Mike L.
The brief clip above was sent to me by one of our readers. I think that it is important to give it a look because it demonstrates the fact that Palestinian Arabs are treated far worse in Iraq than they ever were in Israel.
Yet no one cares about the Muslim mistreatment of Muslims or non-Muslims.
And that's really the point.
It's a significant example of the vitriolic anti-Semitic double-standard put forth not only by Arab governments, but by allegedly well-meaning, allegedly anti-racist, entirely hypocritical western progressives.
The Arab refugees of the '48 war, and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, have greatly suffered, decade upon decade, due to Muslim theological hatred for Jews and because Arab and Muslim governments use that hatred to deflect from their own failures, cruelties, and corruptions.
In truth, Arabs have no greater civil liberties anywhere in the Middle East than they do as citizens of Israel. It is in places like Lebanon and Syria and Iraq where Palestinian Arabs are most ill-treated, yet the international community, and particularly the viciously hypocritical European and American left, castigate and demean and delegitimize the Jewish State of Israel within living memory of the Holocaust.
Given the millenia long violent history of European and Muslim hatred toward the Jewish people this is not merely unjust, it signifies the failure of progressive-left values as a whole.
The Day of the Dhimmi is Done - Michael Lumish, PhD, proprietor. (mike.lumish@gmail.com)
Yeah, that kinda gives their whole game away, doesn't it? These 'progressives,' some of whom have gone so far as to express their desire for terrorist groups like Hezbollah to obtain nuclear weapons, only care about actual Palestinians insofar as they can be used as propaganda weapons toward their goal of destroying the world's one sole Jewish state. Much like Arab leaders in the countries you mention, in fact. What an alliance. What 'interesting' times we live in, eh?
ReplyDeleteWestern progressives tend to favor anti-liberal Islamists and the viciously authoritarian Arab and Muslim governments over the tiny liberal Jewish state.
DeleteAs far as I am concerned, as you well know, the progressive movement is therefore just dead because it fails to stand up for its own alleged values.
They kick the Jews in the head for defending ourselves against theologically-based Arab-Muslim hatred toward us, but they do not give a rip about the far, far worse problem of Muslim violence in the Middle East and Africa.
And what that means, as far as I am concerned, is to hell with them.
Whatever moral authority the western left may have had (a highly questionable assumption to begin with) they've long ago pissed away.
We don't need to join the right, necessarily, but I will be damned if I will stand with people who oppose Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land.
The disconnect between their alleged values (tolerance, freedom, equal rights, etc etc) and their support of backwards, anything-but-liberal Islamist regimes is indeed quite striking. And dumbfounding. And all kinds of other words, too.
DeleteAs for me, I'll stay where I've always been and just continue calling out my fellows when they are wrong.
"It is in places like Lebanon and Syria and Iraq where [ex-Palestine colonists] are most ill-treated,..."
ReplyDeleteAh, but to relate to them and their predicament for themselves instead of their role as a club to beat the Jewish State to death with (literally), is to be missing the whole point.
You know, one of the most pathetic writings I've ever happened upon is one article by the Arab imperialist Ramzy Baroud, "Palestine as A Foil for People's Unconnected Dreams," where he laments the "hijacking" of the "Palestinian" "cause" for various hippie enterprises, some of which look totally unrelated, like global warming and gay rights. The saddest thing about that article was to see how a man had fallen for the narrative trick hook, line and sinker. So it is with anyone who thinks this particular group of Arabs has any separate existence—even just in people's minds—apart from the context of delegitimizing the Jewish national claim.
They were never meant to be made happy; stoking the fire of hatred was always the only goal.
Zion, that raises a very interesting question concerning the validity of "Palestinian" identity.
DeleteThe so-called "Palestinians" only came to know themselves by that moniker within living memory and only out of their exceedingly violent opposition to Jewish self-determination and self-defense on Jewish land after the Shoah.
Yet, somehow, we are supposed to respect that?
I'm sorry, but I do not, as apparently you do not.
Why should we respect an alleged nationality which came into being for the specific purpose of undermining the most persecuted people within the history of recorded memory?
The worst mistake that Israel has made was in acknowledging a distinct and separate Arab "Palestinian" nationality. The "Palestinians" are no different from any other local Arab population, whether Syrian or Jordanian. They speak the same language, follow the same religion, eat the same foods, and are in virtually every other way indistinguishable from regional Arabs, more generally.
We all know this is true, but we are terrified of being called "Islamophobic" for acknowledging the obvious.
I say acknowledge the obvious.
The invented identity emerged after 1920, and was promoted in earnest after 1948. The events that led to both occurrences are worthy of note.
DeleteBack in 1920, continuing from the organization of the defunct Ottoman empire, Palestine was a sub-province, the southern part of the province of Greater Syria (Bilad Al Sham). After WWI, Arab nationalism began to rise to fore, where beforehand it took the back seat to allegiance to the Islamic community of believers. Even so, it did not manifest in any kind of Palestine-specific nationalism until the British and the French killed the dream of an Arab kingdom of Greater Syria when they split it between themselves, driving the would-be king Faisal out. Only then, out of no choice of theirs, did the Arabs of the former sub-province of Palestine go their own way. It was already totally artificial.
