Some years back when asked about Anwar Ibrahim’s fitness for prime ministerial office, Dr Mahathir Mohamad sarcastically replied that Anwar was only fit to be the prime minister of Israel.
The jibe not only reflected the acrimony that existed between the two adversaries, but it also displayed the willingness of Mahathir to resort to a crass trope commonly employed by Muslim politicians - tarring their enemies as Zionist agents.
The latest war between Hamas and Israel has given Malaysia’s tenth prime minister the chance to demonstrate he’s not a soft touch on Zionists when it comes to the issue of Israel and Hamas.
The perception of Anwar as soft on Zionists stemmed from the pomp of the welcome ceremony he received during a visit to the White House in the later part of his deputy premiership (1990 to 1998).
For a deputy prime minister to have been accorded such pageantry spoke of the regard in which he was held.
The visit was used by the Anwar phobic in the Mahathir camp to depict Anwar as a suspect when it comes to the question of Arabs and the Israelis.
Anwar’s friendship with Bill Clinton cabinet member William Cohen and then with George Bush appointee Paul Wolfowitz, both Jews, bolstered the perception of Anwar as a Jew sympathiser.
It may be true to say this perception matters only to those who subscribe to a worldview that sees the Jew as a sinister conspirator intent on world domination.
Not a lot of people share this view.
Anwar’s vision
It is not certain that Anwar holds anything resembling this worldview.
He had projected himself in the latter part of his deputy premiership to Mahathir as a leader whose vision of an Asian Renaissance would consign ancient hatreds and resentments to the side as obstacles in the quest for intellectual advancement and economic prosperity.
Though Anwar had long been a Muslim leader sympathetic to Palestinians, he appeared to want to take the high road of the liberation of humankind from the orthodoxies of race and religion.
At least, that was his inclination whenever he stood on a global platform.
Among Malaysia’s Palestine-supporting public, any attempt to make a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian cause cuts no ice.
Nuances are crushed in the febrile atmospherics of the overall Arab-Israeli dispute.
Stories of Hamas hiding rocket launchers in civilian concentrations in Gaza make no difference to Hamas supporters in Malaysia.
Neither does word of aid meant for Gazan civilians being syphoned off by corrupt Hamas leaders to fund their military.
In war, said Winston Churchill, truth is the first casualty.
In the Arab-Israeli dispute, the espousal of the disputants reminds one of the lines from a great poem by William Butler Yeats that the “best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity”.
Anwar’s high-decibel support of Hamas in recent days is seen as an attempt to endear himself to pious Muslims who supported PAS in GE15 in November last year and at the six state elections last August.
The Anwar-led coalition of PKR, DAP and Amanah found it hard to secure the Muslim vote at both polls.
This vote bank is sceptical of Anwar’s Islamic credentials. That is why it favoured PAS and its ally, Bersatu.
Among Muslim politicians, the conflict in the Middle East has been a favoured arena for the embellishment of one’s Islamic credentials.
Clashing theologies
In Malaysia, the greater the fervour of one’s support of the Palestinians, the more difficult it is to tag a Muslim campaigner as not Islamic enough.
One suspects Anwar sees his fervent support of Hamas as a way of courting the Islamic vote. This will come at a cost.
Prior to a sequence of recent episodes that depicted Anwar as cool towards non-Muslim concerns, he enjoyed strong support among non-Muslims. Not anymore.
The non-Muslims are disappointed with him. Many are now embarrassed by the memory of their past support for him.
Several see the Middle East conflict as fundamentally irresolvable because of clashing theologies.
This is not an argument to abandon theological belief because of its propensity for conflict.
Rather, this is a counsel of scepticism, one that sees value in the poet Alfred Tennyson’s intimation: “There is more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds.”
But where doubt is seen as an enemy, the true believer will want to follow a line of theological reasoning to its conclusion even if that entails bloodshed.
What, then, is to be done?
Simply, don’t encourage obduracy. Foster negotiation.
Anwar’s support for Hamas is so much histrionic. It is for the theatre.
As a professed democrat, he ought to be troubled that the last election in Gaza was held in 2006. Hamas are no exponents of democracy.
In fact, there is reason to believe they can be tyrannical and beastly towards fellow Palestinians who disagree with them.
That fact should introduce a crochet and a quaver to Anwar’s support for Hamas.
His desire to give Hamas RM100 million in aid is money that is sorely needed by a debt-strapped Malaysia whose rising cost of living, middling economy, and spiralling debt servicing charges demand introspection, not foreign adventurism.
A realistic national leader would want to double down on how best to mind the wheels that work his country’s turbines rather than try to busy giddy local minds with global grandstanding. - Mkini
TERENCE NETTO is a journalist with half a century’s experience.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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