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CHAPTER INDEX
Arab Lies & Jewish Self-Delusion
The Palestinian “Refugee” Problem
The Palestine Liberation Organization
MAPS
Movement Of Arab Refugees In 1948
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Introduction
The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel,
saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation
of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him. Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people
round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against
Jerusalem. And in that day will I make
Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it
shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered
together against it.
Zechariah 12:1-3
Once
again the events in a tiny country in the Middle East have brought about an
international "crisis." Diplomats and heads of state from various
nations, along with the head of the United Nations—and even President
Clinton—rushed to Israel in October to try and stop the fighting between
Palestinians and Israelis before it escalated into a regional conflict between
Israel and her Arab neighbors. The fear was that such a conflict could lead to
another World War.
Today
the tiny nation of Israel, and in particular, the city of Jerusalem, is indeed
a "cup of trembling" to the people round about it and a
"burdensome stone" for all nations. It is clear that the nations are
growing weary of that burdensome stone, for their impatience with the
government and people of Israel is becoming manifest. With just a few exceptions,
every nation on this planet is pressuring Israel to make political and
territorial concessions that will ultimately result in its own destruction. And
with the help of the international media—which has been bribed and terrorized
into submission to the Arab agenda—the people of the nations have been
brainwashed and are in total agreement with the policies of their various
governments. Thus, the words Zechariah spoke thousands of years ago are coming
to pass before our very eyes.
Recently (October 2000) we spent two weeks in
Jerusalem and saw first-hand the way the media distorts the truth and
fabricates lies in order to harm Israel and protect the Palestinians.
Recognizing the great need to counter-balance all the misinformation and propaganda we are being fed on a daily
basis, we feel obligated to declare the truth about the Arab-Jewish conflict.
Daniel O. Mace
November 2000
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Arab
Lies & Jewish Self-Delusion
The most oft-repeated piece of propaganda the world
has been subjected to over the last 40 years is that the Jews came to
"Arab" Palestine from Russia, Europe, and other parts of the world,
and "displaced" its original inhabitants in order to create a Jewish
state. Variations of this same theme are: (1) the British helped the Jews
displace the Arabs for imperialistic reasons, and (2) the "West" in
general helped displace the Arabs in order to relieve its conscience over its
failure to stave off Hitler's extermination of the Jews. None of these
accusations have any basis in reality, yet the whole world repeats them as if
they are historical facts.
During the final years of World War II. the Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, was Hitler's guest in Germany. There
he saw how successful the Fuhrer's propaganda machine was. There he saw living
proof that if you tell a lie long enough and often enough—regardless of how
much evidence there is to the contrary—eventually the whole world will believe
it.
Since falsehood and lying are not only acceptable
behavior in Islamic culture, but desirable and normal, the Arabs already had a
built-in talent which enabled them to not only copy Hitler's propaganda formula
but perfect it. All they needed was the means to disseminate it to the world.
That means presented itself when they became the world's primary source of oil
energy. With their new-found wealth and influence they were able to bribe
and/or terrorize the majority of governments, international businesses, and
especially the major news outlets, into submission to their anti-Israel agenda.
The affects of this incessant propaganda can be seen
in the fact that in 1948 both the majority of nations and world opinion favored
the establishment of the State of Israel. The world sympathized with the 500-thousand
Jews of Palestine as they faced 50-million fanatical Muslim Arabs who boasted
they would drive them into the sea. But because the masses have been too lazy
to search out the truth of what has transpired in the area during the ensuing
years—choosing instead to have their views molded by nightly news programs that
pump out Arab propaganda—today the situation is exactly the reverse. World
opinion is against the Jews. It sympathizes totally with the Palestinians.
Today's world-view is that the Jews displaced the
Arabs of Palestine and are therefore responsible to "return" as much
"occupied" territory as is necessary to placate them. It ignores the
fact that these same Palestinians openly proclaim the only thing that will
satisfy them is the return of "all" occupied territory—meaning all of
Israel. It is unmoved by the fact that Palestinian officials publicly call for
dismantling and eventual destruction of the Jewish state. Nor does it seem to
notice that these same officials publicly call for the death of every single
Jew in the region. Palestinian leaders make such proclamations openly in both
foreign and Arabic newspapers, on TV and radio interviews, and in books. Also,
they act out this desire as much as they are able, yet both Israel and the Western
nations seem incapable of believing they mean what they say.
