author of the article — that Jews exerted disproportionate influence over German life; that while Jews had been part of German life for many years, in the aftermath of Germany’s hard-won victory in the Franco-Prussian war, Jews from other places flocked to Germany to cash in on the German people’s hard work and sacrifice. Within 10 years, Jews held loans at astonishing interest on German homes and lands; Jews controlled ports, presses, and had disproportionate influence in universities. …
The Rothschilds were one of the the world’s richest families. I think you’ll find the same sort of behaviour among Christian families of comparable wealth, then and now. As for your second source, what makes you think it isn’t simply anti-Jewish propaganda? Are you a historian and a specialist on the period? If not, why are you reading primary sources without having any way to evaluate them?
!!!
IF I AM NOT AN HISTORIAN, WHY, I SAY WHY do I have the Audacity, the temerity to “read primary sources….” Why, why, it is just not acceptable! How dare!!
I bow and scrape at the feet of your exalted studentship, oh great PhD Candidate.
the only tenant I ever had to evict was a PhD candidate in the 10th year in this exalted effort.
btw, the opening paragraphs of Ferguson’s opus quotes a British Rothschild contemporary who says that Rothschild’s “banking” was qualitatively different from any other form of banking usually practiced. The Bank of St George enriched Genoa, but it was not predatory; Rothschild was the most noteworthy practitioner of predatory capitalism in the last 2 generations. Rothschild decided issues of war and peace that have marked Europe from the time of the Franco Prussian war until today. Herzl worked for ten years to sell his idea of a state for the Jewish people, but it did not get off the ground until Rothschild saw gold in them thar hills and invested in the notion and its infrastructure, including in a pipeline that was part of an Iran-Israel arrangement that provided oil revenue to Israel for several decades. The business relationship was terminated at the time of the Iranian Revolution, at which time Israel owed Iran a great deal of money. Iran sued Israel, Israel dragged the case out for nearly 20 years. Now, a decision in Iran’s favor having been reached, amounting to a sum in the billion dollar range, Israel refuses to pay. That’s why books like “Protocols” have purchase.
The Rockefellers engaged in predatory capitalism as well, and according to James Bill, may have played a significant role in the overthrow of Mossadeqh.
but hey, I’m not even a PhD student, so do, by all means, discount every sourced and referenced comment I make.
Reading primary sources when you don’t have the background to evaluate them isn’t audacity or temerity; it’s folly. You’re very likely to mislead yourself, never mind others. Do yourself a favour and get a proper history book.
sorry, I went off the rails there –
I find some value in the article mentioned precisely because it is NOT a “proper history book.” It’s more like an unpolished letter to the editor. I believe it has value because it reflects an uncalculated perception or impression of reality. It doesn’t really matter that a statistical study might not bear out the impression, this is what the writer thinks: “What men define as real is real in its consequences.”
This work does not have the flavor of an attempt to shape reality, that is, propaganda; rather, it is a man-on-the-street reflection of a perspective of what is happening in and to the German state, an explanation based on particularized experience. Call it a Max Blumenthal moment.
The more than 15-year long project to demonize Iran, initiated by Ephraim Sneh in a series of speeches to Knesset in 1992; brought to Washington, DC by AIPAC, and first acted upon–to the detriment of American interests–by Bill Clinton in an Executive Order in 1995, (see Keith Weismann at Richard Silverstein’s December, 2009 conference in Seattle), is a prime example of the danger of propaganda — of “misleading oneself, never mind others.” My misreading of primary sources may have been a mistake; the project Sneh, Knesset, AIPAC, Clinton, and later, US Congress undertook was deliberate and evil. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and 70 million more are threatened with death as a consequence of the “reality” (hat tip to Ron Suskind) that Sneh/Knesset/AIPAC/Clinton/and the US Congress have set in motion and perpetuated.
I spend my time and treasure to push back against that evil.
Unfortunately, “proper history” is generally written by someone with an equally particularized point of view. I’ve read Letters to the Editor since I was big enough to hold the pages of a newspaper, and I try to absorb the trends in call-in programs such as C Span — they are unsanitized and naive and, as compared to “proper history books,” unprejudiced bits of information revealing the sense of history as people experience it.
