Abdul, Salam Aleikum. You are absolutely right, spreading hate and fear of Muslims is an exercise in futility and serve no good purpose. I think that Haim was citing an article by a British Journalist. The most important part of which being, IMHO: Those of a certain age can hear, in the terrifying rise of the far Right throughout Europe, the echoes of Weimar. The mark of true decadence in the West is the fact that it is not prepared to fight for its own values but is falling over itself to appease both terrorist violence and cultural aggression..
It is particularly futile since only Arab Muslims number probably 500 MM worldwide vs only some 5 MM of Jews in Israel. What surprises me, is that a number of official Arab press and television "outlets" engage in a similar campaign of fear and hate of the "Jew". Gosh, what are they afraid of, what are they envying, that puny .5% of the area in the middle east? That less than 1% of the relative population? Then why do Saudi and Egyptian papers repeat that ridiculous blood libel about Jews using children blood (Muslims and Christians?) to make their passover matza? I assure you, I am Jewish and eat Matza for Passover, and Jewish law forbid the use of, not only human blood in food, but even animal blood. Why do some hotels in Saudi Arabia offer, in lieu of an English Version of the Kuran, a copy of that libelous book "The conspiracy of the elders of Zion"?
Don't you think that teaching Palestinian children hate in kindergarten and from there on, is not only futile, but actually hazardous to those children future well being? Don't you think that sending a 16 years old girl to commit suicide is not only futile, but will create a trauma for the whole Palestinian people for years to come?
Look it is very simple, either there is a will for mutual understanding between Israeli and Palestinians or there is not. If that will exists, then following these kind of hate and incitement tactics will simply delay by 25 years or so the dream of national self expression for Palestinians. It is a chicken and an egg situation, as long as there is a large minority of Palestinians like Hammas and the Islamic Jihad, which is not controlled by the PA, the Israeli, to protect their citizen will have to, from time to time, go and carry out excursion to destroy these nests of terrorism. These nests are supported by the venomous incitement to hate and terrorism backed by the PA.
I know, you'll tell me Israel has to stop it's "occupation", and you and I are going to argue until we are blue in the face, whether it is "occupation" or whether it is "self defense", or even whether the current situation is simply what was so far agreed to in peace agreements between Egypt and Israel and Jordan and Israel, and now, we are all waiting (not so patiently) for an agreement between Israel and whomever will be the counter party on the Palestinian side. But, one thing Israel will have to insist on is the safety of its citizen, until the responsible Palestinian entity can assure such, the Israeli will have no choice but to assure that safety themselves. It is not as if for the last 50 some years, the Israeli where not threatened more than once to be thrown into the sea. They will want some concrete actions, a gradual situation, during which, the Palestinians reeducate its own population to mutual respect with its "future good neighbors", develops truly democratic and transparent structures, and means to control its own extremists. Israel last week arrested four extremist Jews intending to attack civilian Arabs, mind you, that was done before those extremists managed to execute their evil deeds, the Israeli would expect the same from a future PA, why should they not?
What if that does not happen? Well, it is quite simple, Israel will grind its teeth and every so often will suffer great pain from homicide bombers, and from time to time, they will have incursion into Palestinian territories, exacting an ever increasing "price". Why? Until it dawns on the general Palestinian population that their support of terrorist activities is counter productive and will cause an ever increasing "cost" to the Palestinians themselves. If you were an Israeli leader and your civilians were clamoring for some peace, you would do the same thing, you would make it too "expensive" for the terrorists to even contemplate that avenue of action.
The end result, of choosing the current approach (terrorising the Israeli population in the hope of demoralizing it?) is that after 25 years, many of these settlement that today could still be uprooted, will no longer be "uprootable", with further loss to the Palestinians of some of their future land. One day, a leader will rise within the Palestinians and will discover that there are no strategic goals that can be achieved by terrorism (just as there were no strategic goals that could have been achieved by Israel taking Damascus and/or Cairo in 1973, when they easily could), and maybe, another approach to the actualization of the Palestinian dream of self determination could be found. Terror only delay the achievement of that dream and diminish the eventual state the Palestinian could end up with.
Salam
Zeev |
