There never was a nation called Palestine. It was a region -- and it was populated by Jews and Arabs alike. The entire cause of disavowing, boycotting, and the would-be destruction of Jewish Israel is patently dishonest. Most "Palestinians" are from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and so on: not the region called Palestine. Indeed, Yasser Arafat, the terrorist leader of the PLO and subsequent "Nobel Peace Prize" winner, was himself Egyptian. (The fact that Arafat was awarded the prize speaks to the lack of credibility of this once noble committee.) This charade is all bogus and stems from anti-Semitic hate towards Israel and Jews.
Sadly, the anti-Semitism in U.S. universities has often been created by the students within them from the Middle East who covet Israel’s land and prosperity. And then there are many professors who tow the seemingly progressive line and promulgate the agenda of decrying the "racism, apartheid practices, and oppression of the Zionists" which has sickened the minds of young students who trust such authority figures blindly. The students don't bother to do the research to find out the history and the truth of what is really going on in Israel. Sadly, even a loved one of mine has succumbed to these lies and refuses to even look at the contrary and inarguable EVIDENCE of the truth.
When the Palestinian government allies itself with Hamas and Hezbollah, whose very charters call for the destruction of Jewish Israel and denies its right to even exist, who really are the hateful ones? Indeed, if Israel were to unilaterally disarm, they would be over-run and utterly destroyed immediately. They would be wiped off the face of the map, as the former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, once stated was his goal. On the other hand, if the "Palestinian" people and surrounding hostile nations were to unilaterally disarm, there would finally be peace in the region.
Therein resides the difference.
Therein one finds who is truly hateful.
For more information on the struggle in Israel, please read my older post on the topic here.
H/T to Carrie for the video and much of the information comprising this post.
10 comments:
The factual elements of what you say in your text, and the factual content of the video, are valuable information. What I find shocking however is a similar sense of outrage from your side of the partisan divide, as in "therein one finds who is truly hateful". Or perhaps no longer shocking because such voices from the sadly disunited States seem to permeate the Web, a permanent vendetta or cold war of two sides who refuse to understand or sympathise with one another.
It seems that the students are ignorant of the history and complexity of Middle Eastern affairs, as indeed am I, so I cannot speak from some lofty position of wisdom.
But after I'd read Encounter with Martin Buber, a biography by Aubrey Rhodes, I was somewhat enlightened as to the origins and development of Zionism and how the state of Israel came about, and the enormous difficulties, paradoxes and insoluble problems that lay there from the start. Buber himself, the most unorthodox of Jews, repeatedly urged that Israel must behave towards Arabs like brothers, never give up meeting them, reaching out with generosity and so forth. He said that no State has any excuse to break moral laws for any purpose whatsoever. He wasn't heeded. Many immigrants to Israel (they were almost all immigrants to start with but in a much shorter timescale than those who settled in US over the centuries) cared nothing for the notion of it being some kind of theocracy. They were, and are, materialists all too ready to see enemies in their own midst and at their boundaries.
The influence Buber had (for example on Ben-Gurion, in the early days) was never political in the usual sense, and he was probably hopelessly impractical, but compared with Gandhi, who thought the Jews should have used "passive resistance" on the Nazis, rather than flee to Palestine, he had feet firmly on the ground.
My point is this, that there are complexities. Israel is not blame-free. But student demos, any sort of placard-carrying demos of any kind on any contentious matter, simply add to the kind of dumbed-down shouting matches that make it impossibly to unite your country & behave decently to one another, never mind set an example to other countries, or be able to help them in practical ways.
So I don't mean to debate, to agree or disagree, but express a plea that whatever cause we espouse, we don't accuse others of hate. Instead should we not try and understand why they behave in this manner, and why we ourselves react to them in such a similar way?
Thank you very much, Vincent, for your thoughtful comment.
Actually you may be pleasantly surprised that I do agree with your sentiments that instead of demonizing each other due to our political differences with Alinsky-type tactics, we should indeed listen to each other and try to understand where the other person is coming from. We may never end up agreeing with each other due to political or religious axioms we hold as inherently a part of us, and that is fine, but we still should see each person as a human being and worthy of the dignity owed to them as a fellow human being or as a fellow child of God, as my faith instructs me.
