Algeria Anti-Arabism is a major element of a movement known as
Berberism that is widespread mainly amongst Algerians of
Kabyle and other
Berber origin. It has historic roots in French colonialist policy propagating the
Kabyle myth, with Arabs depicted as invaders that occupied Algeria and destroyed its late Roman and early medieval civilization that was considered an integral part of the West; this invasion is considered to have been the source of the resettlement of Algeria's Berber population in
Kabylie and other mountainous areas. Regardless, the Kabyles and other Berbers have managed to preserve their culture and achieve high standards of living and education. Furthermore, many Berbers speak their language and French; are non religious, secular, or Evangelical Christian; and openly identify with the Western World. Many Berber Nationalists view Arabs as a hostile people intent on eradicating their own culture and nation. Berber social norms restrict marriage to someone of Arab ethnicity, although it is permitted to marry someone from other ethnic groups. According to
Lawrence Rosen, ethnic background is not a crucial factor in marriage between members of each group in North Africa, when compared to social and economic backgrounds. There are regular hate incidents between Arabs and Berbers, and Anti-Arabism has been accentuated by the Algerian government's anti-Berber policies. Contemporary relations between Berbers and Arabs are sometimes tense, particularly in Algeria, where Berbers rebelled (1963–65, 2001) against Arab rule and have demonstrated and rioted against their cultural marginalization in the newly founded state. The Anti-Arab sentiments among
Algerian Berbers (mainly from Kabylie) were always related to the reassertion of Kabyle identity. It began as an intellectual militant movement in schools, universities, and popular culture (mainly nationalistic songs). In addition to that, the authorities' efforts to promote development in Kabylie contributed to a boom of sorts in
Tizi Ouzou, whose population almost doubled between 1966 and 1977, and to a greater degree of economic and social integration within the region had the contrary effect of strengthening a collective
Berber consciousness and Anti-Arab sentiments. Arabophobia can be seen at different levels of intellectual, social, and cultural life of some Berbers. After the Berberist crisis in 1949, a new radical intellectual movement emerged under the name ''L'Académie Berbère''. This movement was known by its adoption and promotion of Anti-Arab and
Anti-Islam ideologies especially amongst immigrant Kabyles in France and achieved a relative success at the time. In 1977, the final game of the national soccer championship pitting a team from Kabylie against one from
Algiers turned into an Arab-Berber conflict. The Arab national anthem of Algeria was overwhelmed by the shouting of Anti-Arab slogans such as "A bas les arabes" (
down with the Arabs). The roots of modern-day Arabophobia in Algeria can be traced back to multiple factors. For some, Anti-Arabism movement among Berbers is part of the legacy of
French Colonization or manipulation of North Africa. As from the beginning, the French understood that to attenuate Muslim resistance to their presence, mainly in Algeria, they had to resort to the
divide and rule doctrine. The most obvious divide that could be instrumentalized in this perspective was the ethnic one. Therefore, France employed some official colonial practices to tighten its control over Algeria by creating racial tensions between Arabs and Berbers and between Jews and Muslims. Others argue that the Berber language and traditions are deeply rooted in the North African cultural mosaic; for centuries, Berber culture has survived conquests, repression, and exclusion from different invaders: Romans, Arabs, and French. Hence, believing that its identity and specificity were threatened, the Berbers took note of the political and ideological implications of Arabism as defended by successive governments. Gradual radicalization and Anti-Arab sentiments began to emerge in Algeria and among the hundreds of thousands of Berbers in France who had been in the forefront of the Berber cultural movement. NSW Premier
Morris Iemma said the violence revealed the "ugly face of racism in this country". A 2004 report by the
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission said that more than two-thirds of Muslim and Arab Australians say they have experienced racism or
racial vilification since the
September 11 attacks and that 90% of female respondents experienced racial abuse or violence. Adam Houda, a
Lebanese Muslim lawyer, has been repeatedly harassed by the
