David Parsons, November 13, 2003

Leave it to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, described by a New York Times columnist as "about as forward-looking a Muslim leader as we're likely to find", to express today’s prevailing mindset in the Islamic world regarding "the Jews".

"The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy", Mahathir informed leaders from 57 Muslim nations gathered at a recent summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. "They get others to fight and die for them."

Though considered a modernizer, the retiring Malaysian ruler protested the Jews as an enemy "who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented... socialism, communism, human rights, and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong -- so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries..."

The audience rewarded Mahathir with a standing ovation. In it sat not only despots and dictators, but also such moderate, pro-Western rulers as King Abdullah of Jordan and President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia.

Afterwards Hamid Karzai, Washington’s handpicked president of Afghanistan, hailed his comments as "an eye-opener to a lot of us and . . . what the Islamic world should do".

Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher proclaimed the speech "a very, very wise assessment... I hope the Islamic countries will be able to follow this very important road map."

For those of us who have befriended Israel, defending the Jewish people against such outrageous outbursts has become a full time job. There are so many hideous lies, slurs and insults hurled against the Jews and their besieged homeland these days, one almost does not know where to begin.

Some are so ludicrous that to pursue them amounts to an absolute waste of time, like the laced chewing gum that the Israeli air force supposedly drops over Gaza to render Arab males impotent. Or the charge that Monica Lewinsky was a Mossad plant in the Clinton White House. Or the 4,000 Jews warned to stay home from the World Trade Center on September 11.

Other slanders have to be tracked down and exposed with all due haste. The false claims of a "massacre" in Jenin, for instance. Or the recurrent charges of "war crimes" levelled at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Yet all of these allegations have to be taken seriously, even the seemingly laughable and insane. For collectively they signal a gathering darkness, a shared Muslim mentality with the most depraved purposes in mind.

In truth, there is a two-pronged strategy behind the Arab/Islamic world’s incessant demonising of Israel and the Jewish people.

The first is a form of old-fashioned "Jew baiting". The Palestinian leadership in particular has been deliberately taunting Israel with all manner of insidious charges -- genocide, massacres, ethnic cleansing. They know these accusations are untrue, but their carefully calculated doses of terrorism are intended to goad Israel into committing just such atrocities, thereby bringing the entire world down upon her head.

Sadly, Palestinian lives are utterly expendable in this struggle against the "Zionist conspiracy". Equally sad, far too many nations (especially in Europe) are tending to indulge the unbridled Jew hatred.

Thus Israel’s measured response so far to the Palestinian terror campaign is all the more commendable. They have not given the Palestinians what they actually have wanted -- a real certifiable bloodbath that would justify the international community’s flogging or even dismantling of this precarious little enterprise called Israel.

The second prong in this strategy has an even more sinister goal. The rampant Islamic anti-Semitism now being widely propagated by states and clerics throughout the Muslim world is mentally preparing their people for the day when they will attempt to wipe out Israel using weapons of mass destruction. The region already is awash with ballistic missiles and chemical and biological weapons, while several Arab and Islamic states are bent on crossing over the nuclear threshold. After reducing the Jews to sub-human status, who among them will mind if some day soon the "sons of apes and pigs" were to disappear from their midst?

In his speech before the Islamic Conference, Malaysian statesman Mahathir was indeed "forward-looking". And what he and his coreligionists see ahead should send shivers through us all.

David Parsons is the editor of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) News Service.