Another oft-repeated myth does not originate from
the Arabs but from the Jews themselves. This is the myth of "peaceful
coexistence." You see, when the truth is ugly only a lie can be beautiful;
and the truth of what has transpired between the Arab and the Jew in the Holy
Land—from before the defeat of the
Ottoman Empire in 1917 till this day—is very ugly. Both the majority of
Israelis and those who make up the government do not want to face this reality,
so they choose to run after a beautiful lie called "co-existence."
From the very beginning of Political Zionism, Jews
have deluded themselves, hoping and believing that the Arabs would one day
accept the existence of Israel and come to terms with it. The unpleasant
reality is there will never be "peace" between Zionism and Arab
Nationalism; both claim the same stretch of land as their own. There will never
be peace between Judaism and Islam; Islam seeks to gain territory for Allah. To
the Arab Islamic mind (which the West never has understood) the very existence
of a sovereign Jewish state of any size on territory that once belonged to
Allah—especially one that sits in the heart of the Arab Islamic world—is an
abomination and a humiliation.
Thus, two major pillars of propaganda that must be
destroyed are: (1) that the Jews came and displaced the Arabs of Palestine, and
are therefore responsible to solve the Palestinian situation; and (2) that it
is possible for a sovereign Jewish state to peacefully exist in the center of
an Arab Islamic Middle East.
Ever since the time of Joshua, 3500 years ago, there
have always been Jews living in Israel. During their first scattering at the
hands of Babylon and Assyria around B.C. 550, a remnant was left in the land.
Even after the second scattering by the Romans in A.D. 70, there has been a
continuous Jewish presence in Judaism's four holy cities: Jerusalem, Hebron,
Tiberias and Safed. In addition to these four areas, various other settlements
and towns became inhabited by Jews during the period of Arab rule from A.D.
637-1099. They included Ashkelon, Beersheba, Rafa and Zoar in the south; Jaffa,
Lod and Ramla in the center; Caesarea, Nazereth, Pekiin and Dan in the north.
Additional towns and villages with continuous Jewish communities from the
thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries included Gaza, Haifa, Acre and Nablus.
In A.D. 1099 and 1100, the Jews living in Jerusalem
and Haifa, fighting alongside the Arab
residents, took part in the defense of those cities against the Crusaders. In A.D. 1500, Jewish residents of the land
were the majority in the Safed region.
In short, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for
thousands of years. They have fought to stay in the land and have died
defending it. They didn't arrive just yesterday.
Of course, it is true that the Jews were a minority
in the land from A.D. 70 till the mid-1900s, but that was because they were
forcefully kept out of the land by the powers that ruled it. In 1880 there were
470,000 Arabs and 24,000 Jews living in the area that was to become Palestine.
Around this time the Jews began to have national aspirations and encouraged
emigration. The Arabs, realizing what was happening, followed suit. By 1914 the
number of Arabs had increased to 500,000 and the number of Jews to 90,000.
Until 1917 the modern independent states of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon
and Saudi Arabia, as well as others, did not even exist. They constituted one
vast territory that was an integral part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. But
already by 1886 the Arab-Jewish conflict within that empire was well under way.
A dozen Jewish settlements in the area that was to become Israel were attacked
by Arab bands from 1886 to 1914. In 1891 Arab notables from Jerusalem sent a
petition to the Turkish government in Constantinople demanding the prohibition
of Jewish immigration and Jewish land purchase. Between 1908 and 1914,
anti-Zionist newspapers began to be published in Jaffa, Haifa, Beruit and Damascus.
Anti-Zionist societies were also established in these towns, as well as in
Jerusalem. In 1906 a well-known Arab writer penned these insightful words:
"The reawakening of the Arab nation and the growing Jewish efforts at rebuilding the ancient monarchy of Israel on a very large scale—these two movements are destined to fight each other continually, until one of them triumphs over the other."
Neguib Azoury
Despite these realities, there was an unwillingness on the part of the Jewish leadership to see the evident Arab hatred towards Zionism. With every Jewish step towards statehood, Arab nationalist hostility grew in intensity, yet everyone chose to believe the lie that sooner or later the Arabs would see that a Jewish state would be good for everyone in the region. There was almost a total denial that Arab nationalism even existed. Thus could Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, coin the famous slogan: "The land without a people for the people without a land."
