The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives

371 Pages·2010·2.67 MB·English

by  Gilbert Achcar

GILBERT ACHCAR, who grew up in Beirut, is Professor at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His many books include
The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (Saqi Books,
2006), published in thirteen languages, The 33-Day War: Israel’s War on
Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Aftermath (with Michel Warschawski, Saqi
Books, 2007), and Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, a
book of dialogues with Noam Chomsky.
‘A work of breath-taking empathy, examining one of the most painful and
emotion-laden topics in the modern world with dispassion, sensitivity and high
erudition … [A] magisterial study’ Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of
Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University
‘Essential reading for anyone who seeks a balanced understanding of the place
of Jews and the Holocaust in Arab thinking today. Whether or not one agrees
with Gilbert Achcar on every issue, he provides a welcome and well-informed
counterpoint to caricaturists and hate-mongers and fear-promoters of every
persuasion.’ Michael R. Marrus, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor
Emeritus of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto
‘An erudite, perceptive, and highly original study that shines much-needed light
on a field which has tended to be dominated by partisanship and propaganda’
Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations, St Antony’s College,
University of Oxford
‘A sensitive and insightful exploration of an important dimension of the Middle
East conflict … Achcar’s book, which combines meticulous scholarship and an
engaging style, is a significant contribution to the mutual understanding that is in
such short supply.’ Peter Novick, Professor Emeritus of Modern History,
University of Chicago
‘A penetrating analysis of the multiplicity of attitudes and responses in the
Arabic-speaking world toward Nazism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust’
Francis R. Nicosia, Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies,
University of Vermont
‘A courageous undertaking … [Achcar] succeeds in treating the subject of the
relationship of Palestine and the Nazi Holocaust with original thinking, profound
scholarship, and meticulous analysis.’ Naseer Aruri, member of the Palestine
National Council; Chancellor Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science,
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
‘In a field fraught with bad faith and sheer propaganda, Gilbert Achcar’s book
stands out as scholarly and even-handed.’ Idith Zertal, Senior Research Fellow,
Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Basel
‘A systematic and scholarly refutation of the simplistic myths that have arisen
following the formation of Israel … the best book on the subject so far’ Tariq
Ali, Guardian
‘A refreshing and original study, showing clearly that Muslim anti-Semitism is
neither universal, nor inevitable, nor subject to pat explanations.’ The Economist
‘Gilbert Achcar’s The Arabs and the Holocaust is for the most part a fascinating,
subtle and original analysis of Israeli and Arab historical narratives.’ Simon
Sebag Montefiore, BBC History Magazine
‘Achcar is in full mastery of both the Arabic and the Western sources on his
subject. His exhaustive survey of Arabic sources is particularly important in
correcting the many distortions circulated by polemicists seeking to paint Arabs
and Muslims as anti-Semites … Policy makers would do well to heed Gilbert
Achcar’s call for a more balanced approach to the tragedies that make the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict so intractable.’ Eugene Rogan, Times Literary
Supplement
‘Lucid and penetrating’ Stephen Howe, Independent
‘[Achcar] carefully examines the long history of Arab-Jewish conflict back
through the 19th century, illuminating the range of opinions’ The Washington
Post
‘Calm and judicious in tenor yet unyielding in its intellectual rigor, this selection
may show the path out of a seemingly intractable dispute.’ Booklist
Gilbert Achcar
The Arabs and the Holocaust
The Arab–Israeli War of Narratives
Translated from the French
by G. M. Goshgarian
SAQI
First English edition published in 2010 by Saqi Books
This ebook edition published in 2011
EBOOK ISBN: 978-0-86356-835-0
Copyright © Gilbert Achcar, 2010 and 2011
Translation copyright © G. M. Goshgarian, 2010 and 2011
Originally published in France by Actes Sud as Les Arabes et la Shoah
Indexer: [email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold,
hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
SAQI
26 Westbourne Grove, London w2 5RH, UK
www.saqibooks.com
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not
the beam that is in thine own eye?

