Rob Satloff

Rob Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is an expert on Arab and Islamic politics as well as U.S. Middle East policy (full bio here). His new book, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories of the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, will be our main topic of discussion.

Satloff lived in Morocco for two years, and traveled to eleven countries in his quest to uncover this story. It is "the story of the Holocaust's long reach into the Arab world," and the stories of Arab heroes who saved Jews from the Nazis, and an attempt to answer a bothering question: why weren't these heroes recognized as such in the many years since the Holocaust?

As usual, you can send your questions to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il.

Dear Rob

This will be the last one - I also got it from an Arab reader, but he
is not talking about the Arabs and the Holocaust but rather about the
Jews and the Holocaust. He was writing his mail after reading our
dialog, and an article I wrote about the speech by Binyamin Netanyahu at the GA, in which he said that Iran is like Germany in 1938.

Here it is: "I am sick and tired of hearing Israeli leaders, thinkers,
politicians, journalists and regular civilians using the Holocaust or
the plight of the Jews to attack us the Arabs or the Iranians. This is
becoming nauseating. You want to attack Iran, just go ahead and do it. Stop using your dead and the Jews who have been victims of the
Germans, to achieve political and military goals."

Do you understand what he is talking about? What should I tell him?

Best

Rosner


Dear Shmuel,

If this Arab gentleman sent his statement to me, I would reply as follows:

I am sorry you are nauseated by the fact that the Holocaust continues to be a point of reference for the Jewish people. Perhaps the very different historical experience of Jews and Arabs helps explain your distaste for the hold that the Holocaust still has on the Jewish psyche.

I understand the fact that there have been many painful and unhappy episodes in Arab history - invasions, colonizations, occupations, etc. But from the Crusaders to Napoleon to more recent generations, the invaders, colonizers and occupiers have come and gone - and the Arabs have remained. The outsiders may have sought to control your territory and abscond with your wealth but they never contemplated the possibility of exterminating you. Indeed, even when outsiders dominated you and you found yourselves second-class citizens in your own lands, there were others beneath you. And, it is important to point out, these were often Jews.

The Jewish experience is very different. In different places and in different ways, the threat of extermination has been a very real, ever-present fear. In two millennia of wandering, without the benefit of an anchor of territory to call their own, Jews were continually at the mercy of others, who often did not display much mercy at all. The lowest point of this continual flight from extermination came only a few decades ago, when the most culturally advanced society in the world led a campaign to use the greatest technology of the age to kill as many Jews as rapidly and efficiently as possible. In the history and memory of a people that dates back many centuries before the Prophet Muhammad, the events of World War II happened just yesterday. This is not, as you imply, ancient history.

But it is not just the Jewish people and the citizens of the Jewish state who carry with them the still vibrant images of the Holocaust as a context for today's politics. Many of the enemies of Israel themselves relish in conjuring up the painful memories of that experience. Indeed, the fact that the President of Iran himself revels in denying the Holocaust, all the while threatening to annihilate more than half the Jewish people by "wiping Israel off the map" as he works feverishly to acquire the means to implement his goal, is reason enough for Jews, Israelis, and all civilized people to focus anew on the continuing relevance of the Holocaust.

In short, your plea is for Jews to stop harping on the Holocaust and just get on with their lives; you want Israelis to stop reliving the Holocaust and just get on with politics. The sad reality is that the world isn't letting that happen, even if Jews and Israelis wanted to. For a people that wants to live a normal life, the world is not a normal place because * even with a state of their own * the threat of extermination remains. I agree that this is an abnormal reality but it is reality nonetheless.

Shmuel, thank you for giving me this opportunity to engage with you and your readers this week. In my book, "Among the Righteous," I have tried to open a candid discussion with Arabs about their own relationship with the Holocaust and - thanks to Haaretz - I am pleased that we have been able to carry on that conversation in cyberspace.

Regards,

Rob



Rob

This is from a reader in one of the Arab countries, who asked that we keep his identity to ourselves:

"I don't agree with your guest that the Arab world doesn't acknowledge
the Holocaust. This is completely misleading your readers. Books about
the Holocaust are best sellers in the Arab world, and Holocaust movies
have all been seen in our part of the world.

Now having said that I can ask my question:

How relevant is it to try to explain the Holocaust to Arabs, when
Palestinians are being traded as terrorists all the time and killed
daily by israeli bombs?"

