Posted on 04/30/2002 1:44:29 PM PDT by SJackson
There is a wonderful phrase in Arabic which I would like to share with you, if I may: "Ayoha al-motsaeb, al satheg, al-fahesh, al-makhodo'a!" Beautifully alliterative, isn't it? Roll it around your tongue a while. Shout it at the neighbours - if you feel so disposed - and see if the dogs bark and the caravans move on.
It means "naive, deluded, self-righteous, egregious bigot". But it sounds much better in Arabic and any journalist, you might think, would be proud to write it on the page.
So it is a mystery, then, why the respectable Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram decided instead to describe Tom Paulin simply as an "intellectual". Perhaps they thought my phrase contravened the journalistic convention of neutrality - but then, "intellectual" is hardly a neutral phrase either, as it implies that Paulin is generally in the habit of - at the very least - thinking about stuff before he opens his mouth.
Paulin was interviewed by Al-Ahram about the situation in the Middle East. Among other things, he opined that the US-born Jewish settlers should be shot dead. "They are Nazis, racists," he said, adding - unnecessarily, you might argue - "I feel nothing but hatred for them."
He also pronounced that the state of Israel had no right to exist, that Tony Blair's government was "Zionist", and that the suicide bombers were an expression of "deep injustice and tragedy". However, he advised that more conventional guerrilla warfare would, tactically, stand a greater chance of success than murdering busloads of civilians - an approbation which, I'm, certain, convinced young Palestinian militants in Jenin and Hebron and Ramallah to reluctantly unbuckle their explosive belts and settle back down in front of the television.
I know that the Middle East is a crisis in which so many of us feel impotent and bereft of answers; we blunder around blindly in search of help or guidance. And I suppose, like the famous chimp at the typewriter who will, given infinity, produce by random chance, Macbeth, we, in our infinite bewilderment, will, by the same procedure, eventually end up with Paulin as our mentor or pedagogue. Maybe this is why Al-Ahram approached him.
Or perhaps I've got it all wrong and, over in Egypt, Paulin is revered as a sage and a prophet and his views frequently sought out. The only way to find out for sure was to ring Al-Ahram and ask them.
Except that, at Al-Ahram in Cairo, they'd never heard of Paulin. "Don't know him. Is he a person?" I was asked, mysteriously. They told me to ring the London office and track down the interviewer, Omayma Abdel Latif.
But they hadn't heard of Paulin in London, either. "Who's he?" they said, again. They'd heard of Omayma, though, which was promising. Omayma's based in Oxford, where she's studying at the university, they explained.
Ah, well, now we have either a coincidence or a possible answer to our conundrum. Because Paulin lectures in 19th- and 20th-century literature at Oxford University, a post from which, some have argued, he should be removed for his latest intemperate opinions.
Perhaps they met in one of those fragrant cloisters, Paulin brimming with fury, Omayma desperate for a bit of copy. Omayma hasn't returned my call just yet so we will simply have to wonder about the fortuitous meeting which resulted in so much outrage.
Anyway, I forwarded to Al-Ahram a list of names of alternative Middle East pundits should they, one day, tire of Paulin. Lee Bowyer, Dale Winton and Kelly Brook were my top three. I also offered them 800 words on why the Egyptian government are corrupt and incompetent jackanapes, but, oddly, this semi-official newspaper demurred. "We publish things when they are based upon hard facts, not just, how can I say, bad feeling." Oh yeah?
Still, the Paulin business shook me out of my Wasp-ish complacency. I'd been inclined to dismiss as paranoid repeated complaints from British Jews that there was a new mood of anti-semitism abroad: I was wrong.
Paulin will undoubtedly claim that his remarks are not anti-semitic, but merely anti-Zionist. He may even believe that himself. So might the others, generally from the left, who, when cross-examined about their opposition to what they call Zionism, reveal a dark and visceral loathing of Jews.
There is a theory, loosely based on Freud, that the left's demonisation of capitalists was simply a displaced anti-semitism; and it's true that the old communist caricatures of big businessmen were almost identical to the Nazi depiction of the "filthy Jew", with his business suit, venal expression and relentless appropriation of other people's money. But the whole thing seemed too neat, too glib a theory, to be convincing.
But I can see the displaced anti-semitism at work in the catch-all, ill-defined term "anti-Zionism". And if you doubt it look at Paulin's words - not the stuff about the rights of Palestinians, which we might all agree with - but, quite simply, in this: "hatred" and "shot dead".
Don't silence the BNP A short while ago I had a bit of a spat with the journalist Nick Cohen over a piece he wrote for the New Statesman. Nick argued, in pretty strong terms, that the BBC had been wrong to interview the BNP leader Nick Griffin and suggested that some of us here in Shepherd's Bush, and me particularly, were in thrall to the parties of the far right.
I thought he was wrong on both counts, and still do. Screaming "fascist!" at Nick Griffin and then running away seems to me an inadequate plan of action.
So, having rather noisily stood my ground, I was delighted, a day or two later, to receive a phone call of support.
It was the man from the BNP.
"I just thought I'd say that you were absolutely right," he said, "and that the attack on your programme was disgraceful."
"Oh, um, yes... " I mumbled in embarrassment and tried to extricate myself from the conversation. But the man from the BNP had one more point to make.
"Did you notice, by the way," he asked, conversationally, "the name of the chap who attacked you?"
"Well yes, of course... Nick Cohen, he's a well-known journalist."
"Yes, I'm sure he is. But, you know - 'Cohen'? Cohen. Funny, isn't it, that it always seems to be someone with a name like that?"
And so that pleasant feeling of rectitude, which I'd enjoyed for three days, dissolved entirely and was replaced by shame.
The Jews, though, come well down the BNP list of things to get rid of, these days. "Countdown to a British Burnley!" shouts its website in the north-west, looking ahead to the local elections where they've got loads of grinning candidates up for election.
The image that the BNP promotes there - among the angry, disillusioned and dispossessed white voters of Burnley, Blackburn and Oldham - is of a brave, campaigning party against which the media and the despised major parties collude to defame and silence. Like the people they claim to represent, they are the victimised underdog, excluded from the political process.
They are, of course, helped in this when the media and the major parties actually do conspire to defame or silence them. That's why, I think, shouting "fascist!" and "Nazi!" and howling in outrage whenever the BNP is given airtime won't work: it plays into Nick Griffin's hands.
Ignore them and the only public critique of BNP policies will come from the BNP itself. This, I would suggest, is a bad idea.
Last year the party achieved a 23% share of the vote in one Burnley ward. Perhaps if the true nature of its policies were exposed, rationally, it might be prevented from actually taking a seat or two come May 1.
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