New South Wales police force. Houda has been arrested or detained six times in 11 years and has sued the police force for
malicious prosecution and harassment three times. Houda claims that the police's motivation is racism which he says is "alive and well" in
Bankstown. He has been stopped going to prayers, with relatives and friends and has been subjected to a humiliating body search. He has been the object of several groundless accusations of robbery or holding a knife. A senior lawyer told the
Sydney Morning Herald that the police harassment was due to the police enmity against Houda's clients and the Australian Arab community. He was first falsely arrested in 2000 for which he was awarded $145,000 damages by a judge who described his persecution as "shocking". Constable Lance Stebbing was found to have maliciously arrested Houda, as well as using profanities against him and approaching him in a "menacing manner". Stebbing was supported by other police, against the testimony of many eyewitnesses. In 2005, Houda accused the police of disabling his mobile phone making it difficult to perform his work as a criminal defense lawyer. In 2010, Houda, his lawyer Chris Murphy, and Channel Seven journalist
Adam Walters claimed that Frank Menilli, a senior
New South Wales police officer, behaved in a corrupt fashion by trying to alter
Channel Seven's coverage of the Houda Case by promising Walters inside information in exchange for presenting the case in the police's favour. Walters regarded the offer as an "attempted bribe". The latest incident occurred in 2011, when Houda was arrested for refusing a frisk search and resisting arrest after having been approached by police suspecting him of involvement in a recent robbery. These charges were thrown out of court by Judge John Connell who stated "At the end of the day, here were three men of Middle Eastern appearance walking along a suburban street, for all the police knew, minding their own business at an unexceptional time of day, in unexceptional clothing, except two of the men had hooded jumpers. The place they were in could not have raised a reasonable suspicion they were involved in the robberies"
France France used to be a colonial
empire, with still great post-colonial power over its former
colonies, using Africa as a reservoir for labor, especially in moments of dire need. During
World War I, reconstruction and shortages made France bring thousands of North African workers. Out of a total of 116,000 workers from 1914 to 1918, 78,000
Algerians, 54,000
Moroccans, and
Tunisians were requisitioned. Two hundred and forty thousand Algerians were mobilized or drafted, and two thirds of these were soldiers who served mostly in France. This constituted more than one-third of the men of those nations from ages 20–40. According to historian
Abdallah Laroui, Algeria sent 173,000 soldiers, 25,000 of whom were killed. Tunisia sent 56,000, of whom 12,000 were killed. Moroccan soldiers helped defend Paris and landed at
Bordeaux in 1916. After the war, reconstruction and labor shortages necessitated even larger number of Algerian laborers. Migration (or the need for labor) was reestablished at a high level by 1936. This was partly the result of collective recruitments in the villages conducted by French officers and representatives of companies. Labor recruitment continued throughout the 1940s. North Africans were mostly recruited for dangerous and low-wage jobs, unwanted by ordinary French workers. This large number of immigrants was of great help for France's rapid post–
World War II economic growth. The 1970s were marked by recession followed by the cessation of labor migration programs and crackdowns on
illegal immigration. During the 1980s, political disfavor with President
Mitterrand's social programs led to the rise of
Jean-Marie Le Pen and other
far right French
nationalists. The public increasingly blamed immigrants for French economic problems. In March 1990, according to a poll reported in
Le Monde, 76% of those polled said that there were too many Arabs in France while 39% said they had an "aversion" to Arabs. In the following years, Interior Minister
Charles Pasqua was noted for dramatically toughening immigration laws. In May 2005, riots broke out between North Africans and
Romani people in
Perpignan, after a young Arab man was shot dead and another Arab man was lynched by a group of Roma.
Chirac's controversial
"Hijab ban" law, presented as
secularization of schools, was interpreted by its critics as an "indirect legitimization of anti-Arab stereotypes, fostering rather than preventing racism."
Iran Human rights group
Amnesty International says that in practice, Arabs are among a number of ethnic minorities that are disadvantaged and suffer discrimination by the authorities.
