Dear —–
My friend Joyce sent me a copy of your last e-mail complete with the news stories you included and asked me to comment. I hope you don’t mind me adding my two cents in the interest of debate and clarity.
Your point of view and the point of view of some of the people on Israel’s Left mentioned in your articles comes from our centuries-old humanitarian tradition. Unfortunately there are other darker traditions in the world and it’s vital to realize that the Jewish people and Israel are face to face with one of them. It’s important to fully understand exactly what that means. Frankly I don’t think most of us in the West do.
One thing that all of the articles you sent have in common is that they all are about Israeli concern for human rights Israeli condemnation of the current bloodshed Israeli voices seeking dialogue and negotiation.
Have you ever seen anything like this from the Arab side? Have you ever stopped to wonder why?
Today an Israeli soldier was sentenced to jail time by an Israeli military court for throwing a stun grenade at some civilians. When was the last time an Arab terrorist was subjected to any punishment at all for murdering Jewish women and children? The answer of course is never. In fact the Arabs refer to such murders as successful operations in their media and celebrate the killers as national heroes. Any Arab openly suggesting coexistence with the Jews is labeled a collaborator and in many cases never heard from again.
I say this not to try to prove that two wrongs make a right but to illustrate that we are talking about two very different civilizations; two radically different ways of looking at the current conflict. To Israel this is about land borders and security. To the majority of Arabs it is about destroying Israel and killing or expelling every Jew there down to the last infant. Thatof course is what happened to virtually every Jew living in the Arab countries after 1948 no matter what their politics were or how anti-Zionist they tried to be.
One of my favorite quotes comes from a young Hamas terrorist who said that the Palestinians would defeat the Jews because the Jews love life and we love death. Like it or not all the good will in the world means nothing against that kind of enemy.
To these Arabs the Jewish people are subhuman dhimmis who have the nerve to operate a peaceful successful democracy in the midst of Islam. Israel and America are a contradiction to the entire Arab/Muslim belief system. To people with this point of view if Israel is more prosperous and free than anything in the Arab world it is because Israel is protected by the Devil and populated by satanic inhuman people. The Palestinian media schools and mosques teach this on a constant basis and that kind of hatred is not something that is just going to be switched off because some papers get signed and some land changes hands.
Is it any wonder that such people would see nothing wrong in gunning down two small children and their mother in their home deliberately shooting a nine-month-old baby in a stroller or lynching two unarmed Israelis in Ramallah tearing them to pieces and dancing around with their body parts? One does not commit atrocities like that on people one considers human. It’s very different from making people wait in the hot sun by a military checkpoint.
One of my Israeli correspondents who was at the Moment Cafe bombing in Jerusalem wrote me that at the same time that bodies were being scraped off the pavement she could clearly hear Arabs in the nearby Palestinian areas firing guns cheering and ululating to celebrate. One does not negotiate with hatred at that level. The wonder is not that the Israelis sometimes treat the Palestinians harshly but that the Palestinians have survived this long. I cannot imagine that kind of patience with evil.
To dialogue to negotiate assumes that you have two parties dealing in good faith both of whom have something to gain from a negotiated settlement and something to lose. This is not the case here. According to the Palestinians’ own polls almost 70 percent of them fully support the terrorist atrocities committed against the Jews of Israel. And the majority of the remaining 30 percent are opposed not because they found anything wrong with murdering Jews but because it hasn’t worked up to now.
Yasir Arafat Hamas and the entire network of Palestinian terrorists have stated time and time again that any concessions given to Israel are merely to gain time and advantage until they can destroy Israel. Arafat said this on Jordanian TV the week after signing the Oslo Accords. He said it again this year referring to a famous truce that Mohammed made with his enemies until he was strong enough to murder and destroy them.
To the Arabs no agreement made with a kaffir (non-Muslim) has any ethical or moral force according to both the Koran and the Hadith. Mohammed himself said that war is deception. This is something that Rabin Peres and the Labor Party never understood and the price has been horrendous in terms of dead and injured Jews.
Be assured that the Geneva model sponsored by Yossi Beilin is as big a lemon as the old Oslo model was and anyone buying another used car from the likes of Arafat and the PLO is looking for another major disappointment. They will never negotiate any kind of permanent peace with Israel no matter how much land is given to them and no matter what concessions Israel makes.
What this comes down to very simply is that we are engaged in war — a war for Israel’s survival and incidentally a war for America’s survival. Some of the tactics may be questionable and even unpleasant at times but those are the stakes. There is simply no way that Israel and the Palestinians can coexist in close proximity because that is the way Arafat and his thugs have set things up — deliberately so for their own power and enrichment.
The only possible solution is not a wall but the complete military destruction of the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure and its leaders the termination of UNRWA a final settling of the borders with the appropriate separation of the two populations and the integration of the Palestinians into the surrounding Arab countries that caused the refugee problem in the first place. If this means that much of Judea and Samaria become Arab-free that is how it may need to be.
If you’d rather not support Israel that is your choice. But you should realize that every Jew who supports Arafat and the Palestinians is used as a rationale and a cover for Jew-hatred of the most horrendous sort. That by the way is why Israeli refuseniks and left-wing critics of Israel get huge press while the vast majority of Israelis who do their military service and support their government in these dark times are ignored.
Are you content to act as a cover for anti-Semitism? Do you feel comfortable supporting those who would single out the Jewish people for denial of self-determination and nationhood?Perhaps you sincerely feel that if it were not for Israel there would be no huge upsurge in Jew-hatred. Make no mistake Israel’s enemies do not differentiate between Zionists and Jews. Should you doubt that I advise you to read the full text of Mahathir of Malaysia’s recent speech before the Organization of Islamic Countries which was received with a ten-minute standing ovation by a veritable who’s who of the Muslim world.
Or check out the next anti-Zionist event in your neighborhood hosted by your progressive friends and listen to the speakers and read the signs. Or give a thought to the last words Danny Pearl was made to speak to his Muslim captors before they murdered him.
Do you support Islamofacism and Arafat’s realm or do you support Israel and freedom? I urge you to think about it. The issues are very clear and sitting on the fence is no longer an option — not in Israel and not here in America.
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