That there was a people (the Jews) "without a land" was an undeniable fact. That there was a land (Palestine) "without a people" was self-delusion. Alongside the 24,000 Jews living in Palestine at that time were 470,000 Arabs. Those Arabs may have been poor and ignorant, they may have been lacking in political awareness, but they were there—and nobody seemed to notice. On the one hand, it was as if the Arabs did not exist, or if they did, they really didn't matter. On the other hand, there was the naive belief that this backward and primitive people would be delighted at the benefits that would come their way, thanks to the advent of the progressive and talented Jew. This delusion—that the nationalist aspirations of the Arabs living in the land could be bought with a higher standard of living and material wealth—persists till this very hour.
As late as last month (Oct. 2000), after the Arab citizens of the Galilee rioted to show solidarity with their Palestinian "brethren" in the "occupied territories," the majority of Israeli officials, journalist and political pundits were singing the same old worn-out tune. The reason the Israeli Arabs are rioting, they said, is because they need more money, more community services, more funds for education, and of course, most of all, more integration into Israeli society!
The fact that the Arabs living in Israel—whether
they be "citizens" of Israel proper or non-citizens living under
"occupation" beyond the Green Line—always have and always will hate
the Jews and the Jewish state, and that they are continually working to destroy
Israeli society and overthrow the government, has yet to dawn on all these
experts. The myth of "peaceful coexistence" is a strong
delusion...but only for the Jews. The Arabs have always known better. In the end, this delusion could
very well cause the eventual downfall of the Jewish state.
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Historical Realities
On November 5, 1914, the British declared war on the
Turkish Empire. As the result of its victories in 1917, millions of Arabs were
liberated from Turkish rule. From that territory the allies would eventually
carve out twelve sovereign Arab states: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya,
Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The same
world-power that established these twelve Arab states and gave them their
independence, decreed that a tiny sliver of land on the Mediterranean coast
should be given to the Jews. In 1920, Lord Balfour—the man who had authored the
"Balfour Declaration" 3 years earlier, in which Britain granted the
Jews a "national home" in Palestine—reminded the Arabs of the debt
they owed Britain:
"So far as the Arabs are concerned, I hope they will
remember that it is we who have established an independent Arab
sovereignty of the Hedjaz [Saudi Arabia]. I hope they still remember that it
is we who desire in Mesopotamia to prepare the way for the future of a
self-governing, autonomous Arab state; and I hope that, remembering all that,
they will not grudge that small notch—for it is no more than that
geographically, whatever it may be historically—that small notch in what are
now Arab territories being given to the people who for all these hundreds of
years have been separated from it."
The very power that had liberated the Arabs and
given them their own sovereignty expected, in return, their co-operation in
establishing a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people—a people who
were not strangers or foreigners, but once lived and thrived in that land, yet
had been forcefully "separated from it" for hundreds of years. They
expected the co-operation of the Arabs in facilitating a home for a people who
had been continually present in that land (even if only in small numbers) for
thousands of years. Unfortunately the Western mind never has (and still
doesn't) understand the Eastern mind, particularly the Arab Muslim mind. The
Arabs were not grateful for what Britain had done and chose not to remember.
From then until now they refuse to relinquish that "small notch."
In the same year of 1920, the San Remo conference
granted to Britain the "Palestine Mandate" in order to expedite the
establishment of a Jewish national home. This was based on the Balfour
Declaration of 1917. Mandate Palestine included what today is known as
Israel—including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—and all of Jordan.
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The above map shows the area that was supposed to
become the national home for the Jews. East of the Jordan River was known as Eastern Palestine and west of the Jordan
was known as Western Palestine. A
year after receiving the Mandate, Britain severed Eastern Palestine from
Western Palestine and made it another sovereign Arab state. In other words, 77%
of the territory that had been allocated for a Jewish homeland was immediately
lost. So when you hear Arabs in Israel (or anywhere else) demanding a
Palestinian state, remember this historical fact: there already is a
Palestinian state in the Middle East. Its called Jordan. Jordan is nothing but
Eastern Palestine and its population is over 75% Palestinian. More than 2.7
million of its inhabitants have their origins in Western Palestine. The Arabs
in Jordan and the Arabs in Israel are from the same population base.