Separatist tendencies in
Khuzestan exacerbate this. How far the situation facing Arabs in Iran is related to racism or simply a result of policies suffered by all Iranians is a matter of debate (
see: Politics of Khuzestan). Iran is a multi-ethnic society with its Arab minority mainly located in the south. It is claimed by some that anti-Arabism in Iran may be related to the notion that Arabs forced some
Persians to convert to
Islam in 7th century
AD (
See: Muslim conquest of Persia). Author
Richard Foltz in his article "Internationalization of Islam" states "Even today, many Iranians perceive the Arab destruction of the
Sassanid Empire as the single greatest tragedy in Iran's long history. Following the
Muslim conquest of Persia, many Iranians (also known as "
mawali") came to despise the
Umayyads due to discrimination against them by their Arab rulers. The
Shu'ubiyah movement was intended to reassert Iranian identity and resist attempts to impose Arab culture while reaffirming their commitment to Islam. More recently, anti-Arabism has arisen as a consequence of aggression against Iran by the regime of
Saddam Hussein in
Iraq. During a visit to Khuzestan, which has most of Iran's Arab population, a British journalist, John R. Bradley, wrote that despite the fact that the majority of Arabs supported Iran in the war, "ethnic Arabs complain that, as a result of their divided loyalties during the
Iran–Iraq War, they are viewed more than ever by the clerical regime in Tehran as a potential
fifth column, and suffer from a policy of discrimination." However, Iran's Arab population played an important role in defending Iran during the Iran-Iraq War and most refused to heed Saddam Hussein's call for an uprising and instead fought against their fellow Arabs. Furthermore, Iran's former defense minister
Ali Shamkhani, a
Khuzestani Arab, was chief commander of the ground force during the Iran-Iraq War as well as serving as first deputy commander of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Arab minority of southern Iran has been subject to discriminations, persecution in Iran. In a report published in February 2006, Amnesty International stated that the "Arab population of Iran is one of the most economically and socially deprived in Iran" and that Arabs have "reportedly been denied state employment under the
gozinesh [job placement] criteria." Critics of such reports have pointed out that they are often based on sketchy sources and are not always to be trusted at face value (see:
Criticism of human rights reports on Khuzestan). Furthermore, critics point out that Arabs have social mobility in Iran, with a number of famous Iranians from the worlds of arts, sport, literature, and politics having Arab origins (see:
Iranian Arabs) illustrating Arab-Iranian participation in Iranian economics, society, and politics. They contend that Khuzestan province, where most of Iran's Arabs live, is actually one of the more economically advanced provinces of Iran, more so than many of the Persian-populated provinces. Some critics of the Iranian government contend that it is carrying out a policy of anti-Arab
ethnic cleansing. While there has been large amounts of investment in industrial projects such as the
Razi Petrochemical Complex, local universities, and other national projects such as
hydroelectric dams (such as the
Karkheh Dam, which cost $700 million to construct) and nuclear power plants, many critics of Iran's economic development policies have pointed to the poverty suffered by Arabs in Khuzestan as proof of an anti-Arab policy agenda. Following his visit to Khuzestan in July 2005,
UN Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing Miloon Kothari spoke of how up to 250,000 Arabs had been displaced by such industrial projects and noted the favorable treatment given to settlers from
Yazd compared to the treatment of local Arabs. However, it is also true that non-Arab provinces such as
Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province,
Sistan and Baluchestan Province, and neighboring
Īlām Province also suffer high levels of poverty, indicating that government policy is not disadvantaging Arabs alone but other regions, including some with large ethnically Persian populations. Furthermore, most commentators agree that Iran's state-controlled and highly subsidized economy is the main reason behind the inability of the Iranian government to generate economic growth and welfare at ground levels in all cities across the nation, rather than a state ethnic policy targeted specifically at Arabs; Iran is ranked 156th on
The Heritage Foundation's 2006
Index of Economic Freedom. In the Iranian education system, after primary education cycle (grades 1-5 for children 6 to 11 years old), passing some
Arabic courses is mandatory until the end of secondary education cycle (grade 6 to Grade 12, from age 11 to 17). In higher education systems (universities), passing Arabic language courses is selective. Persians use slurs like "Tazi Kaseef" (lit.
Dirty Taazi), "Arabe malakh-khor" (عرب ملخخور) (lit.