I regularly browse many websites and blogs on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. I always TRY to remain civil in my debate although I admittedly do not always succeed. As a conservative I am still always open to finding a path of civil dialogue and a trading of ideas in debate. Interestingly one of the few people on the right or left that I have found that is able to do so without mocking, condescension, or name calling is a left-wing lady by the name of Rain. Her blog link is at the top on my "Blogs from the Left" link of my site. She is a rarity in the fact that we obviously do not agree on many things but we can discuss contentious issues and still see the humanity in each other. Sorry for my digressing here.
As for Israel, of course they are hardly perfect and have absolutely contributed to the problem and the hyperbolic rhetoric at times. That said, the freest Muslims in the Middle East are all citizens of Israel. Indeed Muslims are members of the Israeli parliament: the Knesset. They also have every single civil right that Jewish Israeli's have, including one extra. They are not required to serve in the Israeli Defense Force, if they so choose, while all other Israeli's are required to serve a term for their national defense. Even Miss Israel was a Arab. One of Israel's top generals is even a Muslim. Far from being a state of apartheid and oppression, Israel seems to exercise enormous restraint as rockets rain down on their cities from the Golan Heights and Palestinian homicide bombers detonate themselves on buses and in commercial districts to inflict the maximum death and carnage possible, while the Palestinian government pays bounties to the families for their loved one's "martyrdom".
I acknowledge that there are indeed good people amongst the Palestinians but when so many loathe their Israeli neighbors far more than they value peace or even their own lives, what do you call that except "hate", sir?
I am so interested in the posts of Vincent and T. Paine. Vincent, you are right; most people do not know the history and bkgd. of Israel/Palestine and therefore have succumbed to the propaganda that the Palestinians and their sympathizers propagate. And T. Paine, you are so right in that Israel grants its Arab citizens all the freedoms of living in a free society and then some. I do take exception, though, to the idea that Israel is not blame free because Israel would agree to a peace anytime the Arabs stop their threats. There is a saying that the Arabs can lose many wars but Israel can only lose one.It is so true. Only 6-8 million Israelis and a half billion Arabs! (The total number of Arabic speakers living in the Arab nations is estimated at 366 million by the CIA Factbook (as of 2014). The estimated number of Arabs in countries outside the Arab League is estimated at 17.5 million, yielding a total of close to 384 million.) That is the reason for the firm diligence there. With the tiniest sliver of land the Israelis made the desert an oasis in Israel ironically w/o any oil! Their educational system bloomed, their science and technology is debatably the world's best, the developments in medicine and contributions to the entire world, including the Arab world, are huge. I don't have it to quote here but I've seen the stats for the # of Nobel prizes, the number of achievements in science, literature, music, medicine, etc. are far greater than that per capita of any modern country-- all this despite that the country has to be on guard 24/7 against its enemies, terror & hate. I also have to say that the Jews were born in that land and "Jewish" comes from the name of their homeland, Judea. There have been Jews living there over 4,000 years. Muslims/Arabs only originated in the 700's A.D. so their claim to the land is more a result of conquest, not origin. Mohammed was a Dark Ages warrior and his way of life was battle, conquer and take over. Seems familiar... What bothers me most, though, is that Israelis are taught to love and accept all others. They took in the Yemenite Jews who are Black Africans when they were so threatened, they took in Russians fleeing pogroms and Communism, they took in Hilter's refugees -- the chief rule in Israel is "The Right of Return" which is the law that says any Jewish person wanting to live there will always have a home, a place to exist in the world that otherwise may not want or allow them. Those with Israeli passports are banned from most Arab countries, did you know that? But Israel accepts Arab guests into Israel. In another comparison, the kids in the madrasas all over the Middle East are taught to hate and even how to use a weapon to kill Israelis! Here in the U.S. the Arab students are a huge influence on our college campuses in preaching anti-Israeli, anti-semitic messages because the average American doesn't know truth and probably doesn't care. I have rambled on. Hope I helped shed some light on this situation. In my opinion, thank God for Ms. Haley, our UN ambassador who telsl the truth about the doings at the UN so opposite of the dreadful Stephanie Powers her predecessor. I pray that Netanyahu is correct and this situation with ISIS will indeed bring Israel closer to brotherhood with the Saudis and Egyptians, Jordanians and other Arab nations to work together against the terror that they fear, too.
Carrie, thank you so much for your very informative comment. I hope it is the first of many! Vincent, I hope you feel compelled to continue commenting in the future as well!