Many of Jordan's cabinet ministers and members of
parliament have come from Western Palestine. Indeed, in the spring of 1988,
Palestinian Arabs made up half the Jordanian cabinet. The major part of the
country's economy and government administration is in the hands of former
residents of Western Palestine. In addition, both the late King Hussein of
Jordan and Yasir Arafat have openly admitted this truth. In 1981 King Hussein
said: "The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is
Jordan." In 1970 Arafat told correspondent Oriana Fallaci: "What you
call Jordan is actually Palestine."
Of course, later both Hussein and Arafat had begun
to deny and obscure these facts because if Jordan is in fact a Palestinian
state, there is no rational or moral basis for the establishment of another Palestinian state in the
region—especially since such a state would have to be carved out of sovereign
Israeli territory.
Most people are ignorant of the true history of the
so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. This conflict did not start in 1967, or in the
Sinai campaign of 1956, or even when the Jewish state came into being in 1948.
It began decades earlier, and it's not an Arab-Israeli conflict, it's an Arab-Jewish conflict, for Arabs were
shedding the blood of Jews in the land long before the term "Israeli"
was even invented. In their blind and arrogant ignorance, many people are
speaking of the need to "recognize" the Palestinians. Well, let's do
that. Let's recognize them for what they are.
Come meet them and know them, just as the Jews of the land knew them in 1921,
1929 and 1936-38.
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The Pogroms of 1921
May 1, 1921 -- Arab mobs began to gather in Jaffa, a
city that was considered a model of Jewish-Arab coexistence. The Jews and Arabs
of Jaffa had extensive commercial relations, and the Sephardic Jews who had
lived there for generations were almost indistinguishable from the Arabs.
Nevertheless, the mobs began to gather—the sticks and metal bars they carried
left no doubt as to their intentions.
For days the Arabic paper Falastin had been agitating against Zionism with particular venom.
Now, in the mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhoods of Nve Shalom and Menashiya, the
mob began to attack Jews in the streets with stones and heavy metal rods. The
Jews attempted to defend themselves, and since the mob did not have guns, the
police could have easily driven them off. But the police were Arab—first and
foremost Arabs. Most of the police officers protected the rioters, while
others removed their badges and joined them, shooting at the Jews. In the first
attack thirteen Jews were killed and the looting and pillaging spread to other
areas of the city. Gradually the mob focused on the city's center of Zionism: Bet Ha'Olim (Immigrant House). Because
of their belief that Arabs and Jews could coexist in peace, the Zionists had
acquired a large, two story building in the all-Arab section of Jaffa. At the
time there were about 100 new immigrants in the building. The confidence that
they could live in peace with their Arab neighbors was so great they had no
weapons of any kind.
Around 1:00 P.M. the mob began to gather. Jews standing
in the street were stoned and beaten. One Arab attempted to throw a primitive
homemade bomb but it blew up in his hands and he was killed—which only
infuriated the mob even more. As they began to approach the building the Jews
ripped iron posts from the gate and blocked the entrance to the front and side
yards. They beat off the first attack and several Arabs were carried away by
their comrades.
At 2:00 P.M. the watchmen on the roof reported that
several policemen were approaching. A general sigh of relief arose until the
police, who were Arabs, arrived. They suddenly began shooting at the Jews and
two grenades were thrown into the courtyard, killing and wounding several of
them. According to the Book of the
Haganah, the attack was led by the head of the prison, Hana Burdkush, a
member of a "respectable" Christian Arab family. The police burst
into the yard, shouting to the mob: "What are you waiting for? Kill them
all!"
Their spirits broken, most of the Jews attempted to
flee. The males who were not fortunate enough to escape were brutally
murdered. Several women pleaded with a policeman to save them. He took them
into an alley, stripped them of their valuables, and tried to rape one of
them. When silence descended on the building, thirteen Jews were dead and
twenty-six were wounded, and for the rest of the day Arabs looted Jewish stores
and houses.
In the morning hours of May 2, six Jewish bodies
were found in the Abu Kabir section between Jaffa and Tel Aviv. The six had
been beaten to death, then their bodies stripped and mutilated. The results of
the Jaffa massacre were 43 Jews murdered, 134 wounded, and untold property
damage. It was now May 5...Petah Tikva's turn.