BG need i remind you, that even though in many instances of old and recent, that systems of government for the most part are just a franchise of the elite. That no matter which “families” or interests we are talking about, that the problems occur because it is endemic to the system of choice today among a majority of the dominant nations. However, it does not give us an excuse to gloss over the study of whatever interest group, and condemn them for their predatory practices – Jew or Gentile. Especially in light of the fact that a world superpower like the USA, with the intended consequences, is being influenced and driven – willingly or unwillingly. I have held equal disdain for any elites that run roughshod over the people, no matter what the source, and have written such both here and elsewhere the same position.
BG:
BG:
once more with feeling: Michael Oren on NPR Weekend Edition, interviewed by Scott Simon:
~primary source, check
~poor, dumb American, no background to evaluate: check
1. an NPR audience considers itself better informed than most, simply by virtue of listening to NPR; thus, something said on NPR is perceived to have greater credibility than something said on FOX.
2. The interviewee holds a position of access and authority; he is the official representative of the state he’s speaking about, and has been accepted in a position of trust by the US. The combination grants his speech far greater validity than the speech of, for example, a blogger who might be a high school student or a PhD candidate or a wacked out lesbian minor league baseball team mascot in Podunk. Oren’s words carry the weight of gospel.
~likely to be mislead (self or others) check
perhaps this one? Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present link to amazon.com
Let me give you my non-historian’s “evaluation” of Michael Oren as a primary source and as an historian: He Is A Lying Sack of Shit.
It has to be assumed that he knows the facts but is deliberately lying. It has to be assumed that his lying has an intention, and that he knows that “others will be misled” by his lies, and that this misleading will result in mortal peril for someone.
I was not misled, but due to the persistence, the authoritative nature, and the access to real political power that Oren’s lies enjoy, it is reasonable to assume that many Americans WERE misled by Oren.
I can’t think of a more stunning example of pure, criminal evil.
On the radio station broadcast from the studios of my alma mater.
I openly told people in Cairo and Gaza that I was Jewish, and did not experience problems. When I told Palestinians, the reaction was usually a surprised one, and then an interest in it. I was even applauded in a classroom (to my dismay and embarrassment, I’m no hero for speaking out against Israel, but that’s beside the point), for saying as a Jewish-American how I deplore Israel’s crimes.
All Americans are anti-semitic Nazis, as are all Brits and Frogs. Mein Kampf is quite widely available. Even in Germany though I thought it had been banned there.
Sorry, that should have been:
All Americans are anti-semitic Nazis, as are all Brits and Frogs. Mein Kampf is quite widely available. Even in Germany though I thought it had been banned there.
It’s not just a question of a book’s availability. Millions of books are available in the US and Europe; far fewer are available in Egypt, simply because the Arabic publishing industry is much smaller. There are also far fewer bookshops per capita here, and hardly anyone orders anything online. So the presence of a given book, prominently displayed by a bookseller in Cairo, means much more than the mere presence of the same book on Amazon. Admittedly, it’s not a scientific measurement, but when you notice that sidewalk booksellers in downtown Cairo, whose book selection is very small (often only fifty titles or so), invariably carry Mein Kampf, I think it’s reasonable to take that as a sign of its popularity.
I lived in Cairo for a couple years and frequented the bookshops quite a bit, particularly in Dokki, Muhandaseen, and in down town Cairo.
I don’t recall ever seeing a copy of Mein Kamph, although I did see a copy of the protocols once in a socialist bookstore.
This was from 2006-2008.
I’ve been seeing Arabic translations of both books prominently displayed by downtown sidewalk book vendors ever since I first moved to Cairo in 2005. Unfortunately no reliable statistics are available on book sales (or anything else) in Egypt.
Arabs suck
no. 2
Benjamin, are you and Richard Witty related/acquainted?
Eva, I don’t know who Richard Witty is, but I’ll strongly disagree with anyone who thinks that “Arabs suck”. My field is sociology; I think all human beings are basically the same, and the basic mechanisms of human society are the same everywhere. My point above was that there are political reasons for the problems we’re talking about here.
