Hatred, Arab Style

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

When reservist Shmuel Meiri was attacked by Arabs in Ramallah on December 14, 1994, the photographs taken of the faces of his assailants convey a hatred of visceral and demonic proportions. To appreciate how much Moslems hate Jews, consider first what Moslem Chechens think and feel about Russians.

Writing on the subject in The New York Times (December 18, 1994), Steven Erlanger quotes two celebrated Russian authors, Tolstoi and Lermontov. Tolstoi writes of the Russian destruction of a Chechen village: "The emotion felt by every Chechen, old and young, was stronger than hatred. It was not hatred, it was a refusal to recognize these Russian dogs as men at all, and a feeling of such disgust [and] revulsion ... that the urge to destroy them, like the urge to destroy rats, venomous spiders, or wolves, ִwas an instinct as natural as self-preservation."

Lermontav summarized the Chechen in the Russian imagination this way: "Their god is freedom, their law is war ... Their hatred is as boundless as their love." That this boundless hatred describes the feelings of Muslims toward Jews is evident in the faces of those Arabs who attacked Shmuel Meiri.

If further evidence is wanted, let me remind the reader of how Syrian president Hafaz Assad celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. He had Syrian militia girls killing four-foot snakes with their teeth, blood running down their cheeks. The pieces were then roasted and served to Syrian militia men. The men subsequently twisted off the necks of puppies and drank their blood. This is what Arabs and Muslims think of and feel toward Jews.

Postscript: May 2008

And now Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wants to yield the Golan Heights to Syria for “peace.” This suggests that Mr. Olmert and people of his ilk are either stupid or mentally deranged. In Olmert’s case, however, it may be that he is simply trying to distract public attention from suspicions of corruption that would prompt a less shameless person to resign from office even if he were innocent.

(Published in December 1994 with a 2008 Postscript)