What’s Behind Western Condemnation of Israel’s War Against Hamas?

Efraim Karsh

•With a unanimity that has become all too familiar, politicians, the media, NGOs, and church leaders across the globe took their cue to denounce Israel’s legitimate act of self-defense against one of the world’s most extreme terror organizations. This chorus of disapproval is in stark contrast to the utter indifference to far bloodier conflicts that have been going on around the world.
•Why do citizens in democracies enthusiastically embrace a radical Islamist group that not only seeks the destruction of a fellow democracy but is overtly committed to the substitution of a world-wide Islamic caliphate for the existing international order?
•Decades of mistreatment of the Palestinians by the Arab states have gone virtually unnoticed. Only when they interact with Israel do the Palestinians win the world’s attention.
•The fact that international coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has invariably reflected a degree of intensity and emotional involvement well beyond the normal level to be expected of impartial observers would seem to suggest that it is a manifestation of longstanding prejudice that has been brought out into the open by the conflict.
•The Palestinians are but the latest lightning rod unleashed against the Jews, their supposed victimization reaffirming the millenarian demonization of the Jews in general, and the medieval blood libel – that Jews delight in the blood of others.

A Tidal Wave of International Indignation

No sooner had Israel opted to stop Hamas’ attacks on its civilian population, after years of self-imposed restraint, than it was confronted with a tidal wave of international indignation. With a unanimity that has become all too familiar when it comes to the world’s pronouncements on Israel, politicians, the media, NGOs, and church leaders across the globe took their cue to denounce this legitimate act of self-defense by a sovereign democracy against one of the world’s most extreme terror organizations, overtly committed to its destruction, which for years had been raining down thousands of rockets and mortar shells on civilian communities (not to mention the long string of suicide bombings).

Echoed by the international media’s blanket coverage of Israel’s response in Gaza, but not Hamas’ murderous ideology and actions, this chorus of disapproval over the Jewish state’s “disproportionate” use of force is in stark contrast to the utter indifference to far bloodier conflicts that have been going on around the world, from the long-running genocide in Darfur, with its estimated 400,000 dead and at least 2.5 million refugees, to war in the Congo, with over 4 million dead or driven from their homes, to Chechnya, where an estimated 150,000-200,000 have died and up to a third of the population has been displaced at the hands of the Russian military. None of these tragedies saw protesters flock into the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Oslo, Dublin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Washington, and Fort Lauderdale (to give a brief list), as has been the case during the Gaza crisis.

Arab Mistreatment of the Palestinians Went Unnoticed

How can this be? Why do citizens in democracies enthusiastically embrace a radical Islamist group that not only seeks the destruction of a fellow democracy but is overtly committed to the substitution of a world-wide Islamic caliphate (or umma) for the existing international order based on territorial nation states? Not because of compassion for the Palestinians, whose plight has never attracted genuine international interest, especially by the Arab states (and for that matter, the Palestinian leadership), whose decades of mistreatment of the Palestinians have gone virtually unnoticed.

Between 1949 and 1967, Egypt and Jordan ruled the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively. Not only did they fail to put these populations on the road to statehood, but they showed little interest in protecting their human rights or even in improving the quality of their life – which is one of the reasons that 120,000 West Bankers moved across to the East Bank of the Jordan and about 300,000 others emigrated abroad between 1949 and 1967.

Nobody in the international community paid any more attention to this than they have more recently to the ongoing abuse of Palestinians across the Arab world from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, a country which was condemned in a June 2006 Amnesty International report for its “long-standing discrimination and abuses of fundamental economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees.”

Nor has there been any international outcry when Arab countries have massacred Palestinians on a grand scale. In 1970 King Hussein of Jordan ordered the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian refugee camps in the course of putting down the Palestinian uprising during “Black September.” This left between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinian refugees dead. But the fact that Hussein killed more Palestinians in the course of a single month than Israel managed to do in decades was never held against him or dented the widely held perception of him as a man of peace. As the supposedly pro-Palestinian journalist Robert Fisk put it in his recent memoirs, King Hussein was “often difficult to fault.”

Again, more than two decades ago Abu Iyad, the number two man in the PLO, publicly stated that the crimes of the Syrian government against the Palestinian people “surpassed those of the Israeli enemy.” While in the wake of the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Kuwaitis not only set about punishing the PLO for support of Saddam Hussein’s brutal occupation by cutting off their financial support for Yasir Arafat’s overblown and corrupt organization, but there was also a widespread slaughter of Palestinians living in Kuwait.

This revenge against innocent Palestinian workers in the emirate was so severe that Arafat himself acknowledged: “What Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories.” Yet there was no media coverage or specially convened UN meetings because it is only when they interact with Israel that the Palestinians win the world’s attention.

Only Palestinian Interaction with Israel Wins World Attention

In other words, the extraordinary international preoccupation with the Palestinians is a corollary of their interaction with Israel, the only Jewish state to exist since biblical times, a reflected glow of the millenarian obsession with the Jews in the Christian and the Muslim worlds. Had their dispute been with an Arab, Muslim, or any other adversary, it would have attracted a fraction of the interest that it presently does.

On occasion, notably among devout and/or born again Evangelical Christians, this obsession has manifested itself in admiration and support for the national Jewish resurrection in the Holy Land. In most instances, however, anti-Jewish prejudice and animosity, or anti-Semitism as it is commonly known, has served rather to exacerbate distrust and hatred of Israel. Indeed, the fact that the international coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the libels against Zionism and Israel, such as the despicable comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa, have invariably reflected a degree of intensity and emotional involvement well beyond the normal level to be expected of impartial observers would seem to suggest that, rather than being a response to concrete Israeli activities, it is a manifestation of longstanding prejudice that has been brought out into the open by the vicissitudes of the conflict.