Many things are in an atrocious state in Egypt, as Egyptians are often quick to point out. A great deal of contemporary Egyptian literature, e.g. the novels of the wonderful writer Sonallah Ibrahim, is devoted to demonstrating this. In 2003, Ibrahim refused a state literary prize by making a speech to a packed auditorium, in which he railed against the state of things in Egypt: “We no longer have any theatre, or cinema, or scientific research, or education. All we have is festivals and a boxful of lies. We no longer have any industry, or agriculture, or health, or justice. Corruption and robbery are rampant, and anyone who opposes the status quo faces humiliation, beatings and torture.” The audience of Egyptian intellectuals went wild with applause.
I disagree with your conclusions. Let me explain why:
If, as you say, the Egyptian publishing industry and its distribution channels operate on a smaller scale than their US and European equivalents, that probably means that books, as a political medium, do not have as great an influence on public opinion as they do in the US and Europe. And this means that, even though this single book might be proportionally overrepresented in the smaller sample of influential books in Egypt, its overall influence is still smaller.
For this reason, I don’t think that the question of how much influence Mein Kampf has cannot be answered by simply comparing its popularity relative to other works. (Which I’d actually like to see some hard, cold numbers on, anyway.)
I’m not saying that Mein Kampf has any influence on anyone in Egypt; instead I’m suggesting that widespread feelings of hostility towards Jews, which exist for other reasons (mentioned above), generate sales of Mein Kampf. Unfortunately there is no reliable data on book sales in Egypt, because Egyptian publishers “deal with distribution figures as if they were military secrets” (in the words of Egyptian literary scholar Samia Mehrez). Yves Gonzalez-Quijano’s book Les gens du livre: édition et champ intellectuel dans l’Égypte républicaine (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1998) contains a tragicomic account of his fruitless attempts to get such data from various sources; I’m not aware of anyone who has made a more successful attempt since then.
” I don’t know who Richard Witty is”
Kind of the local punching bag around here, for me as well as for others because he has a double standard on human rights, often making excuses and rationalizations for some (not all) of Israel’s crimes. I’m disappointed to see some people lumping you in with him because of what you’ve said about anti-semitism in Egypt. Apparently critical remarks of that sort are automatically suspect.
Mein Kampf is a runaway Indian Bestseller. Business Management students snap it up.
Indian business students snap up copies of Mein Kampf
The Telegraph: link to z.pe
Pretty much. I have been seeing copies of it prominently displayed at bookshelves for the last three decades. The Indian frame of reference for Hitler is Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and sundry comical villains in movies. I think most Indians would see Hitler as an amusing figure. We barely know anything about the Victorian holocausts where 30 million Indians died under British colonialism, forget about The Holocaust [with the capital H as suggested by my browser spell check].
Sammy,
And I understand the movie A Streetcar Named Desire is a comedy in India, as well, no? My Indian friends in Manhattan regaled me with their version of STELLA! off CPS one night as we walked home, half-piked. They told me the whole thing is a great laugh for E. Indians.
I’m embarassed to say I haven’t seen it, I’m more of a Kieślowski/ Miyazaki/Ki-duk afficionado – but its my personal experience that many Indians see things a lot differently than westerners.
In order to understand why there is some rise in the purchase of Mein Kampf in India one has to look at not only what is taking place between Palestinians and Israelis, but what is taking place in India. Locked tight into the building of the National Security State in India is Israel and its weaponry/security sales. India has become one of the largest clients of Israel among an elite which have fascist leanings, strong cast differentiation, hard and fast class distinction, as well as religious conflicts.
Rather than taking up the whole subject here (and certainly not exhausting it with the following link), these are some factors you are going to have to consider –
INDIA – RISE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE
If you want to know what is being done to the people in India I recommend Arundhati Roy, who spilled a boatload of horror stories on what is transpiring there (if you think this is dated because it was aired in 2006 let me assure you that what is spoken about on this interview is now worse, ti has intensified). Let me assure you, it is well worth listening to in full. –
ARUNDHATI ROY ON INDIA
When you put the two of these together you will get an idea of why there is ire among some with the process of Israel arming and defending (security) a government which looks upon the majority of the people as chattel. than again, like its big brother, the USA, Israel has no qualms about arming and encouraging repressive governments and budding dictatorships (for pay up front and part of the booty).
