A mistaken perception has prevailed in public opinion
which posited that as the peace process is unfolding and the Arabs get to
know Israel and Jews more closely, the anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist and
anti-Israel stereotypes that were rampant in Arab thinking, and
consequently in their media and publications, might recede before they
disappear.
In fact, experience since Sadat's Peace Initiative of
1977 and up until the present negotiations with the Palestinians and the
Syrians has shown, that those hateful stereotypes far from shrinking, on
the contrary have been expanded and elaborated, drawing on "first-hand
knowledge" to confirm and solidify the conventional derogatory
attitudes that had taken root in Arab and Islamic thinking vis-à-vis
the Jews.
Already in Sadat's times, when the Camp David
negotiations showed signs of difficulties, Prime Minister Begin was
likened in the Egyptian press as a "Shylock". Today, Tishrin,
the mouthpiece of the Syrian regime, denies the Sho'ah and accuses Israel
of "Nazi conduct" at the same time that it seeks to obtain
far-reaching Israeli withdrawals from the Golan Heights.
"Schindler's List", a movie which had nothing to
do with Israel and Zionism, has been banned in the entire Arab world,
because it "proves" the veracity of the Sho'ah, at a time when Arab
countries, including those at peace with Israel, hail as heroes deniers of
the Holocaust such as Garaudy of France. Anti-Semitic broadsides are rife
in the Egyptian as well as the presses of all the rest of the Arabs, which
lend prominence to the Blood Libel, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and the other classical, European-originating, trappings of anti-Semitism.
