Arab Anti-Semitism and Progressive-Left Complicity

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at the Times of Israel.}

The foremost reason for the ongoing Arab war against the Jews of the Middle East is Koranically-based Arab-Muslim hatred for the Jewish people.

This is, in fact, the main reason for the conflict.  During the period between 1948 and 1967 the Arabs of Judea and Samaria lived under Jordanian rule.  They were Jordanians.  Throughout that period the quality of life there was considerably worse than it is now.  Their incomes were lower.  Their educational rates were lower.  Life expectancy was shorter.  By all measures of human decency life is considerably better now for the local Arabs than it ever was under Jordanian rule, yet the local Arabs never called for a "Palestinian" state on that land until the Jews returned.

The main reason that the local Arabs came to refer to themselves as "Palestinians" in the mid 1960s, and demanded yet another Arab state in the region - because controlling 99.9 percent of the land was not enough - was because they found themselves in the humiliating position of being under the authority of their former slaves and dhimmis.

Israel is, after all, The Dhimmi That Go Away.

Today I read an article by Khaled Abu Toameh, at the Gatestone Institute, entitled Palestinians: "No Jews Allowed!"

He writes:

"We will approve the meeting on condition there are no Jews."

This is what you are likely to hear these days if you request a meeting with any senior Palestinian Authority official in the West Bank.

Palestinian journalists who try to arrange meetings or interviews with Palestinian Authority representatives for Western colleagues have become used to hearing such things almost on a daily basis.

Just last week, for example, a journalist who requested a meeting between Western journalists and a top Palestinian Authority official was told "to make sure there were no Jews or Israelis" among the visitors.

The official's aide went on to explain: "We are sorry, but we do not meet with Jews or Israelis."

Another Palestinian journalist who tried to arrange an interview with a Palestinian Authority official for a European colleague was turned down "because the man's name indicates he is a Jew."

This is the basis of the conflict and it has been ongoing within Arab-Muslim circles since Muhammed sacralized the killing and subjugation of the Jews as a matter of religious obligation.

The western left likes to talk about the killing and subjugation of the Jews as if it is a moral imperative, which is to say, as a matter of social justice.  When Arab teens stone Jews in Jerusalem, we are told it is out of a righteous concern for civil liberties and human rights.  When Arabs from Gaza terrorize the southern Israeli towns of S'derot and Ashkelon with rocket fire - as they did in a very intense way throughout most of last year - this aggression against the tiny Jewish minority is justified as resistance.

Just as in the lead up to the Holocaust the German people were told how vicious and cruel and ugly and bad the Jews of Germany were, so today throughout the Arab-Muslim world (and throughout much of the west, as well) people tell one another just how vicious and cruel and ugly and bad Jews, in general, are.  This has become so acceptable that even president Morsi of Egypt can speak openly to his people about the necessity of continuing to create additional hatred for Jews - the children of apes and pigs - and, yet, still receive Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets from the Obama administration.

Almost all the western assumptions concerning this ongoing, millennia-long, Arab-Muslim persecution of the Jewish people are grounded in fundamental lies.  The foremost among those lies - a lie designed to create western sympathy for genocide - is that the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East is subjugating and oppressing local members of the great Arab imperial majority.  In this way history is turned entirely upon its head and morality is flushed down the toilet.

John Kerry and Barack Obama think that the conflict is about Jewish injustice toward Arabs, but this is false.  It is the prevailing notion among western elites, but western elites, as usual, have no idea what they are talking about when they discuss among themselves the "Israeli Occupation of Palestinian lands."  There is no "Israeli Occupation of Palestinian lands."  What there is is a tiny Jewish minority desperately trying to survive on historically Jewish land and doing so under the most remarkably hostile conditions imaginable and, yet, those Jews get the blame for the aggression against them even by people who consider themselves friends.

It's an amazing thing, really.  The issue is so vital and so horrible that it makes other progressive concerns, such as the fight for women's rights or Gay rights or economic justice, seem paltry in comparison.

The fight for Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land should be among the foremost issues within the western progressive-left today.  Standing up for Israel is a matter of standing up for the human rights of the Jewish people, who are among the most subjugated people within recorded history, and yet our natural allies on the left have turned their backs on us.  Through decades of toxic propaganda, mainly coming out of Arab and Soviet sources in previous decades, they have convinced themselves that the tiny, persecuted Jewish minority is the aggressor against the vast Arab imperial majority and it is for this reason that they often think that stoning Jews in Jerusalem is natural and right as a a matter of human justice.

This is how twisted the conversation around the Arab-Israel conflict has become within progressive-left western circles.

The only way to turn this situation around is for western leaders to tell the Arab peoples and their governments, and their progressive-left western allies, that this ongoing campaign of hatred toward the Jews must end; that it is not acceptable and that any western aid or assistance will be predicated on ending it.

Until we do that the persecution of the Jews in the Middle East will go on and on and on, long into the future.

And that is precisely what you should expect.