First, let me clarify my thoughts on Israel not being blame free. I did not say this in any sense of moral-equivalency between Israel and the Palestinians. On the contrary, I hold the Palestinians and their terrorist allies and government officials wholly responsible for 98% of the problem in that region. I know and agree that if Israel's surrounding neighbors would offer peace, then there would finally BE peace in that region. I truly understand the existential threat to Israel's very existence when the U.N. allows exceptionally hateful diatribes and even resolutions against it by neighboring nations that still do not even acknowledge Israel's right to even exist. When Israel's enemies rain down mortars and rockets on civilian populations and then the U.N. condemns Israel for building "settlements", then the sense of propriety is truly out of whack in the world.
I further understand that many in the Palestinian camps truly do not desire peace either. First, to desire that, they would have to acknowledge that Israel rightfully existed. I recall when Yasser Arafat met in one "peace talk" with then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. I was shocked and dismayed when Barak offered nearly 90% of the concessions the Palestinians demanded, and STILL they would not accept peace. Later when Yasser Arafat was asked by a reporter why he did not accept a once-in-a-lifetime deal from the Israelis, his response was that if he did so he would end up "having tea with Mussolini". In other words, his own Palestinian people would kill him for having the temerity to make peace with the Jews.
That said, there have been excesses over the years on behalf of the Israelis in their dealing with the Palestinians that have inflamed matters unnecessarily. I realize that any actions by Israel always results in inflamed rhetoric from the Palestinian sympathizers, however. Frankly, I admire the amazing restraint in their sisyphean task of not always responding to horrific violence against civilians with commensurate or greater violence in return.
No, the Israelis are a truly remarkable people, a staunch ally, and the only true democracy in the region. Unlike our shameful actions during the Obama Administration, America owes Israel our friendship and unyielding support. To do otherwise would only encourage terrorism and evil.
David Horowitz asks just one question of Muslims, will you denounce Hamas?
I would add, do you want Sharia law to be the law of the land?
That neither question has yet to be answered "yes" should give insight to what Israel faces.
Majormajor, that is an excellent point, and it really is just as simple as that.
And THAT is why the Palestinians as a group will never agree to peace with Israel. In the words of former Israeli PM Golda Meir, "There will be no peace until they love their children more than they hate us."
Israel is very adapt at politics, they are masters of deflection and concealment of their policies for decades. For the last 18 years I have been reading about the Middle East and Israel is a very ambitious country with expansionist dreams of conquest.
They have settled on a general policy of Apartheid to control any Arabs under their rule. The Gaza Strip has about 650 military check points to limit movement of people and goods. They have turned the Gaza into an open air prison for its inhabitants who have no choice at all and are kept hungry and poor by the occupation.
Conservatives seem to look at Israel with rose colored glasses and dismiss their war crimes as self defense.
March 6, 2017 at 9:18 PM Delete
Woodenman, have you read anything in the last 18 years that tells the other side of the Israeli story, sir, or have the things you read simply reinforced the view you already hold on this topic? If you truly want to search and find the truth, I would recommend you read Professor Dershowitz's book, "The Case for Israel". It may give you some good information from and opposing point of view, my friend.
Israel is not without its flaws, but they are hardly an apartheid state. As I stated, Israel Arabs are the freest of all Arabs in the Middle East. They enjoy every single right that a Jewish Israeli does, sir.
As for Gaza, the Israeli militarization of this area has been due to the fact that it has been a staging ground for terrorist operations against Israeli citizens for years. It has been a weigh-point for smuggled in weapons and explosives for this cause. As for the poverty of the Palestinians, part of this is myth and a large part of it is corruption of their government. Yasser Arafat had an opulent Paris apartment where his wife dwelled and untold millions in foreign aid to the Palestinians was squandered or embezzled by corrupt government officials. No, Israel is not without fault, but the rose colored glasses are often worn by those clinging to the myth of Israeli-oppressed Palestinians.
First off you can call me by my real name, James, it would be nice to do the same for you.
My preconceived notions of Israel were all positive, before I became informed about how they really are. I did not know enough about Israel to fill a post it note until I started reading about politics. My favorite site back then was Truthout which talked about the way Israel treated the Arabs surrounding them.
Here is an article showing how Palestinians are treated currently in Israel:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46570.htm
Dershowitz is extremely partisan, an Israeli Firster, you think you will learn the truth from him?
My sister, a Born Again Christian said to me the other day that she will never believe Israel is wrong in any way. I did convince her that the Bush admin was a catastrophe after many long discussions though. It was much easier path in regards to Obama, another catastrophe for the US.
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