There is another side to the ledger. For millennia Jewish blood has been cheap, if not costless, throughout the Christian and Muslim worlds, where the Jew became the epitome of powerlessness, a perpetual punching bag and a scapegoat for whatever ills befell society. There is no reason, therefore, why Israel shouldn’t follow in the footsteps of these past generations, avoid antagonizing its Arab neighbors and exercise restraint whenever attacked. But no, instead of knowing its place, the insolent Jewish state has forfeited this historic role by exacting a price for Jewish blood and beating the bullies who had hitherto been able to torment the Jews with impunity. This dramatic reversal of history cannot but be immoral and unacceptable. Hence the global community outrage and hence the world’s media provision of unlimited resources to cover every minute of Israel’s “disproportionate” response, but none of the devastation and dislocation caused to Israeli cities and their residents.

Put differently, the Palestinians are but the latest lightning rod unleashed against the Jews, their supposed victimization reaffirming the millenarian demonization of the Jews in general, and the medieval blood libel – that Jews delight in the blood of others – in particular. In the words of David Mamet, “The world was told Jews used this blood in the performance of religious ceremonies. Now, it seems, Jews do not require the blood for baking purposes, they merely delight to spill it on the ground.”

Zionism Failed to Solve the “Jewish Problem”

To make such an argument will no doubt be dismissed as “Zionist propaganda” by many opponents of Israel. But in fact this not only runs counter to the prevailing wisdom among Israeli academics and intellectuals, for whom such arguments are anathema, but it also challenges one of the most fundamental tenets of Zionism – that the creation of a Jewish state, where the Jewish diasporas would congregate and become normalized, would solve the “Jewish problem” and ameliorate, if not eliminate altogether, the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

What this line of thinking by the founding fathers of Zionism failed to consider, however, is that the prejudice and obsession that had hitherto been reserved for Jewish individuals and communities would be transferred to the Jewish state. As the poet Heinrich Heine, himself a convert from Judaism, once wrote, Judaism is “the family curse that lasts a thousand years” and no matter how much it has tried, Israel has never been able to escape this disturbing reality.

A saddening thought indeed. But is there any other explanation as to why, sixty years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the only state in the world that is subjected to a constant outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and blood libels; whose policies and actions are obsessively condemned by the international community; and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged not only by its Arab enemies but by segments of advanced opinion in the West?

The Jewish Nakba: Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions

Originally was published in Hebrew, in MAARIV

Each year, the Palestinians mark Nakba Day, the catastrophe that befell them with the establishment of the State of Israel. But the Jews in Arab countries also suffered catastrophe and it was many times worse.

By Ben-Dror Yemini (bdyemini@gmail.com)

They say that she was stunningly beautiful. Sol (Suleika) Hatuel was 17 years old when she was beheaded. A Muslim friend claimed that she had succeeded in converting her. When Sol denied the claim, she was accused of renouncing Islam and was condemned to death. Her case reached the sultan.

In order to prevent her death, the community elders tried to persuade her to live as a Muslim. She refused and said, “I was born as a Jew, I will die as a Jew.” Her fate was sealed. It happened in 1834. She was from Tangier and was executed in Fez. Many make pilgrimages to her grave. Despite the fact that the incident was immortalized in eyewitness testimony, in a famous painting and in a play, her story has been forgotten. The following article is dedicated to her and to the victims of the Jewish Nakba.

Every year on the 15th of May, the Palestinians – and many others around the world along with them – “celebrate” Nakba Day. For them, this is the day that marks the great catastrophe that befell them as result of the establishment of the State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs became refugees. Some fled, some were deported. The Nakba grew to such enormous proportions that it is preventing a solution to the dispute.

We must remember that in the 1940s, population exchanges and deportations for the purpose of creating national states were the accepted norm. Tens of millions of people experienced it, but only the Palestinians (and they are not alone in this) have been inflating the myth of the Nakba.

However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same years, there was a long line of slaughters, of pogroms, of property confiscation and of deportations against Jews in Islamic countries. This chapter of history has been left in the shadows. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the Palestinian Nakba. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary.

Like tens of millions of other refugees around the world, they preferred to heal the wound. Not to scratch it and not to open it and not to make it bleed even more. The Palestinians, in contrast, preferred bleeding to rehabilitation. And now they are also paying the price.

The industry of lies has intensified the myth of the Nakba and turned it into the ultimate crime. The Nakba has spawned innumerable publications and conferences, to the point of completely distorting the actual historical process. The Deir Yassin massacre has become one of the milestones in the Palestinian Nakba. There is no need to hide what occurred there (even though the issue of the massacre is in dispute). Innocent people were killed.

There were a few other instances of behavior that should be exposed and condemned.

Extermination War against the Jews

A long series of massacres was perpetrated against the Jews in Arab countries. They did not declare war on the countries in which they lived. They were loyal citizens. That did not help them. Their suffering was erased. Their story is never told. The Palestinian narrative has taken over history. There is no need for a Palestinian narrative versus a Zionist narrative. We need to shake off narratives in favor of the truth. And the truth is the number of Jews murdered was greater, their dispossession was greater, and their suffering greater.

A stunning testimonial from those years, which actually comes from the Arab side, sheds light on the issue. In 1936, Alawite notables sent a letter to the French Foreign Minister in which they expressed their concern for the future of the region. They also referred to the Jewish question: “The Jews brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed gold and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything by force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and didn’t hesitate to massacre their children and women … Thus, a black fate awaits the Jews in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria united with Muslim Palestine.” The interesting thing is that one of the letter’s signatories was none other than the great grandfather of Bashar Al Assad, the president of Syria.

We must remember that Nakba Day is the date of the declaration of Israel’s independence, May 15th . We must remember what happened just a few hours after that declaration. The Secretary of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzamaha, announced the declaration of war against Israel: “This war will be a war of annihilation and the story of the slaughter will be told like the campaigns of the Mongols and the Crusaders.”

The Mufti, Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was close to Hitler during the Second World War, added his own bit: “I am declaring a holy war. My brother Muslims! Slaughter the Jews! Kill them all!” The mini-Holocaust of the Jews in Arab countries.

Various documents, some of them discovered only in recent years, show that the declaration of war was far broader. It was actually a declaration of war on the Jews.