Locust-eater Arab), "soosmar-khor" (سوسمارخور) (
lizard eater In Iran, there is a saying,
The Arab of the desert eats locusts, while the dogs of Isfahan drink ice-cold water. (). Relations are uneasy between specifically Iran and the Persian Gulf Arab countries in particular. Persians and Arabs
dispute the name of the Persian Gulf. The
Greater and Lesser Tunbs are disputed between the two countries. The Iranian rap artist Behzad Pax released a song in 2015 called "Arab-Kosh" (عربكش) (Arab-killer) which was widely reported on the Arab media who claimed that it was released with the approval of the
Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance denied that it gave approval to the song and condemned it as a product of a "sick mind". Anti-Arab racism is also prevalent among the
Iranian diaspora, specially among
monarchists and supporters of crown prince
Reza Pahlavi, who embrace anti-arabist and
islamophobic narratives on the islamization of Iran, promoting the idea that Islam was forced upon Iranians by the Arabs, that Iran is poor due to "degeneration" caused by a purported "miscegenation with arabs" and that Persian culture was "destroyed" by Arab influence, and the only way of "saving Iran" is not only by toppling the
Islamic Republic Of Iran but also by "getting rid of Islam and Arabs" and returning to a pre-islamic
Zoroastrian civilization. This anti-arab racist sentiment is also considered a factor on why many critics of the Islamic Republic and Iranian exiles, specially monarchists, are staunchly
Zionist and supporters of
Israel, with some engaging on harassment campaigns against
Anti-zionist Iranian dissidents, and many Iranian monarchists taking part on attacks against participants of the
2024 Pro-Palestine campus protests in the USA.
Israel As a consequence of the
Arab–Israeli conflict, there is a high level of hostility between sections of the Jewish and Arab societies in Israel, as well as outside the country. A group of men in
Pisgat Ze'ev started patrolling the neighborhood to stop Jewish women from dating Arab men. The municipality of
Petah Tikva has a telephone hotline to inform on Jewish girls who date Arab men, as well as a psychological counseling service.
Kiryat Gat launched a school programme to warn Jewish girls against dating local Bedouin men. Geography textbooks used in Israeli schools were found to portray Arabs as primitive and backwards, with the
Nakba, the destruction of Palestinian society in the
1948 Palestine war, disregarded entirely. History textbooks likewise portrayed the Palestinian population negatively, showing them as primitive and collectively to be an enemy. Contrasted with the portrayal of Jews, who were shown to be heroic and progressive, Israeli textbooks delegitimized Arabs and used negative stereotyping of Arabs nearly uniformly. The
Bedouin representatives submitted a report to the
United Nations claiming that they are not treated as equal citizens and Bedouin towns are not provided the same level of services, land and water as Jewish towns of the same size are. The city of
Beersheba refused to recognize a Bedouin holy site despite a High Court recommendation. In 1994, a Jewish settler in the
West Bank and follower of the
Kach party,
Baruch Goldstein,
massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers at the
Cave of the Patriarchs in
Hebron. It was known that, prior to the massacre, Goldstein, a physician, refused to treat Arabs, including Arab soldiers with the Israeli army. During his funeral, a rabbi declared that even one million Arabs are "not worth a Jewish fingernail". Goldstein was immediately "denounced with shocked horror even by the mainstream Orthodox", and many in Israel classified Goldstein as insane. The Israeli government condemned the massacre and made Kach illegal. The Israeli army killed a further nine Palestinians during riots following the massacre, and the Israeli government severely restricted
Palestinian freedom of movement in Hebron, while letting settlers and foreign tourists roam free, although Israel also forbade a small group of Israeli settlers from entering Palestinian towns and demanded that those settlers turn in their army-issued rifles. Goldstone's grave has become a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists. In a number of occasions, Israeli Jewish demonstrators and rioters used racist anti-Arab slogans. For example, during the Arab riots in
October 2000 events, Israelis counter-rioted in
Nazareth and
Tel Aviv, throwing stones at Arabs, destroying Arab property, with some chanting "
death to Arabs". Some Israeli-Arab soccer players face chants from the crowd when they play such as "no Arabs, no terrorism". In the most radical event,
Abbas Zakour, an Arab member of the Knesset, was stabbed and wounded by unidentified men, who shouted anti-Arab chants. Among the Israeli teams,
Beitar Jerusalem is considered emblematic of Jewish racism; the fans are infamous for their 'Death to Arabs' chant and the team has a ban on Arab players, a policy that is in violation of
FIFA's guidelines, though the team has never faced suspension from the football organization. In March 2012, supporters of the team were filmed raiding a Jerusalem mall and beating up Arab employees. The Israeli political party
Yisrael Beiteinu, whose platform includes the redrawing of Israel's borders so that 500,000
Israeli Arabs would be part of a future
Palestinian State, won 15 seats in the