However, while Palestine gained status as a political entity, there was up until 1948 no striving on the part of the Arabs residing in Palestine to disconnect themselves in either word or deed from general Arabness. The fiction of "an indigenous Palestinian nation from time immemorial, surviving to this age" was a long way off in the early 1920s. This proved disastrous to the Arab anti-Zionist effort during the UNSCOP conference of 1947, where it was all too easy for the Jewish delegates to counter that, as Arabs and and integral part of the Arab nation—which the Arab colonists in Palestine did not deny they were—they already had quite a few states to satisfy their self-determination while the Jews had none. Obviously the Arabs relied more on the sword to thwart Jewish nationalism, and they tried so in 1947–9.
After Israel's War of Independence, and especially after decades of failed military attempts to undo Zionism, the Arab strategy of promoting "Palestinian identity" netto, without any "Arab" qualifier to it, took off. It was to serve, and has succeeded in serving, the purpose of inverting the truth as to who's the David here and who the Goliath, making the one Jewish nation-state among a score of Arabs to be the "imperialist aggressor."
Given our success in the days of UNSCOP conference, compared with our languishing PR nowadays, I have no hesitation whatsoever in correctively denying the faux-Palestinian Arab imperialist fictitious narrative. I believe that reversing our PR predicament depends on it, especially as I reject the tried and failed way of promoting Israel by showing how good and generous and merciful we are. With the anti-Zionist fiction denied, the case for Jewish nationalism on the Land of Israel is ironclad, and those who support our enemies can be automatically condemned as supporters of imperialism and colonialism—a sweet turnabout of the terms of discussion for our day and age.
Zion, can I take this to mean that you are opposed to the two-state solution?
DeleteMy stance, as I assume that you know, is that Israel should declare its final borders and remove the IDF to behind those borders leaving whatever's left over for Palestinian Arab autonomy.
Since the Arabs have proven that they have no interest in a negotiated conclusion of hostilities the Israelis should take matters into their own hands.
That's where I am at this moment.
Do you disagree? And if so, how so?
Anyway, terrific comment. Good material to mull over.
Mike, if you say the Arabs "have proven that they have no interest in a negotiated conclusion of hostilities," then you've written off the two-state solution as a non-solution. That's just about what's happened in Israel among the Jewish populace in the course of the past decade and some.
DeleteI wasn't a priori against the two-state solution. In the 1990s, it had a fair amount of credit among Israeli Jews. In fact, I think the two-state solution was only discredited in 2005, when the abandonment of the Jewish population centers in the Gaza region was followed by the rise of Hamas to power and the intensification of rocket attacks. The Intifada of October 2000, where Arabs of pre-1967 Israel took part in the initial waves of rioting, also made a huge dent in the belief in a two-state solution. Generally, the indications given by the Arabs for the truth of the Israeli Jews' greatest fear—the fear that leaving the post-1967 territories would only move the conflict to its next stage in the pre-1967 ones—were what did the belief in the two-state solution in. And, since one of the arguments for evacuating the post-1967 territories was that Israel would then have legitimacy in the world's eyes to react to an attack on the pre-1967 territories in whatever force desired, the condemnation of defensive operations like Cast Lead by world put another nail in that coffin. Now all that's left is for Egypt to announce the nullification of the peace treaties, and then the only remaining successful implementation of land for peace will have been consigned to the trash.
In short, I wouldn't be opposed to the two-state solution if it were actually a solution. Now that I'm convinced the goals of our enemies are the same as they were in 1947, I oppose it as a ruse to get the Jewish State huddled into borders more difficult to defend, as well as a plot to move the conflict into truly South African lines, when the Arabs push for the de-Judaization of the remaining pre-1967 Jewish State in the name of "equal rights," and the self-righteous world will, naturally, condemn any refusal of ours to do so, a condemnation complete with BDS and all the rest.
At the moment, the strategy I have, if only on the PR front for the time being, is to counter Arab demands for everything we have, with a steadfast refusal to give them anything at all. As far as I'm concerned, the true solution is the one implemented for the Sudetenland in 1945: Following the mistake made in 1919, where the new Czechoslovak state was left with a German minority upon which Hitler made an irredentist claim that ended in the total conquest of Czechoslovakia, Winston Churchill decided that the newly reconstituted Czechoslovakia after the end of the war would be free of irredentist minorities—the German minority was booted out. (So too for Poland, Romania and other states where irredentism had taken a huge toll.) As the world is fine and dandy with ethnic cleansing when it comes to Jews (and not only those of the post-1967 territories—Helen Thomas did not so limit herself), I have no pangs of conscience in advocating this solution. Especially not as the only foreseeable alternative to it is genocide. I want to prevent a massacre of both Jew and Arab.
All that's needed now is good leadership ready to seize a suitable moment.