Research that was conducted, among others, by Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada, shows that the Arab League formulated a bill that would place a series of sanctions on the Jews, including confiscation of property, bank accounts and more. The preamble to the bill states that “All Jews will be considered members of the Jewish minority in the State of Palestine.” And if the fate of the Jews of Palestine was sealed, the fate of the Jews in Arab countries was clear.

The bill was indeed the background to the sanctions against the Jews in Arab countries – sometimes by way of legislation, as happened in Iraq and later in Egypt, and sometimes by taking those measures without the need for any legislation. According to the industry of lies, the Jews in Arab countries lived peacefully in their environment, under the protection of the government, and it was only because of the Zionist movement and the harm done to the Arabs in Palestine that the Jews began to suffer.

This lie has been repeated innumerable times. Most of the Jews in Arab countries did not undergo the horrors of the Holocaust. But, even before the advent of Zionism, their situation was not any better. There were periods in which the Jews enjoyed relative peace under Muslim rule, but those periods were the exceptions. Throughout Jewish history in Muslim lands there were humiliations, expulsions, pogroms and a systematic deprivation of rights.

Series of Pogroms

We can, of course, start with the conflict between Muhammad and the Jews. Muhammad undertook social reforms, bringing the Arabs out of the Jahaliya period, and borrowed the concept of monotheism – primarily, perhaps, from the Jews. Many motifs from the Jewish religion appear in the Koran, for example, circumcision and the prohibition on eating pork. But Muhammad wanted to convert the Jews, they, of course, refused. The result was a confrontation that ended in the expulsion and slaughter of hundreds.

The Jews, as the “People of the Book,” were given the right to live under the protection of Islam and to practice their religion. From time to time, from generation to generation, the conditions underwent changes. In many cases, the Jews lived under the covenant of Khalif Omar.

This covenant enabled them to live as protected people (“Dhimmis”), albeit with inferior status. But many times, under Muslim rule, they were not even allowed a life of inferior status.

The Golden Age: One of the proofs of the coexistence of Jews and Muslims is Jewish prosperity under Muslim rule in Spain and the Golden Age. The reality, however, was different.

It encompassed a series of violence events against the Jews. In 1011 in Cordoba, Spain, under Muslim rule, there were pogroms in which, according to various estimates, from hundreds to thousands were murdered. In 1066 in Granada, Yosef Hanagid was executed, along with between 4,000 and 6,000 other Jews. One of the worst periods of all began in 1148, when the Almohad dynasty came to power (al Muwahhid?n), and ruled Spain and North Africa during the 12th and 13th centuries.

Morocco: The country that suffered from the worst series of massacres. In the 8th century whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First. In 1033, in the city of Fez, 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob. The rise of the Almohad dynasty caused waves of mass murders. According to testimony from that time, 100,000 Jews were slaughtered in Fez and about 120,000 in Marrakesh (this testimony should be viewed with caution). In 1465, another massacre took place in Fez, which spread to other cities in Morocco.

There were pogroms in Tetuan in 1790 and 1792, in which children were murdered, women were raped and property was looted. Between 1864 and 1880, there were a series of pogroms against the Jews of Marrakesh, in which hundreds were slaughtered. In 1903, there were pogroms in two cities – Taza and Settat, in which over 40 Jews were killed.

In 1907, there was a pogrom in Casablanca in which 30 Jews were killed and many women were raped. In 1912, there was another massacre in Fez in which 60 Jews were killed and about 10,000 were left homeless. In 1948, another series of pogroms began against the Jews which led to the slaughter of 42 in the cities of Oujda and Jrada.

Algeria: A series of massacres occurred in 1805, 1815 and 1830. The situation of the Jews improved with the start of the French conquest in 1830, but that did nor prevent anti-Jewish outbursts in the 1880s. The situation deteriorated again with the rise of the Vichy government. Even before 1934, the country was permeated by Nazi influences, which led to the slaughter of 25 Jews in the city of Constantine. When it achieved independence in 1962, laws were passed against citizenship for anyone who was not a Muslim and their property was effectively confiscated. Most of the Jews left, usually completely penniless, together with the French (“pieds noirs”).

Libya: In 1785, hundreds of Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha. Under Nazi influence, harassment of the Jews intensified. Jewish property in Benghazi was plundered, thousands were sent to camps and about 500 Jews were killed. In 1945, at the end of World War II, a program against the Jews began and the number of murdered reached 140. The New York Times reported the horrible scenes of babies and old people who had been beaten to death. In the riots that broke out in 1948, the Jews were more prepared, so only 14 were killed. Following the Six Day War, riots broke out once again and 17 Jews were slaughtered.

Iraq: a massacre occurred in Basra in 1776. The situation of the Jews improved under British rule in 1917, but this improvement ended with Iraq’s independence in 1932. German influences increased and reached a peak in 1941 in the pogrom known as Farhud, in which 182 Jews were slaughtered (according to historian Elie Kedourie, 600 people were actually murdered) and thousands of houses were pillaged.

Those were the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, who preached violence against the Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iraqi parliament acted according to the Arab League bill and in 1950 and froze the assets of Jews. Sanctions were imposed on those who remained in Iraq. The Farhud massacre and the harassment from 1946 to 1949 to all intents and purposes turned the Iraqi Jews into exiles and refugees. The few thousand who remained in Iraq suffered from harsh edicts. In 1967, 14 Iraqis were sentenced to death on trumped up charges of espionage. Among them were 11 Jews. Radio Iraq invited the masses to the hanging festivities.

Syria: The first blood libel in a Muslim country occurred in 1840, and led to the kidnapping and torture of dozens of Jewish children, sometimes to the point of death, and a pogrom against the Jews. In 1986, the Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Talas, published a book, “The Matzah of Zion,” in which he claims that the Jews did, indeed, use the blood of a Christian monk to bake matzah. Same old anti-Semitism, new edition. Other pogroms occurred in Aleppo in 1850 and in 1875, in Damascus in 1848 and in 1890, in Beirut in 1862 and in 1874, and in Dir al Kamar there was another blood libel which also led to a pogrom in 1847. That year, there was a pogrom against the Jews of Jerusalem, which was the result of that blood libel. In 1945, the Jews of Aleppo suffered severe pogroms. 75 Jews were murdered and the community was destroyed. There was a resurgence of the violence in 1947, which turned most of the Syrian Jews into refugees. Those who remained there lived for many years as hostages.

