FreeRepublic , LLC
PO BOX 9771
FRESNO, CA 93794
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD
OUT!! DONATE TODAY
SUPPORT FREE REPUBLIC
FreeRepublic , LLC
PO BOX 9771
FRESNO, CA 93794
Posted on 09/30/2002 9:05:22 AM PDT by sanchmo
'The intifada has come to America. And the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish rhetoric is becoming too shrill'
Forum on Netanyahu's speech: David Shtulman
Sunday, September 29, 2002
On Tuesday evening, former Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu will speak at Heinz Hall as a guest of the Robert Morris University Lecture Series. As often happens when Netanyahu or other prominent Israelis are invited to speak, the appearance will be accompanied by what promises to be hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrators who plan to perform mock Palestinian funerals and attempt to force passers-by through mock Israeli checkpoints while portraying Israelis as Nazis and mass murderers.
Posters have been spotted as far away as Youngstown, Ohio, promising free buses to come participate in this well-rehearsed road show. The posters say it is sponsored by the Committee for Peace in the Middle East but the press release includes Muslim and Arab student organizations at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh and "other groups" as sponsoring organizations.
The intifada has come to America.
The demonstrators may represent several elements. There will be many Muslims. There may also be members of the far right, whose extremist groups now have liaison officers to the Islamic fundamentalists (check the Aryan Nations Web site) because any enemy of the Zionist Occupied Government in Washington is their friend. And there will be the far left -- the socialists, the anti-globalization folks and the human rights activists who see Palestinian blood everywhere and Israeli blood nowhere.
History has been rewritten and fairness has ceased to exist. There is not the space here to debate their myriad accusations, many of which are worthy of debate, but which also include such classics as using the blood of Muslim children for pastries and inventing the Holocaust. So I will merely remind the readers that the origin of the Jewish people in Israel can be found on your bookshelf in your Bible. And that the state of Israel was created through a political process, affirmed first by the British mandatory power in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, reaffirmed by the League of Nations and finally confirmed by the same vote of the United Nations in 1947 that also created a Palestinian state, stillborn due to the ill-fated Arab invasion of Israel on the same day that she declared the independence conferred upon her by the international community.
If Israel is not legitimate, then neither is Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Egypt -- all carved out of British and French mandatory territories at about the same time.
The Palestinian refugee camps that came into being in Gaza and the West Bank as a result of that failed Arab invasion remained refugee camps though Gaza was in Egyptian hands and the West Bank was ruled by Jordan for the next 19 years. During all that time it never occurred to any Palestinian or Arab leader that the Palestinian state was in their hands waiting only for them to declare it.
And finally, only two years ago at Camp David II, Ehud Barak (Israeli prime minister at the time) and President Bill Clinton agreed to virtually all of Arafat's demands in exchange for peace, but once again he turned his back and chose intifada instead.
The Egyptian author Amin Al-Mahdi recently wrote in the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat that "in my personal opinion, no matter what peace proposal Clinton presented to the Arab side, it was sure to be rejected. This is because the Palestinian issue was always the main source of legitimacy for the revolutionary Arab regimes that established rural or tribal military republics. The Palestinian issue was always the subject of 'Announcement No. 1' of all these military coups. More importantly, it was the prop for the war declared on democracy and modernization."
In other words, if the Palestinians didn't exist, the Arab leaders would have to invent them, and the last thing they can afford is to have Palestinian suffering end, because with that would end the justification for their own miserable rule.
But what do I mean, the intifada has come to America?
The Al-Aksa intifada -- this Arafat-created rebellion fueled by the corpses of child suicide bombers educated by the Palestinian Authority to be martyrs in the quest to regain territory that was previously offered at the negotiating table, and paid for by Saddam's $25,000-per-child incentive -- has gone international.
It spread first to Europe spawning the worst wave of anti-Semitic violence since World War II. The combination of Muslim violence and enthusiastic encouragement from the European left provoked the respected Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci to write in April of this year: "I find it shameful that the Jews in Italian cities once again are frightened. And in French and Dutch and Danish and German cities it is the same. I find it shameful that, obeying the stupid, vile, dishonest and extremely opportunistic fashion of political-correctness, they [the Left] exploit the word 'peace'."
And now I fear that it has come to American shores. The anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish rhetoric is becoming too shrill. The demonstrations are becoming more frequent, abusive and dangerous, especially on college campuses. Levels of intimidation have become so intense that on campuses like San Francisco State and Berkeley, many Jewish students feel unsafe. Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard, felt compelled to publicly address the issue of rising anti-Semitism just two weeks ago.
The anti-Israel demonstration that will be held at Heinz Hall is an intentional attempt to control the public debate through intimidation, just as was recently done at Concordia University in Montreal, where a similar demonstration became so threatening that it was deemed unsafe for Netanyahu to speak, the audience awaiting him had to be escorted outside and the demonstrators caused significant damage to the hall.
I am concerned at the proliferation of this tactic on the American scene. But I am frightened by the American public's apparent willingness to accept it. And the people who should be speaking out most loudly against it are American Muslims. Because this is not the American way, it is the way of the intifada.
SUGGESTION - They should not be allowed to interfer with the 1st Amendment.
The entire generation has grown up listening on the media such drivel. What we are seeing today is the result of outsourcing of morality.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.