Understanding the Middle East, part 18 - The Middle East and fascism

My grandfather from my mother's side, left Riga when he was 17. He arrived to "Eretz Israel" as a young Zionist pioneer. He was in the founding group of a Kibbuz called "Shefayim", in the coastal area of Israel and this is where he met my grandmother. She was a very pretty young woman and had several soothers. She used to say that he was the ugliest among them, but the most sincere in his love to her so she chose him. I don't remember much of my grandfather. He died of a chronic heart disease when I was 5. I am told that I am very much like him. A cosmopolitan spirit, an autodidact with an enormous curiosity, a self made man who was always working on some initiative. One of the few memories I do have of him is of the both of us listening on a Sony transistor-radio, a technological marvel at that time, to the broadcasts of Apollo mission launches. 

But one thing my grandfather never did, was to talk about his family. In fact, I didn't know anything about them before I was already an adult.

I sort of promised you not to talk about the Holocaust, and I am not going to. Certainly not in an attempt to squeeze some emotion. This is not my intention in this posts series. I don't want you to piety the poor Jewish people, nor I intend to use such a great tragedy as a mean for promoting my opinions or ideas. I am just going to mention it trough the story of my own family, because I do want to warn you, that fascism is not what you think it is. Fascism, the ideology that have brought to the extinct of half of the Jewish people, is a globally dangerous idea but is also a very elusive thing. It often disguise itself as something else. Some other ideology that it hijacks, and this is how it sneaks into the hearts of the masses, and when they realize that they have been deceived, it is way too late.

In the summer of 1941, the Nazis occupied Riga. They immediately started to try to incite the local Christian population against the Jews, but had very partial success. Eventually they did manage to get the local fascist movement to take action, and at the night of July 4th 1941, Latvian fascist activist, violently forced as many Jews as they could into the great synagogue of Riga and locked the doors. As the sounds of prayers were heard from within the building, they have put it on fire and burned everyone inside. Among the people who were burned alive that night, were my great-grandparents and my grandfather's sister and her family. 

I think my grandfather could never talk about what happened to his family, partly because as a humanist, he could not perceive that such evil can exist. It is very difficult for good people to understand that it can, but we must always remember that in certain circumstances, people are capable of doing the most terrible things, without even asking themselves why.

My wife's parents were born in Baghdad.  They were young children when in the summer of 1941, the Nazi consulate in the city, aided by Haj Amin al Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem who was expelled from Palestine by the British mandate authorities because of his ties to Hitler and Mussolini, arranged riots against the Jewish population, as part of their attempts for a pro-fascist coop in Iraq. My mother in law says that she can still hear the sound of the tinker bells. Mothers used to put bracelets with tinker bells on their baby's foot, and the rioters cut off the feet of the some of the babies they killed and ran with them in the streets, sounding the tinker bells.  

It is very hard to listen to such stories without reaching the wrong conclusions, but I insist that we must. We must because if we will not learn the right lesson from these terrible events, fascism will sneak on us again and again, and every time from a different direction. There is a connecting line between Haj Amin al Husseini, who in 1921 founded that National Palestinian movement, as a fascist movement from its birth, to today's Islamic extremism and ISIS. People are wondering if we are now at World War III. I would say that we are not. We are still in the aftermath of World War II. Some of it was simply dormant during the cold war and now it erupts. ISIS is a fascist movement and so was the Palestinian national movement, founded by Al Husseini. Just as the Nazis have hijacked the German National ethos, Muslim fascism hijacked Islam. It is using a false but ears pleasing rhetorics just like the Nazis did. It presents itself as the protector of the oppressed, just like the Nazis did. It promises return to the old glory days, Just like the Nazis did. It is driven by the same ideas and is using the same methods. It is stemmed in the attempts of Nazi Germany to meddle in the British dominated Middle East that their effects were never completely uprooted. 

No amount of darkness can beat darkness. Only light can beat darkness. This is the only true lesson that should be learned from the terrible things that extremism can bring people to do. When extremism is met with another kind of extremism, both mutually empower one another.  Promising a victory over "our enemies" while preaching ideas, similar to theirs, is exactly the kind of deception that we must always be on the watch against. The only effective weapon against fascism and other forms of extremism is doubt. Doubt , As Otto Quangel said, is like throwing sand into the machine. Doubt is the only protection that freedom and democracy have against tyranny and terror. Always doubt your own convictions. Always doubt your leadership and the purity of its intents. Always try to engage others by raising questions and doubts. If they truly intend to do good, they will not be offended, and if they have evil motives, this is the way to expose them. If we will not act in this way, we may find ourself once more, wondering how we could let terrible things happen.