The news of the Jaffa pogrom encouraged the Arabs of
the villages near the large settlement of Petah Tikva. Scouts reported that
hundreds of Arabs from all the villages in the area were now on their way to
attack. The Jews awaited the Arab attack with sinking hearts. They had only
forty guns and the Arabs had large quantities of weapons and ammunition. The
attack began. Desperately the defenders held on within a fixed radius. The
Arabs attacked, looted, and burned houses outside the defense perimeter. Four
Jews were dead and the colony was on the verge of collapse and slaughter when
British troops arrived to save them. The Arabs of Ramle attacked the large
settlement of Hadera and Rehovot. Only courage and miracles saved the Jews from
slaughter. The book, History of the
Haganah describes the attack:
"Thousands of men, women and children came like
locusts upon this settlement, with the usual battle-cries: 'Eleyhom' [Charge
them] and 'Iibach Al-Yahud' [Slaughter the Jews]. They approached the
settlement looting everything in their path and burning huts in the
orchards."
It is interesting to note that both women and children came to murder the Jews of this colony. The
reality of children being trained to murder Jews is nothing new. It didn't
start with the Palestinian "Intifada" in the "occupied
territories." It started before there was even a Jewish state to hate, let
alone occupied territories. The vast majority of Muslim Arabs are not only
compulsive liars and deceivers, they are vicious—and anyone who refuses to
understand this reality will never understand the history or the present
realities of the region.
November 2, 1921, was the fourth anniversary of the
Balfour Declaration. The Arab press called for a day of mourning, a work
stoppage, and demonstrations to protest the declaration, which it said was the
"death sentence" passed on the Arabs of Palestine. In Jerusalem,
5,000 Jews were packed into the Jewish Quarter—most of them totally unfamiliar with
self-defense. On the day of the strike, thousands of frenzied Arabs attacked
those Jews, who were mostly Sephardic and lived in the Muslim quarter.
The Sephardim had remained there in the mistaken
belief that the Arabs were opposed only to the recent European (or Ashkenazic)
immigrants. To the credit of the Arabs, they did not discriminate against Jews
on the basis of communal background—they killed all of them equally.
At 11:30 hundreds of screaming Arabs, headed by
Sheikh Vad Al-Halili, attempted to smash into the Jewish quarter. They were
driven back after a sharp struggle in which the Sheikh was killed. Five dead
Jews and forty injured ones were brought to the hospital, the victims of Arab demands for an end, not of
Jewish "occupation," but of Jewish existence in the land.
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The Pogroms of 1929
On Yom Kippur, in the year 1928, the Arabs of
Palestine discovered the Wailing Wall. More precisely, they discovered that the
one remnant of the Holy Temple was in fact a Muslim holy place. For hundreds of
years Jews had come to the symbol of their exile to shed bitter tears and plead
with the Almighty to redeem them from the four corners of the earth. But on Yom
Kippur, 1928, a British policeman barged into the midst of the worshipers to
forcibly remove the partition that separated the men and women, thus putting
into motion the forces of pogrom.
For years the British had claimed that they would
keep the status quo for religious sites in Jerusalem. The Wall had no standing
as a Muslim religious site at all, but the Muslims did not wish to see it
granted Jewish religious status. The British viewed the partition between the
sexes at the Yom Kippur services as an attempt to convert the Wall into a
"synagogue."
The incident gave birth to an Arab myth. The Mufti
of Jerusalem was the supreme Muslim leader at the time. In his position as
Muslim theologian he decreed that the Wall was in reality a Muslim holy place.
The reason? When Muhammad allegedly went up to heaven from Jerusalem on his
wondrous horse, Al-Burak, he chose a spot near the Wall to tether it. Instantly
a political-religious legend was born. For almost a year following this new
revelation the Arabs incited, lied, and heated the atmosphere that led to the
deadly pogroms of 1929. In many towns, "committees for the defense of the
Burak," were formed. In November of 1928 the Mufti convened a religious
conference which demanded that Jews be prevented from bringing religious items to
the Wall. The Mufti added his wish that the British enforce this so the Muslims
themselves would not be forced to defend this holy place.
In August of 1939 thousands of Muslims leaving
prayers at the Al-Aksa mosque marched past the Wall shouting "Allah Akhbar!" (God is great!),
"Din Muhamad Kari Basip"
(The law of Muhammad with the Sword), and "Down with Zionism!" A
bitter diatribe was delivered and Jewish prayer books were burned. At the Wall
the following day (the Sabbath), Arabs stabbed to death a young Jew. Letters
signed by the Mufti called on all Muslims to come to Jerusalem the following
Friday to prevent the Jews from "seizing Al-Aksa."