Iran: There was a pogrom against the Jews of Mashhad in 1839. A mob was incited to attack Jews, and slaughtered almost 40. The rest were forced to convert. That is how the Marranos of Mashhad came into being. In 1910, there was a blood libel in Shiraz in which 30 Jews were murdered and all Jewish homes were pillaged.

Yemen: There were fluctuations in relations that ranged between tolerance and inferior subsistence, between harassment and pogroms. The Rambam’s Letter to Yemen was sent following a letter he received from the leader of the Yemeni Jews, describing edicts of forced conversion issued against the Jews (1173). There were further waves of apostasy edicts which cannot be detailed here for lack of space.

One of the worst milestones was the Mawza exile. Three years after Imam Al Mahdi took power in 1676, he drove the Jews into one of the most arid districts of Yemen. According to various accounts, 60 – 75% of the Jews died as a result of the exile. Many and varied edicts were imposed on the Jews, differing only in severity. One of the harshest was the Orphans’ Edict, which ordered the forced conversion of orphaned children to Islam. In nearby Aden, which was under British rule, pogroms occurred in 1947 which took the lives of 82 Jews. 106 of the 170 shops that were owned by Jews were completely destroyed. Hundreds of houses and all the community’s buildings were burned down.

Egypt: As in the other Arab countries, the Jews of Egypt also suffered inferior status for hundreds of years. A significant improvement occurred when Muhammad Ali came to power in 1805. The testimony of French diplomat, Edmond Combes, leaves nothing in doubt: “To the Muslims, no race is more worthy of contempt than the Jewish race.” Another diplomat added, “The Muslims do not hate any other religion the way they hate that of the Jews.”

Following the blood libel in Damascus, similar libels began to spread in Egypt as well and incited mobs to carry out a series of attacks: in Cairo in 1844, 1890, and in 1901-1902; and Alexandria in 1870, 1882 and in 1901-1907. Similar attacks also occurred in Port Said and in Damanhur.

Later on, there were riots against the Jews at the end of World War II, in 1945, in which 10 were killed and hundreds were injured. In 1947, the Companies Law was passed, which severely damaged Jewish businesses and led to the confiscation of property. In 1948, following the UN resolution on partition, riots began in Cairo and Alexandria. The dead numbered between 80 and 180. Tens of thousands were forced to leave, many fleeing and abandoning their property. The lot of those who remained did not improve. In 1956, a law was passed in Egypt which effectively denied the Jews citizenship, forcing them to leave the country with no property. This was an act of pure expulsion and mass property confiscation.

***

The above is just a partial list out of a long series of massacres in Muslim countries. It happened before the Zionist endeavor. It continued with the Zionist endeavor. We are talking about a succession of events. Tens of thousands were murdered simply because they were Jewish. So the fairytale of coexistence and blaming Zionism for undermining that coexistence is yet another completely baseless myth.

Before the UN vote on partition in November 1947, Egypt’s ambassador to the UN, Heykal Pasha, warned that “The lives of a million Jews in Muslim countries will be in danger if the vote is for partition… if Arab blood is spilled in Palestine, Jewish blood will be spilled elsewhere in the world.”

Four days afterwards, the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Fadil al Jamali said that “We will not be able to restrain the masses in the Arab countries, after the harmony in which Jews and Arabs lived together.” There was no harmony. There had been a massacre of Jews just a few years earlier. El Jamali lied, of course. The very same Iraqi government had encouraged the harassment of Jews and issued orders to confiscate all Jewish property.

Additionally, the Iraqi leader of the time, Nuri Said, had already presented a plan for expelling the Jews in 1949, even before the hasty – actually forced – exit of the Jews from Iraq. He also explained that “The Jews are a source of trouble in Iraq. They have no place among us. We must get rid of them as best we were able.” Said even presented a plan to lead the Jews via Jordan in order to coerce them into passage to Israel. Jordan objected, but the expulsion was implemented anyway. Said even admitted that this entailed a type of population exchange.

So the massacres, the pogroms and the great expulsion of the Jews was a continuation of their suffering under Muslim rule. There have always been Muslims who came out in defense of the Jews. They are also worthy of mention. That were also periods of prosperity, but it appears that most of the Jewish prosperity, as in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, in Algeria in the 19th and 20th centuries, in Iraq in the 1920s – was under colonial rule. In most cases, the situation of the Jews was bad before the European invasion and worsened once again with the end of the colonial era.

* * *

Throughout the relations between Jews and Arabs, in Arab countries or in the course of the Zionist enterprise, there was not one case of a pogrom against Muslims of the type committed by the Arabs against the Jews. Even in the worst cases, which must be condemned, such as Deir Yassin, they occurred as part of a military confrontation.

Those are cases that should be condemned, but we need to put things in perspective. The Arabs slaughtered the Jews without any hostilities and without any military excuse, just because they were Jews. And those few Arabs who were killed, were killed as part of a military campaign. Despite this, any injury inflicted on the Arab population resulted in innumerable investigations and references. The worst abuse of all, the abuse of Jews by Arabs, was erased and forgotten.

Let’s return to Deir Yassin, the ultimate symbol of the Nakba. We have called it an indecent act and we will repeat that. But we must note that it was preceded by a series of murderous terrorist attacks against the civilian population. Waves of incidents, which to all intents and purposes were actual pogroms, by an incited mob that attacked the civilian population. Thousands of Jews were slaughtered – women, children and the elderly. The Palestinians even murdered their own people. In the great Arab Revolt in the 1930s, 400 Jews and 5,000 Arabs were killed, most of them at the hands of their brethren.

The months before Deir Yassin were the worst of all. 39 workers were murdered at the Haifa refineries, 50 Jews were killed by car bombs in Jerusalem, and on and on. In total, in the four months between the vote on partition and the declaration of establishment of the State of Israel, 815 Jews were murdered, most of them before the Deir Yassin incident (on April 9, 1948), some afterward (the slaughter of the Hadassah hospital convoy, 79 killed, April 13, 1948). Most were civilians. Most died in massacres and terrorist attacks. And that is the real background. Far more murdered Jews. But they have all been forgotten. They should be mentioned. That is the Jewish Nakba, whose victims, in Israel and around the world, are mentioned less and less.

