Many of you by now must have read Arun Ghandi’s distasteful article in the Washington Post. I found it very shortsighted. Mideast Youth wrote a hilarious and genius response to it. Enjoy…
Dear Arun Gandhi:
We are an interfaith coalition from the Middle East, as well as other predominantly Muslim nations, who would like to thank you very much for referring to Jews as destroyers of humanity, and to Palestinians as snakes. We also must thank you for being so educated as to realize that Israel’s population, the majority of which was, in fact, born in the Middle East and not in Europe, has a Holocaust mentality. (In fact, you probably know that when it comes to whining about their experiences at Auschwitz, Persian and Yemenite Jews are the worst! You’d think it only happened to them and not the Kurdish or Ethiopian Jews too!) And the fact that you chose to use snake imagery, which is the Biblical and Qur’anic representation of evil, to describe Palestinians was brilliant. Clearly, you are extremely culturally sensitive, internationally erudite, and really seem to know how to sweet talk us. We’re so glad you’re our friend.
We fear we’ve made some terrible mistakes. Here you are shining your wisdom and leadership toward a new tomorrow upon us — one that understands Israel as monolithically violent and Palestinians as slithering beasts — while we stupidly felt an appreciation for those human rights groups that many Israeli Jews have created specifically to see Arabs in humane terms, to improve the situation, and overcome our rivalry. And, can you imagine we actually rejected representing each other with imagery that reduces people to animals? We have spent countless time and energy fostering a new paradigm upon which we do not singularly define any community by the trauma they suffer, nor by their allegedly negative characteristics, believing that individuals should be judged upon their own merits; while we have sought actively to engage each other with integrated strategies that foster a greater sense of community. Our focus has been to create a larger, regional healing by shining light on each other’s humanity regardless of our group affiliation. What were we thinking? Bring on the pejorative labels!
But, then again, let’s face it. Who are we compared to someone with a family name to exploit? We just live or come from the region. Can you ever forgive us for such transgressions, especially in the face of such a captivating Zionist conspiracy theory?
You will probably get naysayers about your article, but let’s face it. We need someone like you to lecture us about how to behave ourselves, and how to handle our problems because we’re pretty stupid to figure it out on our own. We need you to identify which single community is to blame for the rivalry that occurs throughout our region. And we need you to label some Middle Eastern communities as either singularly animalistic or threatening because we just can’t seem to remember how well these fresh, new, untried methods always seems to work to soothe tensions and solve our problems. We now know, thanks to you, we don’t really need an actual and legitimate process in which we work in true service to our region by cooperating to overcome the problems we collectively face, We just need to know what kinds of evil, destructive people Jews are; and what kind of animals Palestinians are. Thank you so much for your kindness and empathy. Your grandfather would be so proud.
SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Brilliant!
So Arabs are snakes and the Jews made them such?
It’s a new one, at least.
Arun Gandhi’s argument is that the Jews and Israel, in their “holocaust mentality”, are too distrusting of their fellow man. This distrust, he seems to claim, is the root of the conflict, and it creates “snakes”. After all, Palestinians are merely unthinking beasts that respond to Jewish actions, or so Gandhi believes at least.
Oh yes, Jewish imperialism is the root of all evil, and the poor, stupid, unthinking Arab-beasts merely respond to this evil. But you know… At least his statement shows just how self-reducing are the claims of “terrorism is a reaction to Jews” is. Reactions are also actions… unless you’re led by animal instinct.
And yes, his total ignorance of Middle-Eastern Jews is just hilarious. The man’s an idiot, his only claim to importance is his family name.
“his total ignorance of Middle-Eastern Jews”
That ignorance is universal.
It is the best and most complete propaganda victory of Arab nationalism ever: not only did they manage to get rid of all Jews from nearly all Arab countries without punishment, but they even managed to convince the world that those Jews never existed.
I have not met even a single European or American who was against Israel AND knew about Arab and Iranian Jews and where they live today.
“I have not met even a single European or American who was against Israel AND knew about Arab and Iranian Jews and where they live today.”
Damn!
In fact I have met people who consider themselves perfectly reasonable and “neutral” and who believe that a fair solution would be to deport all Jews from Israel to Europe or America and give the land “back” to the “Palestinians” (by which they mean “non-Jewish inhabitants of or claimants to Palestine”).
In other words, those people support the deportation of Jews from many countries (i.e. the entire Arab world) ultimately to Europe and America and they think that is a fair solution.
For some reason it would never occur to them to deport “Palestinians” from Israel (or Palestine), because, obviously, that would be a crime against humanity.
And those opinions are not understood as anti-Semitism.
Ironically, if a European Nazi would claim that all those Jews (and Muslims!) that were killed by the Nazis never existed, he would go to prison.
But in the Arab world such same dishonesty is regarded as a virtue (as it is among Nazis).
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