Malaysia is no Friend to Israel

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

The recent disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines airplane en route from Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital, to Beijing, has brought that country to the world’s attention.

Malaysia was formed in 1963 when the former British colonies of Singapore, as well as Sabah (North Borneo) and Sarawak on the northern coast of the island of Borneo, joined with mainland Malaya to create the country.

More than half of its 30 million people are ethnic Malays, almost one-quarter are Chinese, another eight percent are of Indian heritage, and the final eleven percent are indigenous peoples on the island of Borneo.

The Malays are uniformly – and devoutly – Muslim, while the other groups practice Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and various Chinese faiths.

Constitutionally, one must be a Muslim to be considered Malay in Malaysia. The rationale for this is that Islam is considered intrinsic to Malay ethnic identity. In September 2001then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad declared that the country an Islamic state, despite its very large non-Muslim Chinese and Indian population.

The country is governed by a National Front dominated by the United Malays National Organization (UNMO), which has a hammerlock on power. It has governed Malaya, and then Malaysia, since 1957. The party is dedicated to uphold and protect the Malay culture and defend Islam.

Since its establishment, the country has rejected formal diplomatic relations with Israel, and it does not allow entry into the country by Israeli passport holders.

In 1981 Mahathir Mohamad was elected Malaysia’s prime minister, and he strengthened the country’s support for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He accused his critics of being agents of Zionism and claimed that Zionists were undermining Malaysia’s integrity and trying to destroy Islam.

In 1994, the government prohibited the screening of Steven Spielberg’s movie “Schindler’s List” on the ground that it was an anti-German propaganda film aimed at winning support for Jews.

Three years later, during a financial crisis, Mahathir attributed the collapse of the Malaysian ringgit to a conspiracy of Jews led by the financier George Soros: “The Jews robbed the Palestinians of everything, but in Malaysia they could not do so, hence they do this,” he stated.

In October 2003, soon to retire, he provided an anti-Semitic diatribe at a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference near Kuala Lumpur.

“We are up against a people who think,” Mahathir told his listeners. “They survived 2,000 years of pogroms, not by hitting back but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others.”

Mahathir added that the Jews “rule the world by proxy,” since “they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.”

That same year the prime minister’s political party, the UMNO, provided its members copies of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic book from the 1920s, “The International Jew,” which had been translated into Malay.

Now retired, Mahathir has not moderated his views. This past January, he accused Israel of treating African migrants in Israel the way Nazi Germany had treated Jews. “The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu fears the possibility of African blood being mixed with Jewish blood. The Jews must remain pure.

“There is no difference then between the Nazis and the Israelis. Their oppression of the Palestinians is another indicator. Given power Jews behave in the same way as the Nazis,” he stated.

On Sept. 21, 2012, about 3,000 demonstrators marched on the American embassy in Kuala Lumpur. They burned an American flag topped with the Jewish Star of David, incensed over a 13-minute anti-Islamic YouTube film that had been produced in California.

So it is no surprise that current Prime Minister Najib Razak was the second head of government (after Qatar’s) to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, on Jan. 22, 2013, following its eight-day war with Israel two months earlier.

Najib laid the foundation stone of the new office of the Hamas Prime Minister. The old office had been destroyed in an Israeli bombing. He also visited the site of a Malaysian-funded school in Gaza, Al-Madrasah Al-Malaziah.