Your reaction?

Best

Rosner

In essence, your question is "in a region characterized by conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, what is the relevance of talking about the Holocaust today?"

In my view, there is great relevance to talking to Arabs about the Holocaust, in general, and about the role played by Arabs during the Holocaust, in particular.

First, there can be no denying the fact that a large slice of Arab popular culture is obsessed with Jews and the Holocaust. Walk past any bookseller's stall in Cairo, Amman or other Arab capitals and you will see row after row of books on these subjects. Many feature swatikas morphing into Stars of David, grotesque caricatures or Jews, or other anti-Semitic themes. My target audience is not the authors of these books, who are "lost," but the purchasers, who by and large are profoundly ignorant of culture and history. Candid, accurate, direct discussion of Jews and the Holocaust can try to counteract this hateful trend.

Second, it is important to remember that the Holocaust has itself been used as a weapon in the ideological war between Arabs and Israelis. To deny or minimize the Holocaust is a key feature of a larger strategy to delegitimize Israel. It has been used by secular nationalists (such as Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, whose doctoral dissertation - from which he has since distanced himself - questioned the numbers of Jews killed) as well as radical Islamists (including Hamas, which kept a clear statement of Holocaust denial on its website). Arabs and Israelis have a deep and painful political dispute WITHOUT invoking the Holocaust; acquiescing in such Holocaust denial or Holocaust relativism only makes it worse.

Third is the importance of responsibility. Whatever your view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, there is certainly a difference in how Israelis and Arabs debate the conflict among themselves. Among Israelis, there is a vigorous, lively and at times brutal internal debate as to who is responsible for the conflict and why. Among most Arabs, there is virtually no such debate - rather, the debate is more about who can be blamed for the current sorry state of affairs: America, Israel, Lord Balfour, etc. In my humble view, building a culture of responsibility - not just about the Arab-Israeli conflict but about all aspects of civic life and public policy - should be an important priority for Arabs. As a non-Arab, my interest in advancing this is because I believe it may be a necessary precondition for a lasting peace. In this respect, engaging Arabs in open and honest discussion about their role in Holocaust-era persecution of Jews - both their role in aiding the persecutors and their role in helping protect Jews from the persecution - can have great value today.

Arabs, who revere history so much, should not relegate the past to the past - it can and does have a powerful impact on the present, too.

Regards,

Rob



Dear Rob

This will be the first one from a reader:

Hello Dr. Satloff

I'm trying to understand the lesson you wanted to share with us when
you wrote this book. Is this a way for you to show that "not all Arabs
are bad", or do you think it's important to recognize these people who
saved Jews as not to differentiate between Europeans and Arabs.

History is always interesting, but does it have any political lesson
we can learn?

Thank you

Dov Rosenthaler

Shmuel,

Here's my reply:


The original "target audience" for my book was Arabs, not Jews. My goal was to find a hopeful, positive and constructive way to lance the boil of denial and ignorance which characterizes much of Arab discussion about the Holocaust and to bring Arabs into the universal discussion of the Holocaust and its continuing relevance. I settled on the idea of finding an "Arab righteous" as what I hoped would be an effective tool to achieve that goal.

Along the way, as I learned about the depth and breadth of Holocaust-era persecution of Jews in Arab lands (especially in North Africa), my project expanded. To understand the role of "Arab righteous" one had to understand the context. That includes both the role of "Arab perpetrators" and the overall political, social and cultural environment in which the persecution occurred.

And then, when I looked at what I found about both the narrow history of the Arabs and the Holocaust and the broader story of the Jewish experience in Arab lands during the Holocaust - I asked myself the question "why have these stories not been told for more than 60 years?" Hence, my concluding chapter, which tries to explain the complex set of reasons why neither Jews nor Arabs examined this history for the past two generations. In addition to explaining the situation within Arab societies, I also try to shed light on tensions in intra-Jewish relations, too - on relations between Sephardim and Ashkenazim as well as relations between remnant communities of Jews in Arab lands and exile communities of Jews from Arab lands.

So, I hope to avoid a clichéd explanation as the rationale for this book. There are many political lessons for Arabs, for Jews, and especially in the post-9/11 world for anyone who believes, as I do, that promoting tolerance is an issue of national security.

Regards,

Rob



Dear Rob

Your reply made the next question almost mandatory.

