NationStates Jolt Archive

Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (Hardcover) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586483994/bookstorenow79-20)

Yes, it's an Amazon blurb but I haven't found any site that explicitly went into detail on the book, which I heard about on public radio shows.

Let's face it. Islamaphobia is a fad today, and it even goes all the way back to the days of World War 2 where Muslims are popularly portrayed as Jewicidal Jihadis who went out of their way to deliberately collaborate with the Nazis in the Final Solution.

This book will open quite a few eyes and maybe even poke them out of that Evil Muslim mentality. Arabs and Jews are brothers, and this book illustrates how Arabs actually went out of the way to shelter Jews from the reach of the Holocaust.

I'd love to be an optimist, but even this book won't stop the nonstop 24/7 Muslims Are Evil Masturbation Party that's happening on NSG, much less the Western World. But I did want to bring up something to disprove the Jewicidal Jihadi stereotype.

Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (Hardcover) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586483994/bookstorenow79-20)

Yes, it's an Amazon blurb but I haven't found any site that explicitly went into detail on the book, which I heard about on public radio shows.

Let's face it. Islamaphobia is a fad today, and it even goes all the way back to the days of World War 2 where Muslims are popularly portrayed as Jewicidal Jihadis who went out of their way to deliberately collaborate with the Nazis in the Final Solution.

This book will open quite a few eyes and maybe even poke them out of that Evil Muslim mentality. Arabs and Jews are brothers, and this book illustrates how Arabs actually went out of the way to shelter Jews from the reach of the Holocaust.

I'd love to be an optimist, but even this book won't stop the nonstop 24/7 Muslims Are Evil Masturbation Party that's happening on NSG, much less the Western World. But I did want to bring up something to disprove the Jewicidal Jihadi stereotype.

It's seems the objective of the book you are talking about is for the Arab world to remember that it doesn't need to hate the Jews... Not that the western world needs to remember to love the Muslims. From your own link, a critic of the book in the Washing post says:

Robert Satloff is a man with a mission. He believes that if contemporary Arabs knew about Arabs who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, they would reject the Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism that are now so prevalent in the Arab/Muslim world. This book tells of his quest to track down the history of those Arabs' deeds.

Satloff begins by relating the oft-ignored story of how Nazi Germany, Vichy France and fascist Italy exported their anti-Semitic policies to North Africa. They deprived Jews of their civil rights, confiscated their property, forced them to do slave labor and established concentration camps across the Sahara. Had Germany prevailed, North African Jews would have been annihilated.

Many Arabs willingly -- and, according to survivors, gleefully -- played an essential role in this persecution, serving as camp guards, clerks, policemen, foremen, overseers and torturers. Some assisted Germans as they went door to door hunting Jews. One Arab volunteer military unit, after being flown to Berlin for training, fought with the Germans in Tunisia. Some Arabs were so closely aligned with the Nazis that they fled to Germany when the Allies landed.

But Satloff has discovered "noble, selfless deeds" by Arabs. In normal times, such acts would have been routine, but during World War II, routine kindness was in short supply. When Vichy officials offered Algerian Arabs windfall profits if they took over Jewish property, not a single Arab in Algiers participated. (Vichy had no trouble finding willing Frenchmen.) On a Friday in 1941, religious leaders throughout Algiers delivered sermons warning Muslims against participation in schemes to strip Jews of their property. Some Jews were able to get false identity papers at the Grand Mosque in Paris. In 1940, two months after the Germans entered Paris, the Germans warned the head of the mosque to cease assisting Jews. In short, Arabs behaved like many Europeans during the Holocaust: Some helped Jews; others persecuted them or benefited from their persecution; the majority looked the other way.

The most interesting aspect of this story is the reluctance of contemporary Arabs to acknowledge noble past acts. Satloff speculates that Arab attitudes toward Jews are now so hostile that to acknowledge the help given Jews by preceding generations would inflame Middle Eastern passions. It would run counter to the prevailing myths in the Arab world about the Holocaust, which range from crude Holocaust celebration (in which Hitler is a hero) to Holocaust denial.

But can you deny the point that the perceived universal loathing of Jews by Arab Muslims is part of the demonization party that's going on today? Also, Satloff also wrote the book primarily to emphasize how the people put in charge of keeping memories of the Holocaust alive neglected to search for any Arabs who went out of their way to rescue Jews- thus indirectly contributing to the Evil Muslim Myth that's a global celebration today.

But can you deny the point that the perceived universal loathing of Jews by Arab Muslims is part of the demonization party that's going on today? Also, Satloff also wrote the book primarily to emphasize how the people put in charge of keeping memories of the Holocaust alive neglected to search for any Arabs who went out of their way to rescue Jews- thus indirectly contributing to the Evil Muslim Myth that's a global celebration today.

