The ever-present shadow of Israel looms large over the goings-on in the Islamic world, sometimes for real and at other times only in imagination
Fixation with Israel haunts the Ummah (pan-Islamic community), sometimes credibly so, other times imagined rather creatively. Even the distant, multicultural and multi-confessional (with Muslim majority) Malaysia insists on its passport with the inscription: “This passport is valid for all countries except Israel.” With no territorial or commercial disagreement besetting any Israeli-Malaysian dimension, yet former Malaysian leader Mohammad Mahathir had called it a “State of robbers”, “the enemy” and described Jews as “hook-nosed”, “rule this world by proxy” etc. At the heart of this deep-rooted angst is the emotive and unresolved issue of Palestine by a narrow stretch of country, Israel, with a population of less than 7 million Jews, that irks and rankles many in the global Ummah of nearly 2 billion. Even as the Ummah itself remains mired in disagreements of sectarian, ethnic and political nature — almost all within attribute the overt or covert hand of Israelis a la ‘Zionist Conspiracies’, that contextualises their perceived problems. Indeed, Israeli spy agency Mossad does play a hyper-intrusive role in safeguarding its sovereign interests, but perhaps not as fantastically as popularly imagined.
Three recent, simultaneous and completely unrelated incidents in distant lands illustrate this Israeli-Jewish fascination. A US citizen of Pakistani origin, MIT-trained neuroscientist Dr Aarifa Siddiqui, currently convicted for 86 years in the US on charges of shooting at US Army and FBI officers while in custody in Afghanistan, was at the centre of a hostage drama. The intensely followed and disputed trial had all the elements of intrigue, counterespionage and murky trails and the Pakistan Government was forced to defend her case publicly, in vain. However, during the long-drawn court proceedings, she had tried to fire her lawyers as they were Jewish and she explicitly wrote to the courts that Jews were “cruel, ungrateful and back-stabbing” people! Recently, a gunman in a small town in Texas took four hostages at a synagogue, including the resident Rabbi — the hostage taker’s singular demand was the purported release of the incarcerated ‘Lady Al Qaida’ Dr Aarifa Siddiqui. The telltale symbolism and conflation of the synagogue, rabbi and hostage drama for a convicted terrorist of Pakistani descent picked up from Afghanistan —usual admixture, somehow commingling Israel/Jews into the same, perhaps unwarrantedly.
Around the same time, as part of the longstanding sectarian shadowboxing between the Shia Iranian leadership and the Sunni Saudi Arabian royal family, an unprecedented accusation by Gen Alireza Tangsiri, Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy, seeks to shame the other. He implied that the Saudi royal family is descendants of Jews who fought the holy Prophet, “We cannot bear to see injustice in a Muslim country that is perpetrated by the Zionists and the seeds of the Jews”, adding, “These are the very same Jews, and I’d better say Zionists, whose hearts have never aligned with Islam, and even with the Prophet in his time”. Again, the political blame game within the Ummah was sought to be settled by invoking the familiar watermarks of Zionism and Jews, following the taint and hate associated with the same, irrespective if factual history or the modern-day State of Israel has anything to do with the same.
Concurrently, another eerie spectre of the fabled Israeli connect (more indelibly so this time) unfolded within the Ummah’s irreconcilable adherents with the mysterious landing of a private plane belonging to the notorious Libyan warlord, Khalifa Haftar, at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. Embroiled in violent clashes with various factions (backed by various international powers) for the spoils of Libya in the post-Gadhafi era, Khalifa was supposed to be supported by powers like Syria, Russia and, incredulously, even the UAE, who would rather have a Gadhafiesque dictator in Khalifa to keep the extremists out. So, while Khalifa’s nemesis and current Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Mohammed Dbeibeh is believed to have recently met Mossad director David Barnea to ‘normalise’ relations with Israel — yet it is the surreal landing of Khalifa’s plane in Israel to seek its support for his presidential candidature, that speaks volumes of the Israeli acquiescence in the Ummah’s muddle. The clear sign of the importance of garnering Israel’s support in any domestic power bid, even if thousands of kilometres away, is unmistakable.
Israel officially denies any pernicious role in the tumult within the Ummah, though it has made strategic inroads with the now-extremism-wary Sheikdoms in the Arab world. It has tellingly opened an Embassy in the UAE and plans to do so in Bahrain and Morocco soon (it already has one in Jordan and Egypt). Saudi Arabia’s heir apparent, Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS), also had to unconvincingly deny reports that he last year secretly met the then Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Red Sea port of Neon. Clearly, a lot of backroom plotting, machinations and emotions are vested in the ‘Israeli connect’ that underlie the regional turmoil — how much of it is real or imagined, remains unanswered but what is true is that the issue of Palestine is on the backburner, and Israel looks stronger than ever.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. The views expressed are personal.)