The Palestinians paid the price

Close to a million Jews lived in Arab countries at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel. Just a few live there today. Most left because they suffered from pogroms and the threat to their lives. It was a crueler expulsion than the one suffered by the Arabs of Palestine, who paid the price for the declarations of war and annihilation made by their leaders. Even the Jewish property that was confiscated or abandoned as a result of the expulsion is more valuable than the Arab property that remained in Israel.

Various investigators have tried to estimate the value of the confiscated Jewish property following the forced departure of the Jews from Arab countries, compared with the Arab property left in Israel following the forced departure of the Arabs. Economist Sidney Zabludoff, an international expert in the field, estimates that the value of the Arab property is $3.9 billion, compared with the value of the Jewish property which is $6 billion (at 2007 values).

So even in this area, the Palestinians’ claims are refuted. They dragged the Arab countries into war. They paid the price. And they are the ones who caused the Jews to pay an even higher price. Both in property and in blood.

This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba, and it by no means includes all the cases of pogroms, property confiscations, forced conversions and other harassment. The purpose is precisely the opposite. When they understand, in the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in lives, is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The Jewish Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous. But it is the suffering of many nations, Jews and Arabs among them, who went through the experience as part of the creation of new nation states.

It is therefore worth presenting the story of the Jewish Nakba. Not for the purpose of increasing the hostility, but for the purpose of presenting the truth, and for the purpose of reconciliation between the nations. Inshallah.

From the tone of most of the posts above, it looks like some knowledge has been lost.

Oy vey!

I so wish Dr. K would be able to see and not have closed off to both the content you write as well as the emotion.

Dr. K, if you are still reading, do you still choose to ignore the overwhelming agreement in all of the letters above? There is so much agreement in the content and, as expressed with almost poetic skill, agreement in the emotions “we” feel about the general “you”. Almost everyone who has written aknowledges your personal pain and that there is a tiny minority of Arabs/Muslims who don’t fervently strive for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. Can you still not accept that? Read the above over and over. The facts are there. They are very historically verifiable. The Arab story is a good one but it is not verifiable. Try it yourself. Unless you believe the Jews control the history books like so many believe we control the media and the banks, the verifiable facts speak for themselves. If you believe you can present a factual, verifiable history that disproves all of the 40 or so letters of history presented above then do so. In essence, when you decided that the conversation is over, you took your ball and went home. That is not the grown up way of doing it. You wanted a conversation. As usual, the Jews are talking and begging you to converse (see the 40 letters above). You seem to have decided that we’re all “full of it” and only you know the true, alternative to our truth.
You wanted a conversation. It is your turn to speak. Give the facts as you have researched them (and please, with sources. The Arab story is so often bizarre and not found in any of the documents we seem to have access to). Prove to everyone that we are wrong. And, most importantly, show us and prove to us and convince us of a true, safe way to bring about the peace with the Arabs and the Muslims so that one day, you can be an honored guest in the house you were born in. And believe me, honored you would be. The house may not revert to being yours but I guarantee justice and remuneration will have been rightly served you. That’s a promise we Jews will keep because it’s simply how we are.

But who actually needs a Palestinian state? Or rather a second Palestinian state. The first Palestinian state, commonly called Jordan, was carved out of the Palestine Mandate and equipped with a refugee Saudi royal family. Today Jordan exists mainly under the protection of the US and Israel, and its population of Palestinian Arabs is a seething mass of Muslim extremists currently enjoying a 30 percent unemployment rate, where the majority of the population supports Osama Bin Laden, at a higher percentage rate than even Pakistan.

But Jordan is practically heaven on earth compared to the Second Palestinian State that the Obama Administration is to determined to inflict on Israel.

Currently ruled by mutually hostile armed gangs loyal to either the Fatah or Hamas terrorist groups, Palestine 2.0 has already been a failed state for over a decade. Every attempt at foreign investment has failed. The ruins of industrial zones, greenhouses and even a casino, dot the landscape. Palestinian Arab Christians from overseas who returned to build up the economy fled quickly in the face of relentless shakedowns, kidnappings and militia gangs masquerading as law enforcement.

The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs work for two employers. The UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority… which in turn is funded by foreign donors. Work for the Palestinian Authority usually means belonging to a militia gang which is loyal to a particular figure in the PA leadership, who in turn passes that loyalty on to the current “government”. With little to do, the gangs spend their free time dealing drugs, carrying out terrorist attacks and collecting protection money from their town’s remaining stores.

For 17 years, Israel, America and just about every interested party has tried to build a Palestinian state. They provided weapons and training to build a modern Palestinian police force. They sent advisers and fortunes in economic aid, thousands per Palestinian Arab. They created industrial zones and transferred greenhouses. Billions in funds from the EU, America and various do-gooders were swallowed up to fund the lavish lifestyles of Arafat and his henchmen.

To those who argue that a Palestinian State will build regional stability, the rational person must ask, how in the world has any of this contributed to regional stability?

Year after year, the proposed Palestinian State has become a worse place. Given autonomy, its own military, political, legal and economic system– “Palestine” has made the region more unstable than ever. Terrorism has increased. Violence has increased. General instability has increased. Proposing that more of this will stabilize the region is akin to a man setting fire to one piece of furniture after another in his living room, and claiming that when the entire room is on fire, it will be a safe place to live.

So I ask again, who needs a Palestinian state? If the Palestinian Arabs really wanted a state (a second state) in Gaza, the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem, they could have had it before 1967, when those territories were in Arab hands. Instead the PLO back then called for no Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. As Clinton discovered to his chagrin at the end of his term, Arafat did not actually want a state and was not interested in accepting an Israeli offer that gave him 99 percent of what he wanted. Is it really any surprise that Hamas today follows the same exact party line?

