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Writing in yesterday’s Irish Times(sub req) Declan Kiberd deals with the current crisis in Lebanon and as a culture critic who specialises in the representation and misrepresentations of race and identity it is not surprising to find that he’s tackling how the Arab is represented in the Western Media. It’s not surprising also, considering his intellectual proximity to Edward Said, who established his reputation mapping out how the Orient was represented in the Western literary tradition.

Kiberd argues that now that Israel has ‘become the smiters of history after centuries of being the smitten’ the traditionally negative image of the Jew as ‘pariahs, outcasts, and ‘homeless wanderers’ has been transferred to the Arab people. But while making this suggestion he also manages to perpetuate another jewish stereotype, that of the Jewish cabal acting globally to influence the most powerful for their own mendacious ends.

Kiberd rolls out his argument about how the political satirizing of the Jew has been transferred instead to the Arab: “The real anti-Semites today are those right-wing cartoonists in certain papers who portray the Arab in the traditional role of a Semite, complete with hooked nose, swarthy face and evil "plotting" grin.”

Although anti-semitism is usually associated with anti-jewish sentiments, it is interesting to note that the term semite refers, in part to a common ancestry between the Palestinians, Syrians and ethnic Jews.

This is from the Wikipedia entry for Semite: “Though no significant common mitochondrial results have been yielded, Y-chromosomal links between Near-Eastern peoples like the Palestinians, Syrians and ethnic Jews have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from other groups (see Y-chromosomal Aaron). Although population genetics is still a young science, it seems to indicate that a significant proportion of these peoples' ancestry comes from a common Near Eastern population to which (despite the differences with the Biblical genealogy) the term Semitic has been applied”.

Of course, Kiberd’s argument ignores the fact there are plenty of people still applying the old Jewish stereotype to Israelis. At the moment there’s an exhibition of Religious Satire in Tehran that was set up as a reaction to the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper last February. The exhibition is based on the results of a competition run by Hamshahri, Iran’s largest newspaper, to ‘find the 'cleverest' cartoons satirising the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis in the Second World War’.

The exhibition itself is co-ordinated by the Iranian House of Cartoons, who’s director Massoud Shojai Tabatabai, asked: 'Why is it acceptable in western countries to draw any caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, yet as soon as there are any questions or doubts raised about the Holocaust, fines and jail sentences are handed down?'.

One of the cartoons, according to the Observer report, shows: “Ariel Sharon, the incapacitated former Israeli Prime Minister, is wearing an SS uniform. A man with Jewish side locks is depicted as a vampire drinking from a container marked 'Palestinian blood'. An Arab figure is impaled to the ground by the absurdly long nose of a man in a black hat characteristic of orthodox Jews and marked 'Holocaust'.”

But while I agree with much of Kiberd’s argument there’s one aspect which surprised me. It’s when he speculates about the US Administration’s motives for supporting Israel in this latest action:

“The current Lebanese adventure, orchestrated by a US regime led by right-wing Christians, suggests two things. One: that there are powerful pro-Israeli backers of the Bushites who will bankroll the Republicans in the next election. Two: that there may well be an anti-Semitic element in that Christian right, which sees its leader embarked on a new "crusade" against "Islamic fascism".”

Number One suggest that the Jewish stereotype has been moved from Israelis to Arabs while at the same time perpetuating another Jewish stereotype, naming that there is a cabal of Jewish industrialists bankrolling the US administration and arm twisting them in to helping Israel at every turn. This is more akin to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion than something you would expect from a world class intellectual who, I’m sure, has a very sophisticated grasp of current geo-politics.

In his defence, it is also a claim that is made in the controversial London Review of Books article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (that I’ve dealt with before).

While it clear that there is a well funded Israeli lobby in the US trying to get the ear of the US Presidency, specifically through the offices of the lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) it has also been shown that by themselves they aren’t powerful enough to change US Policy. It is more likely that it is the US Administrations Foreign policy that is driving the Administration’s strong support for Israel. In fact, there are some in Israel who resent being used as a pawn to achieve some of America’s wider aims.

Fred Halliday, writing in Open Democracy argues that the current war between Israel and Hizbollah should be seen in a wider view both geographically and politically:
[This is about survival in] “a newly-emerged political and strategic space that encompasses India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as Iran, the Arab world and Israel. As with the United States-led regime changes in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), so with the Lebanon war of 2006 – the causes also belong to, and the effects will be felt throughout, this region: from Beirut and Tel Aviv to Baghdad, Kabul, and Mumbai.”

The US needs stability in the region, and probably more so because they have in part created that instability themselves. They, with their actions in the Middle East have opened the genies bottle (from installing the Shah in Iran supported by military aid, to sponsoring Saddam’s war against Iran to maintaining Military bases in Saudi Arabia there is much that the US is now responsible for in the current crisis).

And now, according to a report produced by the London based think-tank Chatham House Chatham House the US Administration’s policy regarding the War on Terror has helped Iran spread its influence well beyond its normal sphere:
[from the Executive Summary]: “In applying pressure on Iran to cease support for Hizbullah, to refrain from hostility towards Israel, to resist meddling in Iraq and to abandon any thoughts of nuclear military capability, the United States hopes for the cooperation of Iran’s regional neighbours. However, Iran has successfully cultivated relations with its neighbours, even those Arab and Sunni states which fear its influence, and is in a position of considerable strength.”

No wonder then that Iran now refuses to suspend nuclear activity.

It seems then that the interest of Israel and its ‘security’ are secondary in the minds of US hawks who, using the neo-con fig leaf of spreading democracy in the Middle East, are much more concerned about containing an even bigger and wider crisis.

At the end of his Open Democracy article Fred Halliday makes the point:
It is in this multidimensional context, rather than in the memory of earlier bilateral, Arab-Israeli wars, that the current Israeli-Hizbollah conflict must be seen. In the perspective of a longer history it can be said to resemble the European war that began in 1914 – another regional conflict long-planned even if suddenly, almost casually, detonated; and one which, once started, drew all the major states of the area into its wake, with dire consequences for all and catastrophic for many. It is a sobering comparison, but nothing in the current pattern of events across greater west Asia makes it extreme. There may be possibilities for progress in the present moment, but currently it is the dangers that are far easier to see.

Much as I admire Kiberd his analysis that the US Administration’s Foreign policy is motivated by displaced anti-semitism is a little off the mark.

LIST OF COMMENTS ....

	1. Written by Guest/Visitor     Wednesday, 23 August 2006
I found this to be an interesting counter-argument to the notion of an overarchingly powerful pro-Israel lobby in US policy: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm

	2. Written by Guest/Visitor     Wednesday, 23 August 2006
That last comment was I, Hugh Green.

	3. Written by Guest/Visitor     Wednesday, 23 August 2006
Yea, I should move this shebang to Wordpress so people can leave their names. Excellent article, thanks. If I read it first perhaps post would have been shorter. Something like Dear Professor Kiberd please read this http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm