Posted on 12/25/2001 4:08:58 PM PST by CrossCheck
A gaffe is perhaps best described as what happens when a politician accidentally tells the truth. Among professional practitioners of the political arts this doesn’t occur too often. But every now and then the truth emerges. So God bless the French ambassador. All he was saying is what many also privately believe. That “shitty little country”, Israel, has become, among many European elites, the object of hate that dare not speak its name.
I’m not talking merely about editorials that seem to deny the right of Jews to emigrate to Israel; or leaders that come close to blaming Israel itself for the mass murder of its own citizens by Hamas terrorists. It is simply routine at this point to see “balanced” news reports from the BBC and the broadsheet British press that morally equate the actions of Israeli self-defence with the deliberate murder of civilian Jews by Palestinian terrorists.
While Britain and America are allowed to fight a war against terrorism, Israel is urged to practise self-restraint every time another terrorist massacres another group of civilians in a restaurant or disco. Supporting Israel as a matter of right versus wrong is almost unheard of in polite society.
In normal times, this is lamentable but not disastrous. The Jews know something about survival. They can and will defend themselves. But in abnormal times, when anti-semitism is spreading across the globe like a brushfire, it is deeply dangerous. Not since the 1930s has such blithe hatred of Jews gained this much acceptability in world opinion. Across the Arab world, in particular, the past decade or so has seen a shift from mere passive resentment of Jews to a paranoid anti-semitism. That European elites want to ignore it, or — worse — pander to it, suggests we have learnt nothing from history.
Am I exaggerating? I wish I were. The massacre of September 11 has merely exposed and accelerated this trend. In the aftermath, a Gallup poll of Pakistanis found 48% believing that the Jews actually flew the planes into the World Trade Center, after warning their compatriots to stay away. This unhinged lie was routinely reproduced in dozens of Middle Eastern newspapers and remains the biggest single obstacle to getting Arabs and Muslims to acknowledge Osama Bin Laden’s guilt.
Al-Ahram, Egypt’s biggest newspaper and the official mouthpiece of the government, controlled by President Hosni Mubarak, recently published a particular gem as a compilation of the “investigative work of four reporters on Jewish control of the world”. It stated that: “Jews have become the political decision-makers and control the media in most capitals of the world (Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Athens, Ankara).” It claimed: “The main apparatus for the Jews to control the world is the international Jewish lobby, which works for Israel.”
Or take the official “moderates”. Consider the view of the former imam of New York’s Islamic Cultural Center, a man described until a short time ago as a western-leaning mullah sent to New York to spread inter-faith understanding. After September 11, he disappeared and then popped up in the Middle East with the following statement: “You see these people (the Jews) all the time everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism and drugs. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world. Now, they are riding on the back of the world powers.”
Then there’s the Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda: the Muslim-Jewish conflict “resembles the conflict between man and Satan . . . this is the fate of the Muslim nation, and beyond that the fate of all the nations of the world, to be tormented by this nation (the Jews)”. Replace the word Muslim with German and you don’t have an approximation of Hitler. You have Hitler.
Here’s one fact, reported earlier this autumn by Agence France-Presse: Mein Kampf was recently as high as No 6 on the Palestinian bestseller list. Last week, Reuters ran a photograph that was barely picked up elsewhere. It was a picture of Hezbollah youth brigades gathered in a square and all performing the Nazi salute. If that picture had shown American children doing the same, don’t you think it would have been splashed on every front page in the world? In fact, it is a function of condescending racism to the Arabs that we believe this kind of hate-filled pathology is somehow normal for them.
The left is particularly complicit in this evil. Many western liberals chided America for withdrawing from the Durban conference on racism last August. But that conference was the latest high-water mark for Jew-hating. The infamous, fabricated tract, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was widely distributed at the meeting. Questioners were shouted down with cries of “Jew! Jew! Jew!” The Palestinian Authority refuses to include the fact of the Holocaust in its own history books.
What about the following statement by one Ali ’Aqleh ’Ursan: “The covetous, racist, and hated Jew Shylock, who cut the flesh from Antonio’s chest with the knife of hatred, invades you with his money, his modern airplanes, his missiles, and his nuclear bombs.” Is ’Ursan some fringe extremist? No, he’s the chairman of the Arab Writers’ Association.