2009 Israeli elections, increasing its seats by 4 compared to the
2006 Israeli elections. This policy, also known as the
Lieberman Plan, was described as "anti-Arab" by
The Guardian. In 2004,
Yehiel Hazan, a member of the
Knesset, described the Arabs as worms: "You find them everywhere like worms, underground as well as above." In 2004, then Deputy Defense Minister
Ze'ev Boim asked "What is it about Islam as a whole and the Palestinians in particular? Is it some form of cultural deprivation? Is it some genetic defect? There is something that defies explanation in this continued murderousness." In August 2005, Israeli soldier Eden Natan-Zada traveled to an Israeli Arab town and massacred four civilians. Israeli Arabs said they would draw up a list of grievances after the
terrorist attack of
Eden Natan-Zada. "This was a planned terror attack and we find it extremely difficult to treat it as an individual action," Abed Inbitawi, an Israeli-Arab spokesman, told
The Jerusalem Post. "It marks a certain trend that reflects a growing tendency of fascism and racism in Israeli society generally as well as the establishment towards the minority Arab community," he said. According to a 2006 poll conducted by Geocartographia for the Centre for the Struggle Against Racism, 41% of Israelis support Arab-Israeli
segregation at entertainment venues, 40% believed "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens", and 63% believed Arabs to be a "security and
demographic threat" to Israel. The poll found that more than two thirds would not want to live in the same building as an Arab, 36% believed Arab culture to be inferior, and 18% felt hatred when they heard Arabic spoken. The report quoted polls that suggested 50% of Jewish Israelis do not believe Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights, 50% said they wanted the government to encourage Arab emigration from Israel, and 75% of Jewish youths said Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jews. The Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel reported a tenfold increase in racist incidents against Arabs in 2008. Jerusalem reported the highest number of incidents. The report blamed Israeli leaders for the violence, saying "These attacks are not the hand of fate, but a direct result of incitement against the Arab citizens of this country by religious, public, and elected officials." In March 2009, following the
Gaza War, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drew criticism when several young soldiers had
T-shirts printed up privately with slogans and caricatures portraying dead babies, weeping mothers, and crumbled mosques. In June 2009,
Haaretz reported that Israel's Public Security Minister,
Yitzhak Aharonovich, called an undercover police officer a "dirty Arab" whilst touring
Tel Aviv. Since the 2000s, groups such as
Lehava have been formed in Israel to prevent that Israeli Arab men form relationships with Jewish women. Some of the material promoted to discourage Jewish women to be with Arab men, are sanctioned by local governments and police departments. Lehava has received permission from Israeli courts to picket the weddings uniting a Palestinian and a Jewish partner. In 2010, dozens of Israel's top
rabbis went on to sign a document forbidding that Jews rent apartments to Arabs, saying that "racism originated in the
Torah". In January 2012, the Israeli High Court upheld a decision, deemed racist, preventing the Palestinian espouses of Israeli Arabs from obtaining Israeli citizenship or resident status. A poll in 2012 revealed that racist attitudes are embraced by a large majority of Israelis. 59% of Jews said they wanted Jews to be given preference in admission to public employment, 50% wanted the state to generally treat Jews better than Arabs, and over 40% wanted separate housing for Jews and Arabs. According to the poll, 58% supported the use of the term
apartheid to represent Israeli policies against Arabs. The poll also showed that the majority of Israeli Jews would not want voting rights extended to Palestinians if the West Bank were annexed by Israel. In 2013,
Nazareth Illit mayor Shimon Gafsou declared that he would never allow that an Arab school, a mosque, or a church be built in his city, despite the fact that Arabs account for 18 percent of its population. On July 2, 2014, 16-year-old Palestinian
Mohammed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped, beaten and burned alive, after
three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in the West Bank. Khdeir's family members have blamed Israeli Government anti-Arab hate speech for inciting the murder and rejected the PM's condolence message, as well as a visit by then President
Shimon Peres. Two Israeli minors were found guilty of Khdeirs' murder and sentenced to life and 21 years imprisonment respectively. During the
2015 Israeli legislative election,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained, in a video statement to supporters, that his left-wing opponents were supposedly sending Israeli Arabs to vote in droves, in a statement that was widely condemned as racist, including by the US government. Netanyahu went on to win the elections against poll predictions, and several commentators and pollster imputed his victory to his last-minute attack on Israeli Arab voters. During election campaign, then Foreign Affairs Minister
Avigdor Lieberman proposed beheading Israeli Arabs that are "disloyal" to the state.
