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Iraqi-Born Israeli Broadcast Pioneer Speaks for Dispossessed
(San Francisco Jewish Weekly) Dan Pine - One day in the early 1940s, little Salim Fattal ran away from Muslim toughs in his dusty Baghdad neighborhood. The older boys finally caught the 12-year-old and slapped him around for no reason other than Salim was a Jew. Fattal, 79, is a retired Israeli broadcaster and writer who pioneered Israel's Arabic-language radio and television and directed acclaimed documentaries. He continues to speak out on behalf of Jews from Arab lands, dispossessed and exiled after centuries of coexistence, and was in the Bay Area last month as a guest of Jimena (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa). "We could feel the superiority of the Muslims against the Jews," Fattal said of his life in Iraq. "There were periods where they treated the Jews justly, but they were accustomed to seeing Jews submissive and inferior all the time." Fattal is unforgiving of Arab enmity toward Israel and the Jews. "Because it's a Jewish state, the whole world attacks Israel from all possible directions." He sees this as a new form of anti-Semitism. "If you scratch a boy from Gaza, the media says, 'What did you do?' But when a terrorist comes to Israel to bomb a bus, it's only a matter of reporting what happened, and after two days it's forgotten." "Until this day [Arabs] talk about annihilation of Israel," Fattal said. "How can you negotiate with someone who wants you to die?"