>Mahathir is a complex figure, since he seems to have close Jewish
>friends and even conducted extensive correspondence with Yitzhak
>Rabin, I think the 'bigot' label is too, um, simplistic.
Anti-Semitism isn't so much about specific individual Jews, but about a mythical force known as The Jews - you know, those secretive rich folks who control the whole world. It doesn't really matter who Mahathir's pen pals are - he's spewing all the classic anti-Semitic crap when he says things like:
>Well, we would not blame everything that goes wrong with the
>Muslim world on the Jews, but there are some, not very many of them,
>who apparently have a way of directing the very small number of
>Jewish people in a way that has given them tremendous influence over
>the world.
What if he'd said, "Well, we know that many black people aren't shiftless, lazy people, but there are some who are, and they give the whole race a bad name"?
Doug