Go about 18 minutes into the Roy interview to get the real meat regarding India.
Just wanted to voice my opinion that BenjaminGeer is making very responsible statements that to me as one who studied the region academically and lived there seem to be pretty spot on.
In my earlier comment I was treating this with a bit of a laugh, and it is true that I never personally experienced animosity from individual Egyptians regarding my Jewishness, but I also know that German friends of mine, when visiting, were told by cab drivers and such how much the cab drivers admired Hitler.
Moral of that story is just that Egyptians are really polite and like to agree with their guests.
Anyways, I think there is real anti-semitism in the Arab world. Asad Abu Khalil, the Angry Arab, often points out that it is frequently found among those who are perceived to be the most “friendly” to Israel– Anwar Sadat, Mahmoud Abbas, the Christian Lebanese fascist movement.
You are not helping Palestine or Palestinians by denying it.
One more thought: many in post-colonial states like the Arab World and India see in fascism a project of a) anti-colonialism (fighting the British and the French empires) and b) nation-building (constructing a genuine national identity and strengthening it through recreating a mythically pure past culture). It is the same elements which drew Jewish Zionists to fascism.
Anyways, I think there is real anti-semitism in the Arab world. Asad Abu Khalil, the Angry Arab, often points out that it is frequently found among those who are perceived to be the most “friendly” to Israel– Anwar Sadat, Mahmoud Abbas, the Christian Lebanese fascist movement.
So they hate Jews? Or Zionists? Is there a difference?
Anyways, I think there is real anti-semitism in the Arab world. Asad Abu Khalil, the Angry Arab, often points out that it is frequently found among those who are perceived to be the most “friendly” to Israel– Anwar Sadat, Mahmoud Abbas, the Christian Lebanese fascist movement.
So they hate Jews? Or Zionists? Is there a difference?
The ignorance of the history of the Jews that I encountered in Cairo while traveling with Hedy Epstein during the Gaza Freedom March astounded me. Egyptians in the hotels, on the street, and journalists interviewing Hedy would ask me: “Is her story true? It is hard to believe that humans would shove other humans into ovens to their death?”
Other Egyptians asked me out of earshot of Hedy how it was possible to be Jewish and not Zionist. They had never encountered that possibility before.
Hedy was treated like a star in Egypt. People on the street would stop us to talk to her. A young Egyptian couple yelled “Hedy” to her as they passed in their car. The media calls didn’t stop while we were there. Every journalist wanted to know more about this Jewish woman who didn’t fear the Arabs and wanted to go to Gaza.
The curious questions and ignorant perspectives among the Egyptians shocked me because as a Palestinian American who has lived and traveled among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, this was not an attitude I encountered there. When I asked Hedy if she had heard these types of queries in her numerous trips to the West Bank, she answered unequivocally that she had not.
The wonderful film “Salata Baladi” kept coming to mind while I was in Cairo. The film tells the story of the parents the filmmaker, Nadia Kamal–her mother an Italian Jew whose family had been in Egypt for generations and her tather an unrelenting Egyptian Communist. They grew up in an Egypt that was multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-linguistic. The creation of the state of Israel saw most of the Jews of Egypt leave for Israel. The filmmaker travels to Israel to visit some of these relatives with her mother. It is poignant to hear them reflect on their memories of growing up in Cairo and their great sense of loss for what was. The Egyptian Jews of Israel still dream in Arabic.
Exposure and multi-culturalism are key to bridging the divides. Let’s hope that borders and walls fall so that we may begin the important work of humanizing the other.
I haven’t read all the posts and responses but the few I read seem to imply that because Mein Kampf and the Protocls are on sale in bookstores it must be that ant-semitism is rampant. Well I have seen Mein Kampf on the shelves at Borders (Borders is a major bookstore in the US for those who don’t know). Any decent University library would have many copies of Mein Kampf. Does reading Mein Kampf or the Protocols make one an anti-semite? Similarly does reading Zionist literature make one a Zionist?
