The Warped Mirror: 'The Arabs will change'

President Shimon Peres hosted his second "Facing Tomorrow" conference in Jerusalem last week. In an interview with Newsweek shortly after the conclusion of the conference, Peres acknowledged the many problems and challenges Israel was facing, but also re-iterated his oft-stated conviction that peace in the Middle East is possible. At one point, he noted: "Some people ask, 'What will happen to Israel in the coming 100 years vis-à-vis the Arab world?' And my answer is, the Arabs will change. Not us. They have to join in a new age."

There are of course many Israelis who don't quite share their president's optimism, but some recently published books make the case that the kind of change Peres is expecting is already taking place in the Arab world. One of these is Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows. However, as a sympathetic yet critical review in The New York Times has pointed out, Wright's own research actually gives little reason to think she is right to believe that "a budding culture of change" at the grassroots level is about to bring meaningful and constructive reform to the Middle East. 

When it comes to the attitudes toward Israel prevalent in the Arab world, it is certainly difficult to detect any positive change. Particularly dismal to contemplate is the fact that even the two Arab states to have signed peace agreements with Israel have shown little interest in any normalization of ties. If we just look at the news from Egypt and Jordan over the past few weeks, the evidence seems clear: instead of any sign of change, it's the same old story of deep-seated hatred toward Israel and Jews.

A just-published survey commissioned by The Israel Project (TIP) to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan "shows intense Jordanian hostility toward the Jewish state." While the survey relies on a small sample and has a margin of error of +/- 6.1% , this hardly matters with results like these:

The poll found that the Jordanian public, comprised largely of Palestinians, is opposed to accepting and engaging Israel. Not a single respondent gives Israel a favorable rating, a level of rejection that GQRR [i.e. the polling firm] has never seen toward anyone or any entity in its 29-year history as a firm. In Jordan, Israel gets 99 percent very cool ratings (ratings between 0-25 on a scale that ranges from 0 to 100)."

Commenting on these results, TIP president Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi highlighted the role of the Arab media in fostering such attitudes and argued that it "is critical for Jordan to open up their TV shows to the reality of the many coexistence projects that are enabling Jews and Arabs to work together to create jobs and hope."

This suggestion would be even more appropriate for the Egyptian media. A recent Jerusalem Post editorial rightly criticized the fact that "Egypt's media is intensifying its abiding hostility toward Israel, ensuring that our cold peace cannot be warmed." The editorial noted that the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate has banned all forms of normalization with Israel for more than two decades, and highlighted the fact that in September, "the leading Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, the semi-official voice of the regime, issued an absolute ban on Israelis. The newspaper, arguably the most prominent in the Arab world, has hosted numerous Israelis over the decades, but henceforth no Israeli may set foot in its offices, its staff are barred from attending conferences where Israelis are present, and all other avenues of interaction are formally off-limits."

Obviously, one is left to wonder: Does this ban apply to all Israelis, or just to Israeli Jews?
Moreover, once you see how Al-Ahram reports on Israel, the picture gets even grimmer: a month ago, the paper featured a commentary on Foreign Minister Lieberman's visit in several African countries - or rather, on "Lieberman’s African schemes."

Apparently, it's completely inconceivable for the analyst who wrote this piece that Israel could have any legitimate interest in good ties and trade relations with African states. Instead, a number of sinister motivations are offered to explain Lieberman's Africa tour: supposedly, "Israel is envious of Egypt's status and prestige" and is therefore scheming to help some African countries to "implement projects ranging from water reservoirs to diversions of some of the tributaries of the Nile."

Then there are "Israel's secret wars in Africa," and Muammar Gaddafi is reported to have said that "Israel is behind much of the violence presently taking place in Africa" - including, of course, the violence in Darfur and Southern Sudan. No wonder then that there is also a hint that "international Zionist financial firms" may want to do their "money laundering business" in Africa. But the main accusation is that "Israel's ultimate goal in Africa […] is to conspire against Egypt." It's just one big conspiracy, according to Al-Ahram, and whatever happens in Africa (and everywhere else, of course) is due to sinister "Zionist machinations."

But none of this is really new, is it? Indeed, the only somewhat new aspect in this kind of story is the substitution of "Zionist" for "Jewish."

But the old-fashioned version, which makes do without lame attempts to hide behind "politically correct" anti-Zionism, has by no means been consigned to obscure publications. As the ADL reported a few weeks ago regarding the Mecca-based English-language monthly of the Muslim World League (MWL):

The May 2009 issue of The Muslim World League Journal, which is distributed worldwide, features a shocking cover story propagating conspiracy theories about Jewish control of media. The phrase 'Control of World Media' appears on the cover next to a large blue and white baseball cap - adorned with the Star of David - sitting atop a globe. The cover story, titled 'Six Companies Control the World's Media,' appears to be an updated version of an article widely circulated on anti-Semitic Web sites for several years. Based on an original piece written by William Pierce, the former head of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the article names individuals heading media companies with the epithet 'Jew' or 'Jewess.'"

The article talks about "Jewish control and distortion" of the media and "the insatiable appetite Jews have shown for all the organs of opinion control on which they could fasten their grip." Previous issues of the journal included articles with similarly racist language and content, and according to a recent report in The Jewish Daily Forward, the MWL "has been on the radars of watchdog groups for years as an alleged purveyor of extremist ideas and anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric."

Yet, as the Forward points out:

Despite this background, it was the MWL that King Abdullah [of Saudi Arabia] entrusted with the task of turning an interfaith initiative he launched last year into an ongoing reality by organizing a series of international meetings. The first meeting held outside Saudi Arabia took place in Madrid in July 2008 and was seen as a major breakthrough toward religious openness by Saudi Arabia."

Given this kind of superficial change, it was doubtlessly wise of Shimon Peres to take the long view when he raised the question "What will happen to Israel in the coming 100 years vis-à-vis the Arab world?"