Lebanon Phoenicianism, a political doctrine that defends a direct link between
Phoenicians and
Christian Lebanese, is based on the idea that
Arab identity is incompatible with the profession of Christian faith, linking this ethnic group with the
Islamic religion. Therefore, the
Lebanese Civil War had at its crossroads both religious (Christian vs. Muslim) and ethnic (Arab/Muslim vs. Christian/anti-Arab) elements, with many acts of anti-Arab agressions, like the
Sabra and Chatila Massacre. Christian parties like
Lebanese Renewal Party or the
Guardians of the Cedars, in their programmes, are openly Anti-arabic.
Niger In October 2006, the government of
Niger announced that it would deport the
Mahamid Baggara Arabs living in the
Diffa region of eastern Niger to
Chad. This population numbered about 150,000. While the government was rounding Arabs in preparation for the deportation, two girls died, reportedly after fleeing government forces, and three women suffered miscarriages. Niger's government had eventually suspended the controversial decision to deport Arabs.
Turkey Turkey has a history of strong anti-Arabism. During the
Ottoman Empire, the Arabs were treated as just second-class subjects and suffered from immense discrimination by the Ottoman Turkish rulers, in addition, most of government's main positions were either held by Turks or non-Arab people, except for the
Emirate of Hejaz under Ottoman rule. Future policy of anti-Arab sentiment, including the process of
Turkification, led to the
Arab Revolt against the Ottomans. Because of the
Syrian refugee crisis, anti-Arabism has intensified.
Haaretz reported that anti-Arab racism in Turkey mainly affects two groups; tourists from the Gulf who are characterized as "rich and condescending" and the
Syrian refugees in Turkey. Outside historical enmity, anti-Arabism is also widespread in Turkish media, as Turkish media and education curriculum associating Arabs with backwardness. This has continued influencing modern Turkish historiography and the crusade of Turkish soft power, with Arabs being frequently stereotyped as evil, uncivilized, terrorists, incompetent, etc. This depiction is frequently used in contrast to the alleged depiction of Turkic people as "noble, generous, fearsome, loyal, brave and spirited warriors". Anti-Arab sentiment is also further fueled by ultranationalist groups, including the
Grey Wolves and pan-Turkist nationalist parties, who called for invasions on the
Arab World's
Syria and
Iraq, to prevent the ongoing Arab persecution of its Turkic populations in many Arab countries of the Middle East. Subsequently, Turkey has begun a series of persecuting its Arab population, as well as desire to recreate the new Turkish border. In recent years, anti-Arabism has been linked with various attempts by Arab leaders to meddle into Turkish affairs, Turkey's alliance with
Israel, which led to the discrimination against Arabs in Turkey grow.
United Kingdom In 2008, a Qatari 16-year-old was killed in a racially motivated attack in
Hastings, East Sussex.
United States William A. Dorman, writing in the compendium
The United States and the Middle East: A Search for New Perspectives (1992), notes that whereas "
anti-Semitism is no longer socially acceptable, at least among the educated classes[, n]o such social sanctions exist for anti-Arabism." Public opinion polls demonstrate that anti-Arabism in the United States is increasing significantly. Prominent
Russian-American Objectivist author, scholar and philosopher
Ayn Rand, in her 1974
Ford Hall Forum lecture, explained her support for
Israel following the
Yom Kippur War of 1973 against a coalition of Arab nations, expressing strong anti-Arab sentiment, saying: "The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are." During the 1991
Gulf War, hostility toward Arabs increased in the United States.
Arab Americans have experienced a backlash as result of terrorist attacks, including events where Arabs were not involved, like the
Oklahoma City bombing, and the explosion of
TWA Flight 800. According to a report prepared by the
Arab American Institute, three days after the Oklahoma City bombing "more than 200 serious hate crimes were committed against Arab Americans and
American Muslims. The same was true in the days following September 11."
