An antisemite who has long loathed Israel
LAST WEEK, the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad telephoned Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, to express his government’s strong support for the Palestinian cause.
Significantly, Mr Mahathir chose Palestinian Islamism and not Palestinian nationalism — Hamas, rather than Fatah — to demonstrate Malaysian solidarity. His telephone call came shortly after his controversial anti-Jewish — as opposed to anti-Zionist — remarks at the Oxford Union.
As a radical Islamist, the 93-year-old premier came of political age after 1945, an era of anti-colonial struggles for independence, but also during the conflict between Zionist Jews and Palestinian Arabs which ended in the establishment of a Hebrew republic and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Arabs.
Although there were quiet contacts and growing trade relations, Malaysia has never recognised Israel and refused to establish diplomatic relations, and Mr Mahathir’s approach has long outstripped that of many Arab leaders towards Israel in its uncompromising virulence.
Whereas most Arab leaders have studiously avoided attacking Jews per se, he demonstrated no qualms about plunging into a racist cesspit for over half a century.
Tunku Abdul Rahman, the founder of the Malaysian Federation, hoped to establish diplomatic relations with Israel on independence in 1963. Indeed Golda Meir, Israel’s foreign minister at the time, sent him a congratulatory telegram — but internal Islamist opposition and rivalry with its neighbour, Indonesia, stopped any progress. Billboard featuring Mahathir Mohamad in 1995, his 14th year in power
He banned Malaysian showings of