Thousands of Arabs streamed into Jerusalem with long
sticks that had sharp nails protruding from them. The cry, "Il Dula M'ana!"(The government is
with us) rang out throughout every Arab village and town—and indeed it was.
The British government at that time was represented by a new High Commissioner
named Chancellor. Since he was a recent arrival, he allowed most of the
decisions to be made by his chief aide, Harry Luke, who was a bitter
anti-Zionist. Luke's policy of non-interference with the Mufti and Arab mobs
led to the murder of many Jews.
Jerusalem: The pogrom in Jerusalem
began on Friday, August 23, and continued for days. Thousands of Arabs streamed
into the city carrying iron bars, sticks, and knives. Outside Jerusalem sat the
small Jewish settlement of Motza. For decades its residents thought they had
the best of relationships with the neighboring Arab village of Kolonia. On
Saturday night, as the Jews of Jerusalem were being attacked and murdered,
thirty villagers from Kolonia—longtime acquaintances—"visited" the
home of the Maklaf family. They slaughtered everyone, including an eighty-five
year old Rabbi who was a guest for the Sabbath. The women were first raped and
then murdered, then the house was burned down.
Safad: High in the beautiful
Galilean hills stood Safad, the city of the Kabbalists. Its 3,000 Jews had
lived for generations with the Arabs. All spoke Arabic and the Jews were hardly
distinguishable from the Arabs in their dress. As the days of pogroms receded,
it appeared that Safad would be spared. But at 5:30 P.M., on August 29, a mob
of Arabs burst into the Jewish Quarter, led by Fuad Hajazi, a young clerk of
the local government health office.
The first place the mob attacked was the Klinger
gasoline storage house. As flames and smoke leaped into the air, the mob
entered the homes of Jews they had known for years, stabbing, beating, raping,
looting. The wind carried the flames onward and ironically this saved many
Jewish lives as the mob rushed to save their own homes. But eighteen Jews were
dead and more than eighty others injured. Almost all the victims were elderly
or women, many of whom had pleaded with their slaughterers to remember the
favors they had done them over the years.
The same evening the small Jewish settlement in Ein
Zeitim was decimated. Three Jews were murdered, the rest fled to Safad as their
homes went up in flames. In the northeast part of the Galilee, the settlement
of Yesud Ha'Ma'ale was destroyed by its Arab neighbors. In essence there was
not a Jewish community of any consequence that was not attacked. Scores of Jews
were slaughtered, and damage was estimated in the millions of English pounds.
But nowhere was the full extent of Arab bestiality manifested more clearly than
in the ancient city of Hebron.
Hebron: Long before the name
"Palestinian" was invented, Jews lived in Hebron. There Abraham
purchased the Cave of Machpela, and there the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the
nation were buried. There David ruled as king for seven years before going to
Jerusalem. There Jews and Judaism were entwined for 3,500 years—and there a
horrible massacre took place.
It was a hot Friday morning, August 23, 1929. There was no Jewish state, no occupation forces or "occupied territories" to give the Arabs reasons to cry out against Zionism. In Hebron there lived some 500 Jews, mostly Sephardic, many with roots going back hundreds of years. Various famous synagogues were at Hebron, and for many years Jews lived, worked, prayed and studied there. Then their "good Arab neighbors" rose up to massacre 67 of them in cold blood. Scores of others were wounded. All the rest fled, leaving their property behind.
Throughout the land there was growing tension as
roving bands of Arab gangsters agitated against the Jews. Incidents were
reported in various places but the Jews of Hebron were not worried. In the
first place, they had lived in peace for many years with their Arab neighbors.
It was inconceivable that those neighbors, for whom they had done so much,
would betray them. Despite the incidents that had taken place in Jerusalem,
Jaffa, Safad and other places, there had never been trouble in Hebron.
Moreover, Arab dignitaries had repeatedly assured them that no harm would come
to them.
At approximately 2:30 P.M. an Arab messenger arrived
and told an Arab crowd that he had just returned from Jerusalem, where
"thousands of Muslims had been killed and their blood spilled like
water." Of course, this was a fabrication but Arabs are compulsive liars.
Seeking revenge, the Arab residents of Hebron marched through the streets. They
first turned to the Grodzinski home. In testimony given after the massacre, Mr.