Hate crimes against people of Middle Eastern origin or descent increased from 354 attacks in 2000, to 1,501 attacks in 2001. Although Price described his victims as Arabs, only one was from an Arab country. This appears to be a trend; because of stereotypes of Arabs, several non-Arab, non-Muslim groups were subjected to attacks in the wake of 9/11, including several
Sikh men attacked for wearing their religiously mandated
turban.
Earl Krugel and
Irv Rubin, two leaders of the
Jewish Defense League (JDL), described by the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a
terrorist organization, planned to bomb Arab-American
Congressman Darrell Issa's office and the
King Fahd Mosque in
Culver City, California. The two were arrested as part of a sting operation when they received a shipment of explosives at Krugel's home in
Los Angeles. Krugel was murdered in November 2005 while in the custody of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons in Phoenix. His conviction, which was under appeal at that time, was dismissed in U.S. District Court. Rubin committed suicide in 2002 while in Federal Bureau of Prisons custody in Los Angeles. Although the JDL was suspected in the 1985 bombing death of ADC leader
Alex Odeh, no arrest has been made in that case.
Stephen E. Herbits, the Secretary-General of the New York–based
World Jewish Congress (WJC) made several racist remarks and ethnic slurs in an internal memo against the president of the
European Jewish Congress Pierre Besnainou: "He is French. Don't discount this. He cannot be trusted ... He is Tunisian. Do not discount this either. He works like an Arab." The WJC in Israel has condemned the statements as both hateful and racist. "It appears that the struggle in the World Jewish Congress has now turned racist, said
Knesset member
Shai Hermesh (
Kadima), who heads the Israeli board of the WJC. Instead of creating unity among the Jewish people, this organization is just creating division and hatred." In 2004, American radio host
Michael Savage described Arabs as "non-humans", said that Americans want the U.S. to "drop a nuclear weapon" on an Arab country, and advocated that people in the Middle East be "forcibly converted to
Christianity" to "turn them into human beings". Savage characterized Israel as "a little country surrounded by racist, fascist bigots who don't want anyone but themselves living in that hell hole called the Middle East". Expressions of anti-Arabism in the United States intensified following the
2009 Fort Hood shooting, which was perpetrated by
Nidal Hasan, a Palestinian Arab American. In 2010, the proposed development of an Islamic community center containing a mosque near the
World Trade Center site provoked further widespread expressions of virulent anti-Arabism in the United States.
Western media Parts of
Hollywood are regarded as using a disproportionate number of Arabs as villains and of depicting Arabs negatively and stereotypically. According to
Godfrey Cheshire, a critic on the
New York Press, "the only vicious racial stereotype that's not only still permitted but actively endorsed by Hollywood" is that of Arabs as crazed terrorists. Like the image projected of Jews in
Nazi Germany, the image of Arabs projected by
western movies is often that of "money-grubbing caricatures that sought world domination, worshipped a different God, killed innocents, and lusted after blond virgins". The 2000 film
Rules of Engagement drew criticism from Arab groups and was described as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood" by the ADC. surveyed more than 900 film appearances of Arab characters. Of those, only a dozen were positive and 50 were balanced. Shaheen writes that "[Arab] stereotypes are deeply ingrained in American cinema. From 1896 until today, filmmakers have collectively indicted all Arabs as Public Enemy #1 – brutal, heartless, uncivilized religious fanatics and money-mad cultural "others" bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners, especially [Christians] and [Jews]. Much has happened since 1896 ... Throughout it all, Hollywood's caricature of the [Arab] has prowled the silver screen. He is there to this day – repulsive and unrepresentative as ever." According to
Newsweek columnist
Meg Greenfield, anti-Arab sentiment presently promotes misconceptions about Arabs and hinders genuine peace in the Middle East. In 1980,
The Link, a magazine published by
Americans for Middle East Understanding, contained an article "The Arab Stereotype on Television" which detailed negative Arab stereotypes that appeared in TV shows including
Woody Woodpecker,
Rocky and Bullwinkle,
Jonny Quest and an educational children's show on
PBS. ==Arab advocacy organisations==