And really why would they want a Palestinian state? If a state was actually created, the UNRWA would have to close up shop. A Palestinian state could no longer rely on foreign donors to fund the hundred thousand or so armed gangsters who form its “government” and its only real form of employment. And the same Muslim states who pass along “charity” to help fund the “martyr operations” that are behind much of the local terrorism would turn elsewhere.

Instead for 17 years the same tired opera has been playing in the region’s one theater. First the world’s statesmen and diplomats descend on Israel, crying that the only hope for the region’s stability is a Palestinian state. Next the Israeli diplomats arrive with a generous territorial offer, counterbalanced by a second clause that asks that there be no more terrorism. That second clause is immediately ignored by everyone in the room.

Next the Palestinian Authority diplomats arrive demanding twice as much land, no more border security preventing terrorists from entering Israel, half of Israel’s capital, contiguous borders that would cut Israel in half, the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from territories claimed by them… and finally the return of the “refugees”, which is code for unlimited immigration from their proposed Palestinian State into Israel.

The Israelis make a counteroffer. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of rejecting peace. The Palestinian Arabs begin carrying out terrorist attacks again (assuming they even bothered to stop during the negotiations). Israel bombs the terrorists. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of perpetuating the cycle of violence, and urge everyone to go back to the negotiating table. By the time that happens a year later, the Palestinian Arabs have doubled their demands, and the whole “Cycle of Peacemaking” repeats itself all over again.

The “not so secret” secret here is that the Palestinian Arabs do not want a state or peace. 17 years of running the Palestinian Authority into the ground have shown how utterly incapable Fatah and Hamas are of running anything, besides armed gangs, mosques and occasional social services to their loyalist families… all funded from abroad.

The Palestinian ruling powers derive their authority from two forces

1. The Muslim desire to destroy Israel as an infidel state whose existence contradicts Islam. This keeps the money and arms flowing in to the different factions, as well as provides popular support by Arabs. Which is why no Palestinian leader will recognize and accept the existence of Israel. It is why Arafat negotiated out of one side of his mouth and ordered terrorist attacks out of the other. It is why after his death. his Fatah movement has lost credibility and popular support to Hamas due to its increasing inability to kill Israelis.

2. Western and Israel diplomats who keep trying to create a Palestinian state out of the bizarre notion that such a state would bring the terrorism to an end. Like all Dhimmi behaviors in regard to Islam, they ignore the fact that the short term goal of terrorism is terrorism. The long term goal of terrorism is to conquer and hold the territory of the terrorized. There is no room for the middle ground of compromise in that equation. It’s either absolute power, or nothing at all.

Terrorism is practiced by armed gangs and movements who derive their power and support from being terrorists. Proposing that they stop being terrorists is a lot like walking into GM and suggesting that instead of making cars, they should make donuts and hand them out for free, so everyone will be happy.

Palestinian nationalism has always been a crock, a transparently phony justification for terrorism that has always come before nationalism. Palestine was never a country or a state. It was the name given by the Roman occupation forces to a region they were administering, a region far larger than modern day Israel. There was never an Arab Palestinian king or ruler until Arafat. There was never a separate country called Palestine. The Post WW1 Palestine Mandate in the 20th century was used to create two states, an Arab state, Jordan, and a smaller state, Israel.

Now the drive is on to create Palestine 2.0, despite the obvious fact that the Palestinian Arabs have done everything possible to prevent it from coming into being. Nearly two decades of terrorism have turned the endless rounds of peace negotiations into a joke. Half the Palestinian Authority is now ruled by the Iranian backed Hamas terrorist group, which insists it will never recognize or accept permanent peace with Israel. A state of affairs that never would have come into being, had Israel not completely withdrawn from Gaza in the first place.

So once again, who wants or needs a Palestinian state?

Israel did not come into being out of pity for the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Nor did it come into being thanks to US aid or support. Both of those however are common myths.

The State of Israel was in place well before the Holocaust, in the form of an embryonic country of farmers who drained the swamps, businessmen who set up shops, journalists who printed newspapers, and soldiers who trained to protect and defend their homeland. When the UN recognized Israel, it simply accepted the fait accompli that Israel existed and was capable of taking care of itself, which it proved by fighting the armies of the surrounding Arab nations to a standstill. It did it without US military aid, which only came into the picture much later with the Kennedy administration. It did it, because the people of Israel genuinely wanted their own state and worked to make it happen.

By 1942, 17 years after the Palestine Mandate, the Jews of Israel had built a thriving country, from power generators to vast stretches of farmland, from a revived language to the Technicon, created in 1924, which is considered one of the world’s leading electrical engineering and computer science schools in the world.

17 years after Oslo, the Palestinian Arabs have built nothing but death and destruction. Worse yet they’ve taken everything that was given to them and turned it into either a weapon or a bribe. By every standard, they have failed to show their ability to build or run a functioning state. Not even the most liberally minded thinker can point to anything in the Palestinian Authority leadership that suggests that they’re capable of running a functional state. Which is why that same species will naturally duck the question and begin blaming Israel instead.

And that highlights the real issue. The only reason for creating Palestine 2.0 is the destruction of Israel. It will not bring regional stability. It will not even bring local stability. It cannot even function unless its entire workforce is funded from abroad. It cannot even stop engaging in terrorism.

Palestine 2.0 is a Frankenstein’s monster, with body parts from Shiite, Sunni and Marxist terrorists. It only knows how to do one thing and one thing alone, kill. It is not a natural creature, because no Palestinian state ever existed throughout history. It is an artificial state whose existence has only one purpose. The destruction of Israel.

And that answers our question at last. Who needs a Palestinian state? Someone who is either ignorant, foolish or needs to destroy Israel.

The Two State Solution is not a formula for any kind of stability or end to the violence. It’s meant to take the violence to a whole new level. It is a formula for the destruction of Israel. 17 years of peacemaking by Israelis has produced 17 years of terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs. Everything sowed on the Palestinian Authority, from money to guns, from autonomy to infrastructure, have come up as dragon’s teeth.

Palestine is not a state. It was never a state. It will never be a state. It is currently ruled by two factions who have both disowned a negotiated Palestinian state in favor of the destruction of Israel. It is not a country, it is a weapon.

Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of Israel with one goal, its destruction. Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of every Jew in the world, legitimizing the worst and ugliest kinds of bigotry. Palestine is an imaginary place given form as a vicious myth brainwashing generation after generation of Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs to call themselves Palestinians and kill and die in the name of perpetuating a second Holocaust, all for the glory of Allah, Mohammed, Marx, not to mention Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, the House of Saud, and every cause and ruler with an interest in toppling Israel into the dust.

Palestine is death. It exists only as a form of living death by a population taught to see themselves as willing martyrs to the bomb belt from birth. It breathes death, it celebrates death, it teaches death and preaches death. It is the final ugly end of the hatred and cruelty bottled up in the Arab and Islamic dictatorships of the region. It is the true face of Islam and its shining reflection in the mirror of the Western press and diplomats is the true measure of their Dhimmism.

The Cult of Death in Palestine and the war against Israel is only a preview for the West of things to come. Palestine is not a place, it is hate and homicide boiled down into myth. Palestine is not only in Israel. It is in Paris and London. It is in Madrid and Detroit. It is in Sydney and Moscow. It is everywhere that the toxic brew of Muslim fanaticism and Arab nationalism flows. Its flag is the flag of death. Its constitution is a death warrant for every free nation. Its legislature is a smug coven of obese terrorist chieftains sending their followers off to death with the promise of virgin demons fornicating with them in Paradise.

Palestine 2.0 is a monster with only one purpose, to create Holocaust 2.0. That is who needs a Palestinian state. That is why the far left and the far right are both so hellbent on bringing one into being. Accepting the Two State Solution means accepting death. Rejecting it means embracing life.

I sympathize with the loss of your family’s home. You were one of many victims of the 1947-48 war. But as was noted in Zach K’s excerpt from Ephraim Karsh, you were victimized not by the Jews of Palestine, but rather by the Arab leaders that were determined to eliminate them. It’s the same situation as the 4th generation descendants of 1948 refugees in the Middle East find themselves–victimized by those who would use them as part of their endless struggle against the existence of Israel.

Even the alleged “moderates” like Abbas not only refuse to accept the idea that the Jews are also a people entitled to national self-determination, that this is a conflict between two nationalist movements rather than a situation of land be taken from one people by an occupying power.

You state that you are loking for “justice” for your fellow Palestinians who have not been as fortunate as you and your family. However, I have not heard from any Palestinian leader (or supporter of their cause here in the US) any definition of “justice” that does not include the elimination of the state of Israel– either militarily, or demographically via the so-called “right” of return.

At no previous time in world history has the side that lost a war– which it had initiated– had a claim to roll back the situation to the status quo ante, to get a historical “do-over”.

So while I do genuinely sympathize, it does not mean that I accept the conclusion drawn by too many that the only remedy with “justice” requires the elimination of the state of Israel.

Charles Krauthammer’s column today over at the National Review looks at the proposed ‘two states for two peoples’ solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict favored by the Obama Administration and refers to it as a ‘red herring’, a false argument:

Well, I think this argument over a two-state solution is a complete red herring.

There is no Israeli government, including Netanyahu’s government, that would not accept a settlement in which a real Palestinian state genuinely accepted a settlement that ends the war with Israel and recognizes a Jewish state.

The problem is such a partner doesn’t exist and hasn’t existed ever. For the last nine years, you’ve had in Israel under Sharon and Olmert governments which accepted a two-state solution, have engaged in negotiations, and have essentially offered what Israel offered nine years ago under Ehud Barack, who’s now the defense minister, with Bill Clinton assisting in that offer of a Palestinian state and a settlement in perpetuity with Israel.

The Palestinians rejected it at the time. They have rejected it ever since, which is why all the negotiations over the last eight years have failed. It’s never been the Israeli problem. It’s been the fact that the Palestinians will not accept a Jewish state.

Look, the Palestinians already have a state. It’s called the Gaza. It’s independent. There are no Israelis in Gaza. It’s a terrorist state that has been at war with Israel ever since the day the Israelis left. It’s an ally of Iran and Islamic radicalism.

The Israelis and Americans understand that if you have a Palestinian state of that sort in the rest of Palestine, it will be a catastrophe.

And what Israel is saying today is unless you talk about what kind of Palestinian state, that it can’t be a Gaza state. It has to be a state that accepts Israel and accepts the peace, all talk of a two-state solution is irrelevant and is headed nowhere.

What Dr. Krauthammer is saying is entirely correct, but I think he misses a few important points.

First, the entire notion of ‘Palestinian nationalism’ is a fantasy manufactured by Yasir Arafat and the PLO in collusion with the Arab League after 1967. It didn’t exist until after the Six Day War, when the Arabs needed an excuse to avoid any political acceptance of Israel’s existence and their own military defeat. And it may not even exist in reality now.

As a matter of fact, after 1948, every Arab living in the areas of Palestine that Jordan occupied became a Jordanian citizen by law, and they remained Jordanians until 1996, even after Israel took over the area. Meanwhile,Jordan ( who also bears the distinction of killing and expelling the most ‘Palestinians’ of any country in the Middle East) was allowed to bar resettlement in Jordan by its own citizens, who remained ‘refugees’ on the UN’s tab, even though they had citizenship in a sovereign country!

Things really do get that weird when Israel is concerned.

The so-called Palestinians are actually made up of a diverse group of people with very little in common except a shared sense of victimization.They are split by clan, by national origin, by location ( Jordanian ‘Palestinians’ really have little in common with Gaza ‘Palestinians’ or Lebanese ‘Palestinians’) and by a myriad of political connections and affiliations.

There are also a number of divisions and old scores to settle between the various factions – the split between Hamas and Fatah is only one of many.

Not to mention the little fact that the Palestinian occupied areas are separated not only by being governed by rival factions but by geography, with the Israeli Negev between the two parts. No nation in history has ever survived long under those conditions.