There are, of course, completely legitimate criticisms of Israel and Israeli policy that have nothing to do with anti-semitism. The settlements policy of the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is extremely hard to justify. There are Jewish extremists as well; and there is brutality in Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza that deserves rebuke.
But these valid arguments are light years away from the Jew- hating that has been fomented by Arab governments for years and tolerated by western elites for far too long. Such anti-semitism is the fundamental reason why no peace is possible in the Middle East, because it has so infected every possible Arab interlocutor that Israel simply has nobody to make peace with. In fact, unless western governments expose and condemn such anti-semitism no peace will ever be possible.
And the minute real pressure is put on the Palestinians by the West, we get results. Hamas’s temporary cessation of suicide bombings in Israel last week is directly related to the Bush administration’s clear backing for Israel after the latest terrorist wave. Appeasement is not necessary for peace. In fact, it perpetuates war.
Do we remember anything? Sixty years ago such hatred of Jews — unchallenged, appeased, excused, ignored — led directly to Auschwitz. Its prevalence now in the Middle East should remove any doubt about the morality of Israel’s self-defence in these perilous times and shame anyone who trafficks in it. Yes, this means that Israel’s war against terrorism is the same as our war against terrorism. And, yes, it is good versus evil all over again.
How much more do we need to know about the nature of Israel’s enemies to know whose side we should truly be on?
1."right of return" is not by any means unique to Israel. This same concept has been in play in nations as varied as Pakistan, Ireland and China.
1.(b) The Orthodox in Israel are complaining about Russian immigrants. Why? because 70% are Jewish only by virtue of their DNA.
2.(a)There aren't many muslims "who lived on that land in their own lifetimes" who want to go back.
2. (b)Most of the muslims abandoned their homes of their own choice, wanting to be out of the way while the Arab armies fulfilled their stated aim of killing the Jews.
3. As to voting rights, The Arabs have full voting rights in Israel, which is much more than Jews are allowed in any part of the Arab world.
Gee, sounds like no-problemo the way you put it.
All of your browbeating and namecalling is really subterfuge.
This isn't correct. For example, when it comes to civilian trucks, you won't find a US-built truck anywhere on Israeli roads, but when it comes to military trucks it's strictly US-built ONLY, because that what the agreement requires. Yes there is allowance for some Israeli-built systems (like the Arrow), but in those cases, the US gets the engineering and R&D done for free. Like I said, "MOST" of the money must be spent on US manufactured products.
Well written article by Sullivan. He says it like it is most of the time. Arafat does not want peace, he wants Israel to cease to exist...period.
And just how do you "reach some true accommodation" with people who want to kill you? For 50 years Israel has tried again and again to make peace with the arab world. What do they have to show for it, besides spending a large part of their GNP on defence.
The Palestinians say they want the IDF out of the PA areas great maybe they might start bt NOT blowing up pizza parlors and bus stops in Israel?
The Palestinians are being played for suckers by the rest of the arab world. They want them to keep fighting for two reasons, 1 it allows them to point outside their countries for an enemy and so stay in power, 2 they realise that if Israel and the Palestinians ever made peace the two of them would be ruling the arab world within 5 years.
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| Uniformed children stand in units named after guerrillas killed fighting Israel as part of Hizbollah's Jerusalem day rally December 14, 2001 in Beirut. The head of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group urged Palestinians to launch more suicide bomb attacks on Israelis and defy U.S.-led demands to crack down on 'terrorist' militant groups. (Sharif Karim/Reuters) |
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Don't blame Israel for your perceived problems. Blame Islam. They are at war with the world ....... not just the Jews and they hate the USA with a passion.
They've been building in both volume and venom for the past month or so. I suspect a fly on the wall in some location or other could have some very interesting notes to report. Coordinated attacks don't "just happen".
Then again, what else should we expect from the goose-step contingent?
It's much easier to call them The Bund.
Sorry, the Chief Jew apparently put us on the same shift -- I went to sleep shortly after posting that.
Seriously, though, the attacks seem to be coming in greater frequency and volume, and IMO are coordinated, probably at (or "just off of") one of the "whiter-than-thou" sturm und drang websites. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, etc.
Yeah, but they'd take it as a compliment.
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