March 31, 2002
The newspaper of the Palestinian Authority leadership, al-Hayat al-Jadida,
contained an article this month, not the first of its kind, which attempted to
delegitimize the Jewish connection not only to their own history, not only to
their own land, but to their very religion, Judaism, and its leader, Moses.
The article attempts to square the circle of the Moslem belief in the
prophecy of Moses and the Torah with the modern, vicious anti-Semitism of
official Moslem Arab leadership today.
The author, a religious leader, resolves the contradiction by claiming,
“The Jews are liars when they relate themselves to Moses, of blessed
memory.”
How does he know that the Jews are lying when they claim Moses as their
prophet? Simple: “Not only was Moses respectable, but he is among the best of
the prophets and his Torah is a lighthouse, guide and bright light; whereas, the
Jews are the opposite of all this.”
Unlike Moses, according to the PA newspaper, the Jews are “the
instructors in crookedness and the purveyors of ruin, destruction and
corruption, accursed traders for whom the ends justify the means. That is the
reason they manage to achieve so many of their goals using women and
money, especially if they need to take advantage of people of weak character.”
The writer attempts to base his thesis on the Quran, thus giving his anti-Semitic
rant a theological justification.
According to al-Hayat al-Jadida, “Great Allah spoke the truth when He
said of them , ‘And they are the purveyors of corruption on earth.’ It
seems that that trait will characterize them till the end of days.”
Not only does the Quran, according to the PA newspaper, back up his
anti-Semitic view of the Jews, but the Jews themselves encourage the
character traits attributed to them by the Quran among themselves. The author
writes, “The greatest of them teaches it to the least of
them, in order to educate him in the ways .”