Aref, your question has been addressed in the comments above; see, in particular, this comment, and this one.
I suppose that you really have not understood my question. Let me try to repeat it or rephrase it. If a book any book is on sale and prominently on display and people buy it does it necessarily mean that society as a whole or for the most part in agreement with the content of the book? The links to responses–yours–seem to suggest that. That is the most absurd logical conclusion I have heard particularly from someone who claims to be a sociologist. Can you conclude that if Mein Kampf and Das Kapital as well as the Koran are on display in a book store and people buy them then that society must have Nazi, Communist and Islamic sympathies all rolled together? That would be a very interesting Cameleon society don’t you think?
Aref, a single individual’s purchase of a book does not necessarily mean that the buyer approves of the content of the book. But when a book becomes a bestseller, this is indeed sociological evidence that a large number of people approve of its content. It’s well-established in sociology that best-sellers respond to existing tastes among the reading public. A book cannot sell well without appealing to some particular widespread taste for a particular type of book. Of course, different types of books can appeal to different segments of the reading public; hence books that appeal to very different tastes can be bestsellers at the same time. If you’re interested in knowing more about the sociology of the book industry, I suggest Pierre Bourdieu’s classic study The Rules of Art.
That’s ridiculously shallow, Geer.
It could be that they are curious since they have their own conflict w/ Israel and again affording the Arabs the same kind of standard we afford ourselves (knee-jerk intellectualism amongst ‘most people’) – is it an automatic legitimization of Hitler’s views? Or is it that they are channeling their own conflict through that work. It’s an outlet.
I don’t condone the denial of the Holocaust that exists in Palestinian society but that doesn’t put them on the same level as the Nazis.
Same thing goes for the Egyptians and Arabs in general.
The relationship between the two groups needs to be characterized confidently first before we begin saying explicitly or implying, that they (Arabs) agree w/ the beliefs laid out in Mein Kampf.
Zionists often question why people are concerned w/ I-P. They do this so they can button-mash the antisemitism move.
But intentions are important. Why? Because they change the context of an opinion.
If I support the Palestinians because I am a universalist and believe in the importance of international law and social justice, am I not more ‘credible’ than someone who supports the Palestinians because they hate Jews? You could ask why the hate. Then question why the conflation w/ all Jews. However, there is a value we’d attach to latter, which I think would be of lower moral clarity than the former. Even after understanding them. In understanding them however, you could mitigate that initial condemnation a bit in harshness/etc. You still cannot condone the premise of their support but you might understand them more and in doing so, humanize them and their beliefs.
Similarly, you have to understand the intentions of the people who buy this book. Especially, when it’s an Arab. The context is different. It’s basically painting all of the purchasers w/ the same color.
is there a similar sociological principle that holds that broadcast information responds to the existing tastes among the listening public? Or is it the case that broadcast media is used to shape and train the listening public into responding favorably to the message that the broadcaster intends?
Notice how language is used to ‘shape’ the narrative, therefore, the train the viewer into acquiescing with the intentions of the media manipulator:
link to npr.org
Peace Talks From the Israeli Perspective
notice the juxtapositions: PEACE …. Israel….
same broadcast, next segment:
link to npr.org
Iran’s Nuclear Cloak-And-Dagger Game Claims Another Victim
How do you say trifecta plus one? Four negative, fear-evoking words in one 2-second byte, all associated with Iran.
Somehow, I don’t doubt that it’s a hatchet job.
Benjamin, there is no denying the fact that there is anti-Semitism in the Arab world as there is racism in all countries. It is also true that this phenomenon is relatively new in the Arab world and has largely to do with the rise of fundamentalism and the continuing I/P conflict and the conflation of Zionist and Jew. This conflation is further exacerbated by the appearance that many Jews particularly so called “liberal” seem to give legitimacy to Zionism even though they maybe critical of some of Israel and some of its actions. Jews who are anti-Zionist do not have the voice and the coverage in the MSM–they are in the same boat as other anti-Zionist and most often do not go around advertizing themselves as Jewish.
