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Arab World Needs to Stop Banning Books and Movies about Jews

[GlobalPost] H.D.S. Greenway - Thirty years ago I was crossing the Allenby Bridge from Israel to Jordon to interview King Hussein, the father of the present monarch. In those days, foreign correspondents stationed in Israel routinely had two passports: one for Israel only and another for the rest of the world. My last posting had been Southeast Asia, and I still had a Laotian visa in my rest-of-the-world passport. "Ah Hah!" said the Jordanian immigration official. "An Israeli stamp!" I tried to explain that the stamp was from Laos and that the writing was Sanskrit, not Hebrew. He was having none of it. In frustration, I pulled out my Israel-only passport and showed him what Hebrew writing really looked like. His face expressed horror as he urged me to put it away, then quickly waved me through. When Lee Griggs, a reporter for Time Magazine, took up his post in Beirut more than 40 years ago, his household goods were held up at customs because of a Yale glee club record album. The seal of Yale University features Hebrew writing which, in the 18th and 19th centuries, was considered a language of learning, like Latin and Greek. Griggs had to come down to the customs office and convince the authorities that the record was not composed entirely of Zionist music. To ban the work of Jewish writers or books about Jews is a societal self-mutilation which the Arab world should put behind it. Like it or not, the Jews are as much a part of the Middle East as the Arabs and all the banning in the world will not refute that.
2009-05-08 06:00:00
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