I haven't read the book , I'm not trying to pretend to know the objectives the author had in mind when he wrote it, but the critic actually says it was to help fight Muslim loathing of Jews today.

Perhaps, from the examples in the book, the Palestinian Muslims did not loath the Jews sixty years ago, but they do today? I still don't see how your message in the OP is being conveyed by that book.

I haven't read the book , I'm not trying to pretend to know the objectives the author had in mind when he wrote it, but the critic actually says it was to help fight Muslim loathing of Jews today.

Perhaps, from the examples in the book, the Palestinian Muslims did not loath the Jews sixty years ago, but they do today? I still don't see how your message in the OP is being conveyed by that book.

Because the book shatters the myth that Muslims at best did nothing to help Jews in plight and at worst actively contributes to their oppression and destruction. And that perception as you know is a justification that feeds part of the constant cries of Muslims being Anthropomorphic Evil.

If anything, the current views of Muslims in the Middle East on Jews is a long term result of Western political meddling and corrupt leadership resorting to a convenient scapegoat to deflect attention from their own shortcomings. Things like the Suez Canal invasion, the overthrow of Mossadegh and the propping up of the Shah left a bad taste of the West in the Middle East's mouth and when you combine that with the United States' support of Israel, it sets up a climate where Israelis and Jews are perceived to be willing accomplices of the oppressive Western powers, the way many French saw the members of Vichy France as Nazi collaborators.

Then throw in corrupt regimes and opportunistic Jihadis and religious figures who see "Blame the Jews" as a cheap and reliable method of gaining and keeping power with a mass that mostly lives near the bottom of the standards of living and are likely illiterate to boot. And Israel tends to help their viewpoints whether they mean to or not with their de facto apartheid policies and heavy handed collective punishment aimed at Palestinians.

What you get is the modern Middle Eastern attitude on Israeli Jews and the reluctance to acknowledge Arabs helped them in the past.

I'm sorry, I thought you were saying that the modern misperception of the Muslims was that they are haters of jews and violent etc., that they are not guilty of being Jewicidal Jihadi stereotypes.

But now it looks like you are saying that even if they are Jewicidal Jihadis that it is the Westerners fault that they are so they are still not to be held accountable for being Jewicidal Jihadis?

That didn't seem to be your message before, and it would seem to be even further away from the purpose of that book.

Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (Hardcover) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586483994/bookstorenow79-20)

Yes, it's an Amazon blurb but I haven't found any site that explicitly went into detail on the book, which I heard about on public radio shows.

Let's face it. Islamaphobia is a fad today, and it even goes all the way back to the days of World War 2 where Muslims are popularly portrayed as Jewicidal Jihadis who went out of their way to deliberately collaborate with the Nazis in the Final Solution.

This book will open quite a few eyes and maybe even poke them out of that Evil Muslim mentality. Arabs and Jews are brothers, and this book illustrates how Arabs actually went out of the way to shelter Jews from the reach of the Holocaust.

I'd love to be an optimist, but even this book won't stop the nonstop 24/7 Muslims Are Evil Masturbation Party that's happening on NSG, much less the Western World. But I did want to bring up something to disprove the Jewicidal Jihadi stereotype.

Unfortunately the 'hatred' of Jews is derived from nothing logical - all the boosk in the world won't change it; heck, in the Qur'an there are several points where there were treaties signed with Jewish tribes. Its too bad that some take one or two events and use it justify their hatred.

I'm sorry, I thought you were saying that the modern misperception of the Muslims was that they are haters of jews and violent etc., that they are not guilty of being Jewicidal Jihadi stereotypes.

But now it looks like you are saying that even if they are Jewicidal Jihadis that it is the Westerners fault that they are so they are still not to be held accountable for being Jewicidal Jihadis?

That didn't seem to be your message before, and it would seem to be even further away from the purpose of that book.

:rolleyes:

Yeah, thanks for trying to twist my message. Modern Middle East Muslims don't have positive views of Jews, nobody denies that. Did I say that justified their behavior at all? Did I say that Western meddling in their history makes it acceptable for them to behave that way?

It's that meddling combined with convenient scapegoating that lead to the current situation, where both sides actively deny they actually had something in common long time ago.

not sure Balderdash is trying to intentionally twist your message. He may just be a little slow on the uptake.;)

:rolleyes:

Yeah, thanks for trying to twist my message. Modern Middle East Muslims don't have positive views of Jews, nobody denies that. Did I say that justified their behavior at all? Did I say that Western meddling in their history makes it acceptable for them to behave that way?

It's that meddling combined with convenient scapegoating that lead to the current situation, where both sides actively deny they actually had something in common long time ago.

That, and the double standard - "we want democracy, but we'll have some of the middle easts greatest tyrrants as out allies"