At the same time, we have to be cognizant of the fact that the History of Jews in Europe particularly during the Nazi rule in Germany and WWII have had a huge effect on the ME. Is it not then possible that people are interested in Mein Kampf for that reason?
Egypt was (I am not sure it still is) the center of intellectual and artistic life in the Arab World. Also, book reading particularly non-religious texts, is not an activity that most Egyptians engage in. Such books are read mostly by students, academics and intellectuals so is it not possible that if Mein Kampf was recently translated into Arabic that it would be more popular or more in demand by those who want to actually read what Hitler wrote rather than rely on being told what he did write–intellectual curiosity? I did read both the Protocols and Mein Kampf and to be honest I found them both very laughable and unconvincing and could not imagine that anyone would actually become a convert by reading them–I suppose there are who would!!!
You also mention the fact that there is no reliable information or statistics regarding sales of books in Egypt. Given that, and the relatively small pool of readership, is not a precarious leap to draw conclusions about a whole society? I suppose what I am trying to say is that we have to be aware of the context and what maybe true in one society or context might not be true in another. I am not trying to say that there is no anti-semitism in the Arab world and I am trying to pretend that Egyptian intellectuals are free from racism or bigotry. What I am trying to say is that we should be careful about drawing conclusions without context.
One of the amazing things about studying sociology is that everyone thinks they know your field better than you do. No, Cliff, Bourdieu’s sociology of the publishing industry is not “ridiculously shallow”; you haven’t studied it and aren’t in a position to make that judgement. Moreover, I haven’t talked at all here about Palestinians (who have my wholehearted support in their struggle to reverse the effects of Israel’s ethnic cleansing), and no one here is equating anyone with Nazis. My suggestion here has simply been that sales of Mein Kampf and the Protocols are one indication among many of widespread negative stereotypes about Jews in Egypt.
I’m pretty sure that people who are “curious” about Hitler in the US or Europe don’t generally satisfy their curiosity by reading Mein Kampf; they do it by reading a reputable history book about Hitler or Nazism, because they know that Mein Kampf is demented, hate-filled propaganda and therefore not a reliable source of information. A tiny minority of people might be curious enough to read it, but most people will seek out a more reliable source. Hence Mein Kampf doesn’t sell well in the US or Europe.
What are people’s intentions in buying Mein Kampf in Egypt? It’s difficult to say, because there are no opinion polls and I’m not aware of any empirical studies on this. “Channeling their own conflict through that work” sounds plausible to me, but think about what exactly that means. What is the connection between Israel and Hitler? The only possible conceptual connection is that Zionists are Jews and that Hitler hated Jews. So if you’re feeling angry about Israel, and you conflate Zionism with Judaism, Mein Kampf could be an appealing book, because it will confirm your existing feelings and beliefs.
My conversation with my Egyptian friends about the Protocols went something like this:
Me: “The Protocols are fake; they were forged by the Russian secret police.”
My friends (sceptically): “Really? Everyone in Egypt thinks they’re authentic. There was even a TV series based on them.”
Me: “Every respectable historian knows they’re fake.”
My friends: “Have you got evidence of that?”
In the end I had to dig out scholarly studies to convince them. I can’t believe you don’t see a link between that and sales of the Protocols and Mein Kampf in Egypt.
Aref, you’re making many points here that I’ve already made in the discussion above, e.g. that anti-Jewish sentiment in Egypt is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that its primary cause is the conflict over Palestine. At the same time, it’s not something that appeared yesterday. According to Joel Beinin’s book (which I mentioned above), conflation of Judaism with Zionism began in Egypt in the 1930s. As for “curiosity”, see my next comment. As for “drawing conclusions without context”, I’ve lived in Egypt for three years, I’m proficient in Arabic, I know Egyptian history well, I’ve talked to a lot of Egyptians, and I have a lot of Egyptian friends. I think you’d have a hard time finding anyone in Egypt who disagrees with what I’ve been saying here: that negative attitudes towards Jews are widespread in Egypt. Sales of Mein Kampf are just one indication of that. You’ll find others in my previous comments.
Aref, your question has been addressed in the comments above; see, in particular, this comment, this one and this one. (Sorry for the duplicate comment here.)