Posted on 01/21/2007 11:46:57 AM PST by Mr170IQ
Another Tack: A beautiful friendship
We'll call her Naima (though she anglicizes her name). She's my daughter's pen pal of sorts. They met on a LiveJournal Web site and soon featured on each other's "friends" lists.
Naima grew up in the US and was brought back to Jordan by her folks a year ago. Her dad is quite wealthy, and the family resides in a posh Amman suburb. Naima is the quintessential antithesis to a Muslim fundamentalist. A young adult, she's hardly religious, fanatic only about soccer, a confirmed feminist and an outspoken supporter of gay rights. Naima loves horror movies, watches Japanese anime, reads English-language best-sellers, listens to American heavy metal, struts about in oversized rapper jeans and Goth T-shirts, wears her hair short and in stylish spikes. She hates studying and is partial to off-color expressions.
She's very hi-tech, is into the latest computer gadgetry and downloads pirated software.
She told my daughter that she had crossed our border for "fun days" at Israeli tourist attractions. There's nothing reactionary or seemingly sinister about her. She sounds and looks like a citizen-of-the-world, indistinguishable from her age-group peers anywhere in the West. She's everything Shimon Peres could envision as enlightened denizens of his "New Middle East." Indeed, hopes for peace are pinned on young Arabs like Naima.
That's why those among us who keep harping on the "need for dialogue" and incessantly stress that present hostilities "must be superseded by a round of meaningful negotiations" - by yet another quest for that elusive something at the end of the rainbow - should consider Naima a very relevant touchstone. Precisely the fact that she appears to be the live-and-let-live poster child makes what she wrote my daughter - with whom she had struck up a close and warm correspondence - particularly significant and doubly spine-chilling.
AS THE first shells started raining on northern Israel last July, Naima advised my daughter to "stay safe." But a few sentences afterwards she added: "I'm a full supporter of Hizbullah. I don't consider them to be terrorists. I believe all Israelis involved in this war and in this conflict are terrorists."
Months elapsed before Naima elaborated: "Yes, I understand that a few Arabs had bombed Israel and sacrificed themselves for their cause, killing some women and children, which is why people call them terrorists, but nobody looks at what's happening to the other side: massive killings, children shot, squished to death by their own houses crumbling on top of them after your bombings. What you are doing to the Arabs is what the Nazis did to Jews. If I look up the definition of 'terrorist,' it should say 'Israel.'"
My daughter wrote back: "Israelis don't want to fight but to be left alone. That's why Israelis ceded territory unilaterally in both Gaza and Lebanon - in order not to be called occupiers and to be left alone. The trouble is that the Arabs won't let us alone. They invade our side of the border - even after we withdraw.
"They don't want us to BE - this is the source of conflict. It isn't so-called 'occupation,' but the very existence of a Jewish state. Our BEING is anathema to them. Borders don't matter. This conflict isn't about Palestinian self-determination (otherwise a Palestinian state would have been founded between 1948-67.) It's about destroying Jewish self-determination."
She concluded by expressing the hope that Naima feels "compassion also for Israeli children - many more than just a few - premeditatedly murdered by those 'self-sacrificing' human guided missiles."
Naima rose to the challenge and admitted candidly that "yes the problem really is the very existence of a Jewish state. You are living on land that isn't yours to begin with.
"You acquired it the way Americans did: kill and banish everybody living on it. It's not as if the land was a desert that you made into your state. You killed just enough Arabs and expelled the rest so you can live comfortably. Jews got greedy, ordered Arabs to piss off and killed whoever didn't want to move. How can you expect Arabs to leave you alone?... Israel isn't a state. It isn't a country. It's just miles and miles of occupied land. All Israel is doing currently is trying to get more land.
"Do I feel sorry for children who're dying in Israel? Yes - because their parents are content to live in a land that isn't theirs. Israelis are acting like Nazis, killing off people just because they are Arabs. Israel is the true terrorist."
My daughter replied that "Arabs should be wary of castigating Jews as Nazis - not only because it's a cynical lie - but because the Arabs were Hitler's enthusiastic collaborators under Haj Amin el-Husseini."
She argued that "seeking Israel's destruction is attempted genocide by another name"; that "it's illogical to accuse Israel of plotting conquest when it had just voluntarily given up land"; that "Arabs were those who attacked newborn Israel and became displaced in a war of aggression they launched in order to displace Jews."
She acquainted Naima with "the old Jewish joke about the boy who slays his mother and father but then pleads for mercy because he's a poor, pitiful orphan."
Most of all, she protested "the implication that Arabs have the right to murder Jewish children if their parents live in Israel."
Naima never responded. She simply removed her Israeli cyber-pal from her contacts list. Thus ended what promised to be a beautiful friendship.
My daughter was left stunned that someone as cosmopolitan as Naima "equates justice with either our death or disappearance. What then can be expected of less moderate Arabs? What's left to negotiate other than the terms of our termination?"
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467762625&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
And here I was thinking that article was going to be about a teenage Muslim girl who wanted other Muslim sisters to be as free as she was, whose behavior and beliefs indicated that there was a new generation growing up with different attitudes and beliefs than its elders........
Not.
I did too. I almost didn't read it...but I did and can only shake my head in sadness.
Sad. You'd be surprised (or maybe not) how many times friends say everything would be peachy in the Middle East if Israel just went away.
All Arabs have to cling to is their hate. Israel is the focus of that hate. If, more than half a century after its founding, Israel still hasn't earned legitimacy in the minds of Arabs, in all likelihood, it never will.
Extremely good article. Thanks for posting
Was the snark really necessary?
It's been my understanding that the land Israel took over was just a barren wasteland, for the most part and it has been since the Jews have developed it that Arabs suddenly want to live there. Is that true?
That is my understanding also...now that it is a thriving area, everyone wants it.
You'd be surprised how many American Jews hold that exact position - that's why they support JFnK, Hillary and the rest of Dims. If you pass any synagogue in mASSachusetts - just count the number of anti-Bush bumper stickers!
You mean the "fairy tale" remark? Yeah, that came off more insulting than I intended. All I meant was that those kinds of happy endings don't exist in a land as hate-torn as the Middle East.
Pretty much. However, it is still true that the Jews did appropriate that land. It belonged to them only in a spiritual sense.
That was then. This is now. Israel is. And they're not going away. Get over it.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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There's the rub???? They appropriated the land. One can see from this comes the hatred...and it dovetails with the world's hatred of America. The fact that they've made it a productive, modern civilization in the middle of the pathetic, impoverished Middle East leads to JEALOUSY. OUr enemies want to supplant us so they can have what we've been blessed with.
Not all
Arabs for Israel
Arabs and Muslims who Support the State of Israel and the Cause of Peace in the Middle East
http://www.arabsforisrael.com/
Prof. Khaleel Mohammed
http://www.sdjewishjournal.com/stories/aug04_4.html
I had a group of girlfriends that included a Jew and an Arabic Christian. Actually her parents kept the key to the home they were kicked out of in present day Israel when it became a nation, and her parents were relocated to Jodan.
Ironically, as Christian Arabs, they fear their Arab brothers more than the Jews who forced them to relocate. He said that when he goes to the Middle East, because of his name, look, attitude, etc. the Muslims can SMELL him a million miles away.
As Christian ARabs they are the ultimate minority. And despite being relocated, I didn't detect anti semitism in them.
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