You wrote about "the morphing of "Jews" and "Zionists" in the minds of
Arabs - does this mean that you think the Arab world today is anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, or both? Can these two things can be separated? Do we want them to be separated?

Best

Rosner

Shmuel,

Thanks for your question because it first gives me an opportunity to dispel a myth.

You asked me whether I think "the Arab world today is anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist or both?" The myth is that there is such a thing as "the Arab world." As I write in my book, of all of the ideas that stand out after a quarter-century studying the Middle East, one of the most important is that "Arab culture" is really many cultures, that "Arab people" are really many peoples, and that "Arab countries" are filled with a combustible mix of ethnicity, religion, nationality and race that produces the range of human passions. The "Arab world," as such, does not exist - an Omani has very little in common with a Tunisian; a Lebanese Christian has very little in common with a Sudanese Muslim. Of course, various ideologues would like to spread the image of an "Arab world" or a "Muslim world" but we in the West accept this context at our peril; we live and thrive in the world of nation-states and have no interest in advancing the concept of an "Arab world" or a "Muslim world." Indeed, to view the Middle East this way is to cede the ideological high-ground and lose half the "battle of ideas" even before we start.

As to the specific question, there is no doubt that the political class in Arab countries is largely anti-Zionist - i.e,. most do not accept the proposition that the Jewish people have a right to exercise sovereignty in part or all of the former mandatory Palestine. At the same time, a large proportion of these people, in my view, have come to reconcile themselves to the fact of Israel's existence and have no desire to expend lives or fortunes to challenge it. Indeed, for a large proportion, the question of Israel is of intellectual, but not practical, interest. (This could change if many Arabs came to believe that Israel was vulnerable.) At the same time, there are those in the political class of the three regions of the Middle East - Levant, Maghreb and Gulf -- who recognize the positive role Israel plays in regional security and who appreciate Israel. They are quiet about this but this feeling is real and something to be nurtured. (I say "political class" because, in my view, the vast majority of people in Arab countries are animated by such more pressing issues as housing, sustenance, education and health care than they are the high politics of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.)

In general, my experience is that the urgency of the "Israel/Palestine" issue connects to geography - i.e., the closer to the conflict, the more enduring the practical interest in its outcome. So, for example, Israel's neighbors care a lot about the conflict and have strong emotions about it that manifest themselves on virtually a daily basis but the interest in the conflict among people in the more distant countries of the Gulf and North Africa is episodic and driven by the news cycle. In other words, Bahrainis and Moroccans do not wake up in the morning worrying about what is going on in Gaza, unless it is the lead item on al-Jazeera. I doubt that a majority of Egyptians do either, but the percentage is higher. It is highest of all in Jordan, both for geographic and demographic reasons.

To be sure, there are many who do wish to act on their anti-Zionism and try to destroy Israel. This remains, regrettably, a very real objective, especially for radical Islamist extremists and their fellow travelers. Some of them believe this objective needs to be their most urgent priority; others - the more dangerous group - believe they should first try to win influence and power in existing states, often via allegedly "democratic" means, and use that position eventually to carry on their anti-Zionist campaign. Israel and its friends need to be alive to this danger.

What probably grabbed your attention about my first posting was my observation about the morphing of Arab anti-Semitism and Arab anti-Zionism. Basically, the story is this: the common Arab narrative is to make a distinction between Arab opposition to Israel and traditional Arab friendship toward Jews. According to this narrative, Arab-Jewish relations were wonderful until 1948, when Israel's founding soured everything. Even so, this narrative goes, Arabs have done everything they could to separate their enmity toward Israel from their relationship toward Jews.

The reality is much more complex. First, life for Jews in Arab lands may, historically, have been far better than it was for Jews in Christian lands but - given the horrors of the Inquisition, York and the pogroms - that yardstick is pretty low. Apart from the "golden age of Andalusia," which was defined by both time and space, Jews generally lived as tolerated second-class citizens in most Arab lands, paying special taxes and suffering with special restrictions on residence, occupation, attire, etc. There were also sporadic outbursts of violence against Jewish communities in many Arab countries that dot the history of the modern Middle East.

