A is for Alhambra and Ahmadinejad

Beginning today I will make daily posts about academia, journalism, poetry, and worlds they have not told you about! I start with the letter A and end with the letter Z (Zed for us Canadians and Zee for our good friends south of the border!). This will take approximately one month.

A is for Alhambra and Ahmadinejad

I know you might wonder. How can you put the genocidal President of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Alhambra, the architectural marvel known as "the red fortress" built by Muslim rulers in 14th century Granada? The Alhambra is so revered as a cultural treasure that it is a UNESCO world heritage site. Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, is so reviled for sending child soldiers to die during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), calls to wipe out Israel, sponsoring of Islamists Hezbollah and Hamas that seek to liquidate the "Zionist entity," and grotesque role in killing 85 at a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994. The good news is that the world is starting to wake up to the danger posed by a nuclear Iran bent on a fundamentalist Islam that wants to cleanse the planet of Jews, Christians, moderate Muslims, Sunnis, and all those that call for democracy (which is predictably seen as a Zionist plot to destroy the Islamic world).

Today Ahmadinejad used the UN's second conference on racism to specifically call Israel "the most cruel and racist regime." Jewish suffering for the Holocaust, which the Iranian dictator likes to deny, led to European guilt, Palestinian statelessness, and the creation of an imperialist, racist "alien body" (Israel). Forget that Israel has Israeli Arab parliamentarians, professors like myself, and footballers. Or Jews and Arabs peacefully living in the same neighbourhoods. Forget that nearly 20 per cent of Israel is composed of Israeli Arab citizens. Forget too that Jews can no longer live in Iran. Or most of the Muslim world because of genocidal anti-Semitism that has a spiritual kinship to Nazism: the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and beyond, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Forget that genocides come and go in Darfur (Sudan), Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq, as the UN repeatedly and disproportionately singles out Israel as the most heinous regime on the planet.

Palestinian statelessness is a real problem. Like the prince from Hawaii, Obama, I favour two states for two peoples - what Israeli writer Amos Oz would call an adult "divorce. We do, however, live in dark days on that goal of two states. The so-called "progressive" left eats up the anti-Zionism, as do the anti-Semites on the right by disingenuously positing that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Did anyone ask the opinions of real flesh and blood Jews what they think? Do they care?

Israel, the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, and Australia took the lead by refusing to attend the UN's second racism conference. The irony of all ironies: An anti-racism conference that degenerates into racism and anti-Semitism against Jews and the collective Jew (Israel), as Canadian Liberal MP Irwin Cotler has pointed out. The first Durban conference on racism in 2001 was also a farcical affair, but one with real consequences for Jews in Israel and beyond: Rising anti-Semitism from Paris to Caracas. The real aim of such a conference is not anti-racism, or a solution to the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israel-Arab conflicts. Rather the aims are division, racial hatred, and the denigration of Israel to the point where it becomes obvious to those that know nothing about the conflict that Israel ought not to exist. Jews ought not to have a right to self-determination period.

Finally we had more massive walkouts during Ahmadinejad's speech today, including Finland, Denmark, Czech Republic, and France. His speech might have been lifted from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the vile 19th century hoax created by the Czarist authorities to fire mass popular anti-Semitism. The same Protocols of the Elders of Zion that I saw openly distributed in London and played to capacity television audiences in Egypt.

The left from Canada to Britain and France to Australia liked for years to explain away Ahmadinejad as a madman, but a madman fighting the good anti-imperialist fight. A Che Guevara of our times in Islamist ideological clothes. Could it be that the world is waking up? Could it be that we might be getting better at assessing our foes? Will we wake up to find out that the imperialist secularists we so hated might not be great, but better than the Islamist, Chinese, or Russian alternatives? Are we realizing that if Israel goes the chances for democracy in the Arab and Muslim worlds will be sent back centuries?

I began the blog by juxtaposing the Alhambra and Ahmadinejad. Muslims lost the Alhambra in 1492, the year Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain. My Jewish Moroccan ancestors originate from Muslim Spain. My mother speaks Arabic and my father Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish dialect spoken by the Jews of Spain. I am both an Israeli and Canadian citizen. I live the worlds of bridges: Berber, Arab-Islamic, Jewish, and Christian European cultures. I know that coexistence is possible between peoples because I am a product of that coexistence that gives life its richness, diversity, and spiritual meaning. Yet, we cannot recreate the exact conditions of a Muslim Spanish Golden Age of the Middle Ages. Jews want their own state and have it in Israel. They have solid historical reasons for wanting such a state. They do not merely want tolerated, minority, “people of the Book” status.

On the other hand, Arabs and Muslims were great players in Middle Eastern and world history. The Ottoman Empire only died after some 500 years in the early 20th century. An Ahmadinejad or bin Laden want to restore the ancient glories of Islamic empires lost. A Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East is a reminder, a daily reminder, of what Arabs and Muslims were and what they are today. They are peoples breathing the pains of countless defeats. So they will continue their fight.

The good news is that by walking out on the Iranian dictator at the UN perhaps the world is waking up. They are waking up to the reality that Ahmadinejad and his allies from Afghanistan to Pakistan and Lebanon to Gaza are not our friends. When they will triumph, there will be no gentleness. There will be no good night. It will be lights out on democracy, parliamentarism, rule of law, pluralism of the press and political parties, secularism, and women's rights. And the entire world will lose the positive heritage of the Enlightenment.

Tamir Bar-On