LS,
read this from my friend Zeev who lives in Tel Aviv.
He wrote this as a ripost to some Islamofanatic on a blog.
I also added two videos at the bottom, which speak for themself.
Taro
"1. Based on my personal experience and years of discussions with my friends, family and colleagues, the huge majority of the Israelis do not hate Arabs or Moslems in general. Hatred is almost entirely in your own department, do not assume that other people hate you just because you are full of hatred for them.
2. We did displace several hundreds of thousands of Arabs (who became what is called today Palestinian refugees) in the course of 1948 war of Independence of Israel. The war started on the day of declaration of Independence of Israel that was sanctioned by the UN. On the same day 6 Arab countries outnumbering Jewish Israeli population hundred to one, launched a massive attack at the country that did not even have a regular army. That the one day old country survived this and won the war, seems today - in the historical retrospect - a rare and miraculous show of heroism and self-sacrifice.
3. The several hundred thousand Palestinians who fled to Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza strip have forever remained and suffered in the refugee camps, all located in Arab countries till the 1967 Six Day War. The Arab states never did anything to get their Palestinian “brothers” out of the camps and help them lead normal lives. They kept them poor and starving, feeding on hatred to Israel.
4. Such displacement of population happened several times in the history during international military conflicts - Sudet Germans after WW2; Cypriot Greeks in the Cyprus conflict to name a few. In every case the country where the refugees fled - to which they ethnically belonged - helped them assimilate and lead normal lives. Not so in the Arab Israeli conflict - at least not on the Arab side.
5. As a result of the conflict 600 thousand Jewish refugees fled to Israel from the Arab countries and were placed in refugee camps in Israel. Several years down the road not a single Jewish refugee was living in a refugee camp - they all assimilated and became Israelis. The Jewish refugee camps were therefore dismantled. The Jews lost all their property and homes in the Arab countries which they fled. They never tried to launch an attack on their former countries in an attempt to return or recover their property.
6. I and most Israelis acknowledge and deeply regret the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. Every time an innocent Palestinian child gets killed or hurt - and they do in the military actions - my heart aches just like it does when an Israeli child gets killed or crippled by a Palestinian rocket. No less.
6. Israel has successfully led multiple attempts to reach piece with Arabs. It has signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1978 - returning every inch of the territory captured in the 1967 6-day War. Also we have peace treaty with Jordan. These peace treaties work very well and we have a lasting peace with these countries. The effort to reach piece made by Israel has been enormous. I do not know aof another nation that is more piece loving. You have mistaken this for weakness and attacked.
7. Israel led peace talks and signed the Oslo peace agreement with Palestinians. What did we get in return? Murderous Intifada full of suicide bombings.
8. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza 3 years ago in order to give Palestinians a chance to establish democratic self-rule on their own piece of land that would eventually lead to independent Palestinian state and end of conflict. What did we get in return? Hamas murderers voted to power and unprovoked continuous rocket power.
9. It is clear from your post that your solution of the conflict is that all Israelis commit a collective suicide in order to solve the problem of displacement of population during war, which we Israelis and the other countries hove solved so efficiently for our own refugees. Well, do not count on this one. We know how to defend ourselves against terrorists, fanatical as they may be.
10. We are in a violent conflict with the murderous and fanatical Hamas terrorists (internationally recognized as such by most Western countries, including those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause) that Gaza Palestinians had voted into power. They are financed by Iran, just like the Lebanese Shiite murderer Nasralla (quote: the Jews like Life, we like Death, so we will win, unquote). Moderate Arab states detest them. Just listen to what the foreign minister of Egypt said a day ago: Hamas are responsible for the Israeli attack on Gaza…
11. In this conflict we and Palestinian terrorists use different weapons. The key weapon of Palestinian terrorists is their lack of respect for human life, including that of their women and children whom they send on suicide bombing missions that killed many hundreds of Israeli civilians. The same lack of respect for human life drives them to fire rockets on Israel in anticipation of inevitable Israeli retaliation where Palestinian civilians would inevitably also get killed, and then send forward their children to throw stones at tanks just to get a photo op for their propaganda. Israel is a democratic Western country that does not and will not use this kind of weapons.
12. We defend ourselves with the kind of weapons we can use, which includes modern warfare and special technologies for taking out terrorists with minimal chances of hurting uninvolved civilians. This includes hugely expensive unattended airplanes that surgically take out terrorists from the air. Only a country with enormous respect for human life would go though such a painstaking effort in order to minimize civilian casualties. The fact is, almost all the casualties in this conflict on Palestinian side were filmed wearing uniform - a propaganda disaster no doubt deeply regretted by Hamas.
13. Finally, please do not try to impress me with body count. Counting dead bodies is in your murderous department, this is not our way fo measuring success. We will take out as many Hamas terrorists as needed to forcethem stop them firing at our civilians. Every civilized country would do the same."
Wafa Sultan Debating Islamic Cleric
youtube.com
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