Egyptian Journalist On Those ‘All-Powerful Jews’

Elder of Ziyon has run across an op/ed by an Egyptian writer and editor, Anwar Al-Hawary, that attempts to explain what he describes as the o’erweening “power of the Jews” in the Western world, a power that helps explain Israel’s ability to survive against its much larger Arab and Muslim enemies. More on this antisemitic screed, that was published in the Arabic-language edition of Al Jazeera, can be found here: “The mask slips: Al Jazeera publishes classic antisemitism,” Elder of Ziyon, April 12, 2024:

I [Elder of Ziyon] don’t often see Al Jazeera in my surveys of Arab media antisemitism. Usually they are careful to only say they are against Zionists, not Jews. But a new op-ed, written by Egyptian writer and editor Anwar Al-Hawary, lets the mask slip.

The article surveys the history of Zionism and justifies European antisemitism, distinguishing it from normal European xenophobia.

He says that persecution of Jews by Europeans in the 19th century was nothing special – European colonialists oppressed lots of people around the world.

But the Jews who suffered persecution at the hands of antisemitic regimes or groups in Europe were not living as a backward people eking out an existence in distant lands. The Jews were living as fellow citizens of those who sought to persecute them, and culturally were not backward — unlike the peoples in Africa and Asia whom the British and French and Italians colonized — but, rather, were just as advanced as those who tormented them.

According to Anwar al-Hawary:

But the difference between Jews and non-Jews – among the peoples who were subjected to European violence in the nineteenth century – was not in the persecution itself, nor its type, nor its size, nor its extent. The difference was in a fundamental idea: The Jews are the only people who have experience, coexistence, and mixing with Europe, for several centuries, Jews and Europe were not strangers to each other from across borders. This coexistence gave the Jews sophistication in dealing with Europe. The Jews excelled in making money, just as they excelled in science, the arts, philosophy, music, and literature. They also excelled in the skill of social organization. They also excelled in the game of political communication, exerting pressure, influencing, and gravitating towards power, wealth, and influence.

Ah, yes. Jews and Money. Not just Money, but Mastery in the Making of it. Isn’t that what the Protocols of the Elders of Zion lamented: a cabal of Jewish bankers who supposedly controlled the world. Anwar Al-Hawary does describes Jews as a remarkable people, who excelled in so many areas, and it is for that reason that non-Jews must be wary of them, must recognize their superabundant talents that threaten the wellbeing of others and, of course, always keep in mind the Jewish desire to dominate all other peoples. This, of course, is classic projection by a Muslim analyst. So the antisemitic Al-Hawary has no trouble admittng that Jews “excelled in science, the arts, philosophy, music, and literature.” But this cause not for admiration, but for alarm. And what’s more, according to Al-Hawary, unlike those colonized in Africa and Asia by the European powers, the Jews had lived for many centuries among Europeans, and understood how to deal with them, even how to master them. The Jews not only excelled in many fields — the arts, literature, music,philosophy, and science — but they also “excelled in the game of political communication, exerting pressure, influencing, and gravitating towards power, wealth, and influence.” So the Jews knew how to control the countries of the Western world by influencing and manipulating its political class, even as they also wielded economic power out of all proportion to their numbers. For Al-Hawary, the Jewish will to dominate is real and, especially for Muslims unversed in such ways, dangerous.

Even in light of persecution, the Jews were an influential and powerful force that provoked envy, hatred, and provocation. The strength of the Jews was one of the reasons for the violence directed against them, while the weakness of other peoples was the motivation behind Europe’s audacity to conquer the world.

Anti-Jewish feeling, or antisemitism, is according to Al-Hawary perfectly understandable. The Jews were so successful that they elicited “envy, hatred, and provocation.” Violence — those pogroms, those persecutions, those blood-libels, those extermination camps —all were a reaction to Jewish power, to Jewish success.. What else could people threatened by that frightening Jewish power do except strike back with violence?