There’s also not a whole lot of the economic viability or freedom needed to provide the basis for a state. Monopolies on certain consumer goods and services for the well connected and onerous ‘taxes’ on the less well connected that are essentially protection money and provide zero social services are the norm, particularly in Fath’s areas in Judea and Samaria(AKA the West Banak). There’s not much in the way of natural resources and much of the population has been on the UN dole for so long that actually working at a job is a unique and barely remembered experience.

The one thing the Palestinians did have to export was labor, which might have worked out as part of a working economic partnership with Israel if Yasir Arafat and his friends hadn’t made that an impossibility. Nowadays, a lot of the work that used to be done by Palestinians in Israel pre-intifada is done by guest workers from places like Romania and Moldava.

To sum up, from a cultural, political and economic standpoint, what we’re looking at is another recipe for yet another failed state. And I think we have enough of those already, thank you.

Another thing that rarely gets mentioned is the very real possibility that the Palestinian leadership really doesn’t want a state, not even if it included all of Gaza plus all of Judea and Samaria. Yasir Arafat got offered almost that by Ehud Barak during the Clinton years, but turned it down, to the astonishment of Dennis Ross. Likewise, both Hamas and Fatah refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or to compromise on their demands one iota in trying to come to a peace agreement with Israel – even though that pretty much ends the possibility of a realistic settlement before it’s even started.

It’s not too hard to figure out why.

As Ross has said, when he presented the final outlines of the deal to Yasir Arafat, it specified that this was a complete settlement of all claims and would signify the end of the conflict.

Arafat didn’t sign because he realized that without the War Against the Jews to unify the Palestinians and their victim status, there was nothing to keep them together as a cohesive group. Moreover, there would be no need for Arafat and his Fatah thugs to be in charge of anything, and they would have to justify their existence by actually governing instead of living leech-like off the Palestinians and the aid money.It would have been the end of them, and the finish of the gravy train that has made millionaires out of well placed Fatah apparatchniks while the majority of the people they supposedly represent still live in squalor in refugee camps.

A real Palestinian state would have meant the end of them.

Hamas has the same problem, as Gaza makes plain to anyone but the most biased observer. They’re good at terrorism and violence, but lousy at the nuts and bolts of running a civil society, even with water and electricity provided by the hated Jews and more aid per capita than any developing nation in history.

If Hamas was actually interested in creating a state, the last thing they would have done is to waste resources and money launching rockets and mortars against Israel. After the Jews were removed from Gaza, some state-of-the-art greenhouses and irrigation systems were purchased by the World Bank from the farmers in places like Gush Katif and deliberately left intact for the Palestinians to use.

Within hours after the Israelis left, those greenhouses were looted and destroyed. The greenhouses that used to sell massive amounts of fruits and vegetables and flowers to Europe became rocket launching sites and grow nothing today.And Gaza is simply another terrorist squat swimming in its own sewage.

Given Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah’s popularity in Judea and Samaria, any ‘state’ given the Palestinians can expect to revert to Hamas and be subject to the same kind of non-government Gaza has. Not that a Fatah state would be any different.

And that’s not even mentioning the fact that a Hamastan in part of Palestine would be an Iranian enclave capable of menacing Europe and moderate Arab regimes like Egypt and Jordan. As I mentioned, the one industry the Palestinians have developed is terrorism.

Barack Obama, The EU and the other idiots shilling for a Palestinian state may just get one..and live to regret it.

Since the posting of your letter, I have been trying to think of what I could say to get you to open up your mind a bit.

You wrote: “Many Palestinians, including the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, advocate for a two-state solution and acknolwedge and accept the right of Israel’s existnece. The Arab League declaration of 1997 states the same. I don’t recollect a single post in this thread acknowledging these positions.”

Let me tell you why you didn’t read about the so-called two state solution. Not one single Arab leader or organisation has acknowledged that my state of Israel is the Jewish state. In fact they have denigrated the idea and have said they would never accept Israel as a Jewish state. So, Dr. K., since they make this a non-starter, why would you expect us to mention it? What is there to say? On this point, unless the Arabs change, we will never see eye to eye.

” Do the views of the late Rabbi Kahane and his followers represent the Israeli perspective?”

Not at all, and anyone following Kahane’s beliefs are not going to take the time or make the effort to have a dialogue with you.

” Why are you generalizing the extremist view among some to all Palestinians?”

If what you read in all these letters to you is “generalizing the extremist view among some to all Palestinians,” either you are misreading or I am. Israel has made numerous concessions, offering land for peace and what did we get in exchange? Intifadas. Did YOU hear the moderate Palestinians speak up? Neither did I. I can count on the fingers of one hand the moderate voices I have heard or read. Don’t you think something is amiss here, when every concession Israel makes is met with violence? What does that teach us? To me the lesson is not to make any concessions because they obviously are misconstrued as weakness.

Zach K. wrote out a long and very well researched historical background of the conflict for you. I hope you read it after all his hard work, time and effort. You can’t brush all this off as irrelevant, Dr. K. You say you want justice, but I am not sure that that is really what you want.

I have some Arab friends in El Aroub. They also complained about wanting their house back. I asked them to file a claim in the courts in Jerusalem. And do you know what their response was? “No, we couldn’t possibly do that. They [their fellow Arabs] would kill us.”

I guess that just about sums it up.

Let me get this straight you said:

“Generalizations about whole people and cultures such as “they hate us” and “want to drive us into the sea” may apply to extreme fringes in Arab & Muslim communities, and are fueled by the persistent belief that an injustice has not been addressed. That does not make such feelings about other people and cultures acceptable. The same situation exists among many Israelis such as those who scream “death to the Arabs”, and advocate ethnic cleansing. Reasonable people should not let the views of the extremists on any side be allowed to charactertize what the majority of people think and feel.”

Arafat to Abu Mazen to Ismail Haniyeh have all stated their wish for destruction of Israel. Hamas has it in it’s charter. Hamas was voted in by the Palestinians. Are you saying these “extreme fringes” ie. Fatah Hamas somehow voted in Hamas somehow.?
How about the polls in Gaza supporting suicide bombing? supporting the destruction of Israel. These extreme fringes have alot of power I guess. Your moral calculus is truly dizzing.