This is a guest post by Point of No Return
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators now taking to the streets in the West are being emboldened to shout the old slogans familiar to Jews on the receiving end of rioting in Arab lands in the 1940s: ‘The Jews are our dogs’, they are chanting in Arabic. But the media remain deaf, blind and dumb to the antisemitic agenda of these protestors.
Kevin Libin of the Canadian National Post noted that last Saturday in Montreal a thousand or more protestors marched downtown chanting ‘The Jews are our dogs,’ and cheering not one, but two, banned Islamist terrorist groups — Hamas and Hezbollah — in the company of labour leaders and politicians.
” It didn’t make front-page news. It didn’t make back-page news. In Canada, this is, it seems, not news”, Libin wrote on his blog. “The best our country’s journalists could muster was a story in the Montreal Gazette mentioning only that the crowd shouted “Stop the Madness” — the agreeable slogan that did make the headline — “Israel Assassin” and “Viva Viva Intifada.” (See this video). “These may have counted among the least remarkable of the oft-time violent and anti-Semitic cheers that rang out loudly on rue Ste. Catherine that day”, Libin writes. He had the translation of Arabic slogans corroborated independently.
Buried in the 20th paragraph of the Gazette report, the representative from the Quebec-Israel Committee admitted that some chanting “called for the genocide of Jews.” Libin adds: “My Arabic translator tells me there is some chanting of the widely known “Khaibar, Khaibar Ya Yahoud” cheer, which alludes to the massacre of Jews by Mohammed’s troops at Khaibar, near Medina. (It promises: “the army of Mohammed will return.”)
In New York on 3 January protesters chanted numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slogans, including “Palestine is our Land, the Jews are our Dogs;” “From the River to the Sea Palestine is Arab [land];” “Shame, Shame USA! Bush, How Many Jews are in the Government?;” “Israel is a Racist State, Built on Lies, and Blood and Hate;” and “Khaibar, Khaibar ya Yahud, jaysh Muhammad sawfa ya’ud!
About two years ago Joseph Abdel Wahed, a Jew from Egypt, noticed this disturbing trend. He was aghast to hear Palestinians in the streets of San Francisco chanting proudly in Arabic and without fear of being detected, “Al Yahud Kelabna: The Jews are our dogs”.
“My first reaction to the Palestinian chanting was one of disbelief, then I felt a mixture of fear, anger and heavy-heartedness, ” Abdel Wahed writes.” Terrible memories cascaded before me taking me back to when I was a young boy, growing up in Egypt. These memories included Egyptian mobs descending upon the Jewish quarter of Cairo chanting Al Yahud Kelabna, followed by violence that left some Jews dead and injured, and the community dazed.
“Egyptian Muslim mobs no longer do this, because there is no longer an Egyptian Jewish community to speak of. We once were over 80,000. Today there are fewer than 50 Jews remaining in Egypt. Indeed, once thriving Jewish communities in ten Arab countries were likewise cleansed. Today, virtually no Jews remain in the Arab or Muslim world. (..)
“They clearly felt certain that we are “their” dogs. In Arab culture, dogs are considered filthy, dirty beasts, and negotiating with “dogs” is not an option. Historically Jews were often identified this way because for centuries, we were living as a subjected people under the dominant culture of Islam.
“Today, the Arab and Muslim worlds are the most anti-Semitic of any region. Much of their media – TV programs, cartoons, editorials – promote the kind of anti-Semitism not seen or heard since the time when Hitler walked this earth.
As long as Palestinian and other Arab children are taught such dehumanizing hatred of Jews, there is no hope for them, and there is no hope for us. Peace in the Middle East will not come with the next ceasefire (…), but only when tolerance, compassion, understanding and respect for religious freedom become the dominant value in Arab society.
“When Arab young people honestly feel too ashamed to chant about Jews being “our dogs,” then there will be real hope.”
Kevin Libin comments: “For whatever reason, we are seeing rallies in major cities calling for genocide, celebrating terrorism and spouting hatred against a minority group — but the media is missing the story. Maybe calling out certain groups makes Canada’s media uncomfortable, or maybe they have become inured to the extreme radicalization of Palestinian supporters here. Unless we start watching these demos a lot more closely, preferably with Arabic translators in tow, this trend cannot end well for either the media, or for the country. “
