LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: CONFRONTING ARAB 'JUDENHASS'
By Arlynn Nellhaus

For some reason, lately every time I want to type the year 2001, it comes out 1001.

Could it be because recent Hitlerian declarations of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have thrown me back in time to when Christians said the same hateful things about Jews?

We hadn't a moment's doubt in Israel that Assad would make political hay out of Pope John Paul II's recent visit.

The Pope came to shore up ties with Christians living in a predominantly Moslem land, to reach out in friendship to Moslems and to preach peace and reconciliation.

But he no sooner laboriously descended from his airplane when Assad took it upon himself to deliver his thousand-year retro speech blaming Jews for everything but the zit on his cheek.

The Pope stood by silently and then spoke in platitudes about peace and harmony. On the bright side, at least he didn't kiss Assad, the way Hillary Clinton kissed Suha Arafat after she accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian children.

Later, the Pope allowed himself to be used for more propaganda by going to the church in war-demolished Kuneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

The Syrians claim that Israelis destroyed Kuneitra during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. But others say that the Syrians destroyed it as they withdrew, so that it could be used exactly as it was that day -- to condemn the Israelis.

Granted, Syrian Christians are a minority living under a ruthless dictatorship and the Pope had to be careful not to make their plight even more precarious. A well-known Arab saying, often quoted in this part of the world, is roughly translated as: "First we kill the Saturday people [the Jews], and then the Sunday people [the Christians]."

The declining Christian population living under Islam tells the story. Christian Arabs simply have found it pleasanter to live elsewhere. In the Sudan, Moslems turn Christians into slaves.

So it is understandable that the Pope did not say anything that would endanger Christians.

But did he really have to remain silent while yet more anti-Semitism was heaped on Jews by Arabs?

Could he not have said something, later, to erase Bashar's spread of ignorance and hatred?

The Pope returned from his whirlwind Middle Eastern and Mediterranean tour and gave his weekly homily on Sunday in the Vatican. And still there was no response to Assad's words, even indirectly.

And the silence reminds Jews painfully of another Pope who kept silent – Pope Pius XXII (The Pope of Silence) who said nothing against the Nazi extermination plan.

In contrast, the Greek Orthodox archbishop in Athens, upon learning that the Germans had deported the Jewish community of Salonica, distributed fake baptismal records to Jews and directed Greeks to protect them.

Unfortunately, his brave efforts came too late, for most of Greek Jews lived in Salonica. Upwards of 95 percent of them lost their lives.

But Greece had a Christian religious leader who made an effort, unlike Pope Pius. And now only silence comes from Pope John Paul.

It's a pity, too, because his visit last year to Israel made a great impact toward reconciliation. Was that only the mirage of good PR?

Meanwhile, Assad is complaining, "How could he be an anti-Semite, when Arabs are Semites?"

He is being disingenuous.

The term "anti-Semite" was coined by an anti-Semite, Wilhelm Marr in 1879. He wanted to replace the German expression, Judenhass (Jew-hater), with a more socially acceptable term -- to express the same idea.

Marr wasn't thinking of Tunisians when he came up with the statement. The term was meant only for Jew-hatred.

Sorry, Assad, you remain an anti-Semite, even if you are a Semite, because the term is a euphemism.

Syria claims that Assad's words were no worse than anti-Arab remarks of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual head of the Shas Party in Israel. But Yosef retracted his ugly words about Arabs -- and said he was speaking only about Arab terrorists. Assad has not retracted anything.

Besides, what comes out of the mouth of the spiritual head of a minority political party has far fewer ramifications than what comes out of the mouth of a head of a sovereign government standing beside the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope John Paul left Syria repeating his call for reconciliation and tolerance. (Some might see this as a response to Assad's remarks).

But the next day, Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas, perhaps encouraged by the vagueness of the Pope's response to Assad, said on Lebanese television, "When I see a Jew before me, I kill him. If every Arab did this, it would be the end of the Jews."

So much for reconciliation and tolerance.

What did the Pope's visit accomplish, except to give Assad a chance to demonstrate how removed he and those close to him are from reality and how steeped in violent hatred they are?

On the other hand, if the world finally wakes up to the depth of Arab "Judenhass," perhaps some good can emerge from the Pope's voyage to Syria. Meanwhile, Israel won the European Basketball Championship after defeating Greece on May 13. Eight thousand Israelis flew to Paris for the game.

A quarter of a million Israelis from all parts of the country gathered in Tel Aviv the next night to welcome Maccabi-Tel Aviv home. Israelis were deliriously happy.

After the murder a few days earlier of two 14 year-old boys (one also an American citizen) while on a hike – a murder in which the boys were so horribly mutilated, they were unrecognizable, Israelis desperately wanted something to cheer over.

And in contrast to American sports celebrations, nobody rampaged afterwards. Nobody vandalized stores. Celebrants just went home, happy.

On the other hand, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs reveled in self-made misery by marking Nakba ("Disaster") Day on May 15, the Gregorian calendar anniversary of Israel's independence 53 years ago.

They mimicked Israel by sounding a siren in the Palestinian self-rule areas to call people to attention.

Israeli sirens sound for two minutes on Remembrance Day in memory of soldiers who have fallen, and for victims of terrorism. Not to be outdone, Palestinians sounded their sirens for three minutes.

But Palestinians' marking the day as a "catastrophe" reminds the world that Arabs continue to live in a fantasy world of anti-Israel "Judenhass". Palestinians, too, could be celebrating 53 years of independence -- if anti-Semitism did not drive them.

Israel was ready to accept a Palestinian state in 1948. All the Palestinians had to do then was accept the UN's partition of the land into Jewish and Arab areas. And all they and their fellow Arabs from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq had to do was not start a war.

Instead, the Arab nations combined to drive Israel into the sea in the 1948 War of Independence – which too bad for them, they lost.

It was the Arab world -- not Israel -- that created the "disaster" and "catastrophe" of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, still called "refugees" some 53 years later.

The conflict also caused the displacement of an even greater number of Jews from Arab lands, who were resettled in Israel, and are known as Sephardim (the most hard-line voting bloc in Israel). But as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said of the Jews forced to flee from lands in which they lived before the Arab invasion -- "We don't call them refugees – we call them brothers."

Arlynn Nellhaus is a former Denver Post reporter now based in Jerusalem, and the author of Into the Heart of Jerusalem, and a freqent contributor to The Idler.