MATTHEW 7:3
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Words Laden With Pain
Shoah, Holocaust, Jewish Genocide
Zionism, Colonialism, Uprootedness
Nakba

PART 1: THE TIME OF THE SHOAH
Arab Reactions to Nazism and Anti-Semitism 1933–1947
Prelude
1. The Liberal Westernizers
2. The Marxists
3. The Nationalists
The Baath Party
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party
The Lebanese Phalange
Young Egypt and Egyptian Nationalism
The High-School Student Movement Futuwwa in Iraq
Iraqi Arab Nationalists and Nazism
Syrian Arab Nationalists and Nazism
Arab Nationalism and Anti-Semitism
The June 1941 Pogrom in Baghdad: The Farhūd
4. Reactionary and/or Fundamentalist Pan-Islamists
Pan-Islamism and Fundamentalist Counter-Reformation
The Religion of Islam and the Jews
Rashid Rida
Shakib Arslan
‘My Enemy’s Enemy’: Alliances of Convenience, Affinity and Complicity
Amin al-Husseini: The Grand Mufti
‘Izz-ul-Din al-Qassam
Amin al-Husseini and the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine
Amin al-Husseini’s Exile and Collaboration with Rome and Berlin
Amin al-Husseini and the Jewish Genocide
Amin al-Husseini, Architect of the Nakba
Amin al-Husseini’s Divergent Legacies

PART 2: THE TIME OF THE NAKBA
Arab Attitudes to the Jews and the Holocaust
from 1948 to the Present
Prelude
The Nakba as seen by Benny Morris: A Symptomatic Trajectory
5. The Nasser Years (1948–1967)
‘Throwing the Jews into the Sea’?
Nasserism and Anti-Semitism
The Eichmann Trial, Reparations, Comparisons and Holocaust Denial
6. The PLO Years (1967–1988)
The Programmatic Redefinition of the Palestinian Position toward the Jews
Transposing the Image of the Holocaust: the Battle of Comparisons with
the Nazi past
7. The Years of the Islamic Resistances (1988 to the Present)
Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamized Anti-Semitism
From Garaudy To Ahmadinejad: Reactive Exploitation of the Memory of
the Holocaust
Conclusion: Stigmas and Stigmatization
Of Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Philosemitism, Islamophobia and
Exploitation of the Holocaust
Of Zionism, the State of Israel, Racism, the End of Denial and Peace
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
This book had its inception early in 2006, when my friend Enzo Traverso asked
me to contribute a chapter on the reception of the Holocaust in the Middle East
to the monumental work on the history of the Shoah that he and three other
scholars were co-editing for the Italian publishing house UTET in Turin. The
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editors were looking for someone who could write about the reception of the
Holocaust in the Middle East. I accepted the invitation, but only after much
hesitation: the short six months I was given to complete my essay – an author
who had been approached before me had bowed out late in the day – made the
task, given its scope and complexity, a perilous one.
I took it on nonetheless, motivated by what might be called a sense of duty.
The work being put together would, I knew, be a good one, and I did not want to
see the issue I had been asked to discuss – a delicate question if ever there was
one – treated incompetently or left aside. Out of a concern for intellectual rigour,
I limited the field of my research to countries that lay directly in my area of
competence, countries whose language I knew – those of the Arab world from
which I come. After my editors had approved this restriction, I began intensively
researching and writing, and I eventually turned out the long chapter that closes
the second and final volume of that work. Enzo was the first to suggest,
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insistently, that I work this chapter up into a book. At the time, I was not
particularly inclined to plunge back into intensive research on the same topic.
But I continued to give it thought, since the questions raised were being posed
ever more sharply in the Middle East. For example, late in 2006 a Tehran
conference called ‘Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision’ promoted Holocaust
denial, with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, contributing his own
deliberately provocative statements. Urged on both by readers of the original
chapter – including the publishers of the French, British and American editions
of the present book – and by my own desire to discuss the problem in a form
more widely accessible than the voluminous compendium published solely in
Italian, I undertook the project of transforming the chapter into a book.