Monday, August 13, 2012

The Fresno Zionist Has Some Words

This piece was originally written and published by the Fresno Zionist at http://fresnozionism.org/.

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The single greatest misconception about the conflict between Israel and its neighbors is that it’s about the Palestinians. A corollary to this is the idea that creating a Palestinian state would be a step toward peace.

Focusing on the relations between Israel and the Palestinians turns the conflict inside out. In fact it is driven by the absolute rejection of a Jewish state in the Middle East by all the Muslim nations in the region, which dates back to the beginning of Zionism, before the founding of the state of Israel, before the development of specifically Palestinian nationalism, and long before the 1967 war.

This rejection was founded on religious principles and ethnic hatred, and has been aggressively nurtured over the years by various parties — Muslim leaders, the Nazis, British colonialists and the Soviets — and has developed a mythical history whose consequence is that the honor of the Muslim nations and the purity of the land can only be regained by extirpating Jewish sovereignty.

A huge amount of anti-Israel propaganda and psychological warfare, much of which was guided by the Soviet KGB, amplified the conflict. In the Arab world, such things as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the idea that Israel or international Jewry perpetrated 9/11 (in order to blame it on Arabs), and numerous accusations that Westerners would call ‘crazy’, are accepted as non-controversial truths.

Since 1967, the international Left — especially including Jewish and Israeli leftists — has adopted the Palestinian cause and accepted the historical myth about Israel’s creation as ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian nation. While not as gullible as the Arabs, the Left is prepared to believe almost any accusation about Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, including stories about massacres, murders of Palestinian children, etc.

Both Muslims and the Left have been sufficiently impacted by anti-Jewish and anti-Israel brainwashing to the point that they are not able to evaluate information inputs about the subject rationally. Israel, for them, is the Devil.

For those of us who still have open minds, the explanatory power of the idea that the basis of the conflict is the existence of a Jewish state and not the lack of a Palestinian one, is obvious.

The Arab states have been historically unfriendly to the Palestinian Arabs. During the War of Independence, they encouraged the flight of Arabs from Israeli-held territory. After the war they repressed Palestinian nationalism in their territories except insofar as guerrillas could be used against Israel. Egyptian rule in Gaza was particularly brutal and oppressive. Arab nations except Jordan never gave Palestinians citizenship, and in some cases (e.g., Lebanon and Saudi Arabia), placed restrictions on residence, employment and education that can only be called apartheid. Jordan and Lebanon fought mini-wars against the PLO, and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia expelled Palestinians after the Gulf War.

If the Arab nations had wanted a Palestinian state in the territories, they could have established one in 1948-67. But that was (almost) the last thing they wanted! Instead, they fought every initiative to integrate Palestinian refugees, so that they could be used as a weapon against Israel.

Even the Palestinian leadership itself famously turned down the possibility of sovereignty in 1938, 1947, 2000-1, and 2008. They tell us that the offers weren’t good enough — they lied about the content of the Camp David offer, according to US negotiator Dennis Ross — but one would think that a people thirsting for a state would take an offer, even if it was initially less than what they hoped for (the Jews did).

These facts are mystifying if you think that the conflict is based on the ‘need’ for a Palestinian state. But the mystery vanishes when you understand that it is all about the existence of a Jewish state.

No technocratic compromise which would create a Palestinian state while keeping a Jewish one has ever been acceptable to the Palestinians. Currently, they keep coming up with preconditions which prevent negotiations from taking place. Why? Because they know that Israel will not agree to commit suicide. Better to get what they can unilaterally from the UN.

Today the military forces poised against Israel come primarily from Iran and its proxy Hizballah, as well as a Syrian regime that is more and more propped up by Iran. Iranian propaganda, of course, pays lip service to the Palestinians, but is mainly focused on the idea that Zionism must be destroyed, and not that Palestine should be established. It goes without saying that if Iran launches its threatened missile war against Israel, Palestinian Arabs on both sides of the Green Line will be in harm’s way.

If a Palestinian state were created in the territories, neither the Arab nations and Iran or the Palestinians would be satisfied. Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has said that in that case he would press further claims against Israel — for right of return, etc. — in the UN and international courts. Proponents of Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) have also made it clear that only right of return and the de-Zionisation of Israel would be a reason to call off their actions. And Hizballah claims that Israel is still ‘occupying’ Lebanese territory even after the UN carefully delimited the border.

It is not about ‘Palestine’, it is about Israel.

4 comments:

  1. This is one of those fundamental insights that is often lacking when discussing the Arab conflict against the Jews in the Middle East.

    The problem here is not the alleged oppression of the Palestinian people, but the actual, long-standing persecution of the Jews in that part of the world.

    The conflict flows from Arab-Muslim theologically grounded, genocidal bigotry against the Jewish people, which is why they absolutely refuse to accept Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land.

    The problem with progressive-left racists, such as those at the Progressive Zionist website, is that because they consider the Palestinians and the Arabs, more generally, to be something like children they can rarely bring themselves to blame anyone other than their fellow Jews for the conflict.

    Sad, but true.

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  2. I would nominate this piece for The Common Sense Awards, if there were such a thing... ;)

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  3. "The US is currently opposed to the reestablishment of the long defunct Israeli-US-American committee to monitor incitement, Strategic Affairs Ministry director-general Yossi Kuperwasser intimated on Sunday.

    In a briefing to reporters following a cabinet meeting where he brought the most recent “incitement index” to the ministers’ attention, Kuperwasser said both Israel and the Palestinians expressed a willingness to set up the committee, though “we don’t hang much hope on it.” A “third party,” whom he did not identify, but which was clearly the Americans, was not interested, he said.

    Diplomatic officials said that the US did not feel that at this time, with the diplomatic process at a stalemate, the establishment of a committee to look at cases of incitement would serve a constructive purpose.

    A joint Israeli-Palestinian- American committee on incitement was set up in 1998 under US auspices. The Israeli team was led by the late journalist Uri Dan, who was a close confidant of Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian side by Yasser Arafat’s spokesman Marwan Kanafani. Sharon was foreign minister when the committee was established.

    The committee disbanded after about a year with little to show for its works, except for continuous arguments.

    The bottom line, Kuperwasser said, is that Palestinian incitement is “going on all the time,” adding that the phenomenon is “worrying and disturbing.” He said that at an institutional level the Palestinian Authority was continuously driving three messages home: that the Palestinians would eventually be the sole sovereign on all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; that Jews, especially those who live in Israel, were not really human beings but rather “the scum of mankind”; and that all tools were legitimate in the struggle against Israel and the Jews, though the specific tool used at one time or another depended on a cost-benefit analysis."

    http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=281005

    Opposed? The leader of the free world opposed? This is not your father's free world I guess.

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