Arabs should slam attacks on Jews, says analyst

December 2003

BEIRUT - Two synagogues were bombed in Istanbul and a Jewish school set on fire in France was the provisional outcome of the last month’s attacks on Jewish communities around the world.

Two other bombings were added to the November toll of violence. Two bombs hit HSBC bank and the British Consulate a week later.

In the midst of the so-called war on terror and the spiral of bloodshed in occupied Palestine, several Arabs found such attacks a convenient retaliation. But others had a different perspective.

“The same way we condemn the Israeli army raids on innocent Palestinian civilians, we should condemn those attacks as fervently as possible. Otherwise we would be the biggest hypocrites of history,” said Salim Abu Majdi, a Jordan-based Palestinian political analyst in a phone interview with Alternative.

“The only benefactor of those attacks was the Israeli government, which was the first to condemn those attacks: A jumping-on the opportunity scenario that the Israelis are very good at,” he added.

Abu Majdi recounted how during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Israeli army bombed Beirut’s Jewish Quarter of Wadi Abu Jamil in Beirut in order to force the small Lebanese Jewish community to flee to Israel. “This behavior was a continuation of the terrorist attacks Israel had masterminded to force Jewish minorities in Iraq and Egypt to go to Israel.”

Since Lebanese Jews enjoyed several privileges, the community did not leave the country until in 1984 when kidnapping of prominent Jewish personalities occurred and the community started dwindling in Lebanon. 

“Besides the killing of innocent civilians, the attacks on Jewish communities around the world accelerate the process of immigration to Israel, and most of all confirms the Israeli motto ‘Jews are under attack, give them a home to live in peace.’”

According to the Palestinian analyst, Arabs should not give Israel the excuse to prove that Jewish communities outside Israel where threatened instead of trying to re-evaluate the figures of the Jewish holocaust, “as we usually do.” -- K.S.