Second, even a cursory look at post-1948 history and popular culture in Arab states shows that anti-Zionism frequently - even consistently - spilled (and continues to spill) over into anti-Semitism. The fact that so many hundreds of thousands of Jews left Arab lands in the years after 1948 - with a large percentage not making aliyah to Israel - is prima facie evidence of this blurring of anti-Jewishness and anti-Zionism. But it has many other manifestations, such as the use of the term Yahud as a common synonym for Israelis -- and the appalling frequency with which the adjective "Nazi" is applied for both. In this regard, it is impossible to separate out the phenomenon of anti-Zionism in Arab societies with the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

With the decline and disappearance of Jewish communities in Arab lands - the only two Arab countries still to have more than 1000 Jews are Morocco and Tunisia - this process will deepen. Fewer and fewer Arabs will live with Jews and see them as real human beings; instead, Jews will only be known as caricatures. This cannot be a positive trend. But are all Arabs anti-Semitic? Definitely not. And that ray of hope needs to be nurtured, too.

Rob

Dear Rob,

My first question is a more general question, as to help the many readers who haven't yet have a chance to read your new book. You answer this question in the book in much detail, but a shorter version is essential before we can start our discussion: Were there any Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and why didn't we know about it until now?

Best,
Rosner

Did any Arabs save any Jews during the Holocaust? I believe the answer is "yes." Moreover, I believe that the number of Arab "righteous" is probably proportionate to the number of other non-Jews who saved or rescued Jews, relative to the time, place and range of circumstances in which Arabs found themselves.

First, it is important to recall that both World War II in general, and the Holocaust in particular, have a special Arab component.

For several months, Arab lands were the focal point of the war. In late 1942/1943, for example, the major battleground of the European theater was Tunisia, which was the scene of heavy back-and-forth fighting between the Allies and the Axis powers.

Similarly, Jewish communities in Arabs lands were not spared the German-spawned campaign to persecute Jews. In lands governed by Germany's French Vichy collaborators and Italian Fascist allies, these Axis powers implemented anti-Jewish laws, at times even with greater vigor than in Europe itself.

Vichy deported to labor camps in North Africa more than 2,000 European Jews, often deep in the Sahara desert. Many of these Jews were then dispatched to "punishment camps" for special torture. Italy rounded up thousands of indigenous Jews in especially brutal desert camps in Libya, where hundreds died.

And one Arab country - Tunisia - sustained for six months a full-fledged German occupation that included round-ups of Jews, confiscations, hostage-taking, deportations, executions and the imposition (throughout much of the Tunisian hinterland) of wearing the yellow star.

Throughout this ordeal, most Arabs were indifferent to the fate of the Jews, a substantial minority participated - often fully and willingly - in the anti-Jewish persecution, and a small but powerfully important number helped and even rescued Jews.

In my research, I found stories of Arabs who welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews' valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property.

I found remarkable stories of rescue, too. During the heat of battle in the Zaghouan valley, west of Tunis, a group of Jewish internees at an Axis labor camp banged on the farm door of a man named Si Ali Sakkat, who courageously hid them until liberation by the Allies. In the Tunisian coastal town of Mahdia, a dashing local notable named Khaled Abdelwahhab scooped up several families in the middle of the night and whisked them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the threat of rape by a German officer.

And there is strong evidence that perhaps the most influential Arab in Europe - Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris - saved as many as 100 Jews by providing them with certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation. In my view, these men, and others, were true heroes.

Why haven't we heard these stories of both rescuers and perpetrators over the past 60 years? I believe there are two main reasons: first, Jews did not look too hard and second, Arabs did not want to be found.

By the first, I mean that the intra-Jewish conflict between Ashkenazim and Sephardim (especially, in Israel); the intra-Sephardic tension between remnant communities and expatriate communities; the ideological as well as physical separation between Israel and Arab states; and the obvious fact that the Holocaust was overwhelmingly a European phenomenon all combined in such a way as to limit the interest and activity of Jewish and other Holocaust historians and institutions in researching the on-the-ground, real-life experience of Jews in Arab lands during the war. While some historians have focused on the topic, it has been largely ignored.

By the second, I mean that the Arab-Israeli conflict has been so toxic in many Arab societies that it has not only led to the morphing of "Jews" and "Zionists" (after all, how else can one explain the exile of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands post-1948?) but it has transformed perceptions of otherwise noble deeds such as helping Jews during the war into political incorrect actions.

Throughout my research, I was stunned by the extent to which both officials and ordinary Arabs alike were either not happy to learn that their fathers or grandfathers saved Jews or were unhelpful in assisting me to prove that it was so.