Jews have no right to grab Arab land: Mahathir on eve of retirement
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30: Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, speaking on the eve of his retirement, said on Thursday that the Jewish people’s past sufferings in Europe were no excuse for taking Arab land and persecuting Muslims.
The 78-year-old leader, who steps down on Friday after 22 years in power, provoked howls of protest two weeks ago by saying that the Jews had emerged from the Holocaust to “rule this world by proxy”.
A staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, Dr Mahathir said the Jews were now guilty of persecuting Muslims in the same way that Europeans had persecuted Jews down the ages.
“They must never think they are the chosen people who cannot be criticized at all,” Dr Mahathir said when asked if he had one last message for the Jews.
His Oct 16 speech to leaders of Muslim nations had centred on the need for Muslims to join the modern world, use their brains, make peace and stamp out suicide bombing.
It also contained grudging admiration for the way Jews had prospered despite their persecution, but the comment on their world influence evoked memories in the West of the conspiracy theories used in Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany to whip up anti-semitism.
“They suffered a great deal in the past. They were killed, they were massacred and finally there was the Holocaust. We sympathise with them.
“We are very sad to see how the Jews were ill-treated by the Europeans. They must remember when they were ill-treated by Europeans they had to run to Muslim countries to seek refuge.
“The Muslims never ill-treated the Jews, but now they are behaving exactly how the Europeans behaved towards them against the Muslims.
Dr Mahathir denies being anti-semitic and says he has Jewish friends, but in his controversial speech he did not draw any distinction between Jews, Israelis and Zionists.
He reiterated on Thursday that the root problem between Jews and Muslims was the occupation of Arab land to form the state of Israel.
“It is not religion at all. It is territorial. You take somebody’s land and they will fight for it.”
DEMOCRATIC RECORD: The outgoing premier defended his democratic record and predicted strong economic growth in an upbeat final parliamentary appearance.
Facing opposition questioning for the last time, Dr Mahathir warned that too much freedom could lead to anarchy in Malaysia’s multi-racial society and made a strong call for national unity.
“As I retire from the nation’s highest elected office, I call upon every Malaysian to rise to the occasion to face the challenges as they emerge and shoulder the responsibilities of citizenship,” he said.
“If we do this, there is no reason why we cannot continue to be successful and make this country a model for the world to emulate.”
Groups of schoolchildren crowded the public gallery and the prime minister was praised lavishly by some MPs, but the session was free of the tears and emotion that have marked a series of farewells, with normal parliamentary banter the order of the day.
Dr Mahathir presented a mid-term review of the eighth plan, which ends in 2005, predicting real GDP growth at an average of six per cent per year, which he said would put the country on track to realizing its target of becoming a developed nation by 2020.
Before that, however, Asia’s longest-serving elected leader faced a question and answer session in which opposition MPs probed his commitment to democracy.
He defended controls such as the detention without trial of terrorism suspects and the banning of communists from elections as essential to maintaining democracy.
While the government believed in free speech, he said, it also had to ensure that racial sentiments in Malaysia’s multi-cultural society were not inflamed.
He described national unity as the country’s greatest asset. Malaysia has a Malay Muslim majority of around 60 per cent of its 24 million people, but large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.
“We have seen how many other multi-ethnic societies have failed because each race places its own interest first before the interest of the nation. If we are not careful we too will fail and be destroyed,” he said.
“Anarchy can take place because of an obsession with democratic freedoms. The belief that if democracy is implemented then everything will be well has no basis, especially if democracy is imposed immediately.”
Dr Mahathir pointed out that it had taken Western countries nearly 200 years to reach their current level of liberal democracy, but they were still not free of problems such as political corruption and the manipulation of power.
They had also “linked individual and minority freedoms to democracy, until they forget the rights of the majority”.
Harking back to one of his familiar complaints about what he sees as Western decadence, he said some countries “are too free, until everything being done is accepted as a right. The practice of homosexuality is accepted as a right and same sex marriage is legitimized”.
When a member of the hardline Islamic Party (PAS) suggested that Malaysia in fact practised the “tyranny of the majority” and was simply afraid of losing power, Dr Mahathir pointed to PAS’s presence in parliament as a sign that the opposition “enjoy many privileges”.
He said his United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the lynchpin of the ruling coalition, was not afraid. “We win with a huge majority every time.”
Dr Mahathir’s chosen successor, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, will face an election within a year, with a key element being the struggle between UMNO and PAS for the votes of the Muslim majority.
Mr Abdullah is to be sworn in by King Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin at 0500 GMT on Friday. —Reuters\AFP
