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Arab intellectuals are not fulfilling their
obligation to their people
“Dear Dr Pipes,
Permit me to rant, with the memory of the captured terrorists who were
assigned to kill school children fresh in my memory. Arab societies are
fraught with hate for the Jews. This we all know. But who are the
victims of this hate and who is the guilty party? Of course the Jews are
victimized by this deliberate hate campaign against them, yet Jewish
people are generally not exposed to Arab hatred on a daily basis. And in
any case, could easily find cover and protection.
The greater victims are the Arab masses. They are driven to perpetrate
the worst form of racism the modern world has known and for their
troubles, they remain one of the most under-achieving people on earth.
The Arabs masses are taught that the world consists of three types of
people, Muslims who are righteous, Jews who are sly bandits, and
everybody else. Everybody else must undergo a personal battle to prevent
themselves from coming under the spell of the Jews. Arab intellectuals
of course, know this not to be true. Yet their own people that they are
trained to inspire and uplift are stuck in an ignorant world and the
Arab intellectuals are not in too much of a hurry to pull them out.
There is a pervasive tolerance by Arab intellectuals for ridiculous
discourse about Jews and to a less extent, Americans. It's as if the
collective Arab intellectual community has decided that the best way to
get back at the Jews for 1948 is to allow their own masses to live in
the dark ages, mired in conspiracy theories and flights of fantasy. Have
the intellectual Arabs simply said to themselves, the Jews took part of
our land therefore we shall not allow our people to grow intellectually,
to understand the nature of humanity of this earth. We will not uplift
our own people, so they become a brainless hate filled mob forever
cursing the Jew. At least until the Jews of Israel come to terms with
Palestine and sign a just deal?
Authors in the Arab world seem to have free intellectual reign to write
any garbage conspiracy theory about the Jews that they want. Not a peep
from the Arab intellectuals. Books and publications interpreting the
Torah, informing Arabs what the Rabbis really meant by this and what
Rabbis ask Jews to do about that. No anti-Semitic web site is complete
without an "interpretation" of the Jewish Torah. What are these Arab
intellectuals really trying to cover up? Is it the only way a society
beaten by war can cope with defeat?
In our western tradition, intellectuals generally protect the integrity
of diverse religions. They stand up for the minorities, the weak, the
oppressed. Books are expected not to hark on the weaknesses of the weak.
We expect more from our educated elites. We allow taxi drivers and short
order cooks to talk silly talk on a small scale in front of friends and
customers, yet rarely does this stuff every hit a printing press.
Intellectuals who stumble upon hate theories usually shrug off this
stuff, perhaps even a polite laugh for a poor slob who works hard for a
living and never really had a chance to go to school. Intellectuals have
an obligation to remind people that theories that attack or harm other
people are held to a very high standard of proof and consistency.
Usually too high a standard for any hate literature to earn any
credibility.
Yet what is happening in Arabia? Intellectuals who know a lot better
seem to not only to turn a blind eye to hate media, they often encourage
it. Such is their revenge to the Jews and their crime against the Arab
people. They are deliberately allowing the Arab people to live in the
dark ages, denying them the thinking tools they need to advance in this
world.”
Jonathan Pfeffer, December 5, 2003 at 22:03
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