Grodzinski described what happened:
"When the riots began, there were people in our house. I saw
a young Arab open the gate to our courtyard and dozens of Arabs burst in. They
surrounded the house and began banging on the doors. We hastily secured the
doors as stones came smashing through the windows. When a shot was fired into
the room, we went up to the second floor and called for help. Eliezer Don
Slonim saw us and managed to get a group of police, who finally scattered the
mob. We then all decided to move to the home of Slonim, since he had excellent
relations with the Arabs and we felt sure that his house would not be
attacked."
The Arabs wanted Jewish blood. They made their way
to the Slobodka yeshiva. Since it was the eve of the Sabbath, most of the
students were not there. Only the Yemeni shammas
(sexton) and the perpetually diligent masmid
(eternal learner of Torah), Shmuel Rosenholtz, were to be found. The mob came
charging into the courtyard. The shammas leaped into the well in time and
covered himself—it saved his life. But Rosenholtz was completely immersed in
his Talmud and did not even hear the mob come in. It was only when stones
smashed him in the head, so that blood spurted over his books, that he
attempted to flee. But the mob was upon him and punctured his body with knife
wounds, like a sieve.
The Hebron massacre had its first victim. Evening
now comes and the Sabbath begins. The mob that murdered Rosenholtz has
scattered and the streets are silent. The police arrive at the yeshiva and
place his body on a table. The son of Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, head of
the Slobodka-Hebron yeshiva, is called to the office of the Hebron governor,
who is an Arab. The governor tells him he must go to every Jewish house and
warn the occupants not to walk out. He says: "Let the Jews stay in their
houses and I will be responsible for their lives." The night passes in
troubled silence.
By 6:00 A.M. Arabs are streaming into Hebron from
the surrounding countryside. Mr. Slonim and a yeshiva student, along with a
police detail, go from house to house warning the Jews not to go out and not
even to look out the windows. Meanwhile, Arab neighbors gleefully tell their
Jewish "friends" that "today will be the slaughter." The
streets are now packed with Arabs who are armed with guns, swords and knives.
Cars speed through the streets with Arabs sitting on the roofs, shouting
slogans calling for death to the Jews. The atmosphere is electric—and through
it all walks Arab and British police officers, very calmly.
The Jewish leaders of the community meet at the home
of the Sephardic Rabbi Franco. Fear of a truly serious threat to their lives is
now evident. But without their knowledge the slaughter has already begun. In
one of the houses further away from the center lives the Abushadid family. The
father, 55 years old, is a storekeeper and was born in Hebron. He suddenly
appears on the balcony of his home, screaming for help. No one hears or
listens. The police are nowhere to be seen. Rocks begin flying into the house,
smashing windows, and screams of terror are heard. Several women and children
appear on the balcony. An Arab, his eyes filled with hate and lust, rushes at
them, swinging a sword. He cuts and stabs again and again. Blood spurts over
the balcony and drips into the street.
Inside lie the bodies of Eliyahu Abushadid and his
twenty-five year old son, Yitzchok, a simple tailor. Also dead are forty-five
year old Yaakov Goslan, a smelter who was also born in the city, and his
eighteen-year old son Moshe. The Arabs do not even look at the bodies. They
are too busy looting the house and throwing Jewish property into the street to
the howling mob. The mob now turns to the home of a sixty-nine year old scholar
named Rabbi Meir Kastel, also born in Hebron. He watches as the mob breaks
down his door. He is murdered brutally. The mob loots his house and then burns
it down over his body.
On to the next house...that of sixty-five year old
Rabbeinu Hason, one of the heads of the Sephardic rabbinate in Hebron. He and
his wife watch in terror as the mob burns down their door and then storms in.
Both die a horrible death. Now the mob turns to Beit Hadassah, which is both a
medical clinic and synagogue. This famous institution, which did so much for
both the Jews and the Arabs of Hebron—and which in later years is to serve as
the symbol of Jewish shame as Jewish governments bar Jews from returning to the
scene of the massacres—is the next to feel the Arab's wrath. The fact that it
is a place of worship and study, as well as a medical clinic for Jews and Arabs
alike, matters little to the mob.
Among those who attack are many who have received free treatment in this same building.
They climb through windows and smash down doors. Inside they destroy everything
they see: medical equipment, medicine, drugs, everything is shattered in a
hate-filled frenzy. And now flames leap toward the skies as they set fire to
the inside. The place is an inferno. The synagogue is a scene of utter
destruction. The torn and desecrated Torah Scrolls now burn and become ashes.
The building that served as a place of mercy and charity is gone.
Next door to the Hadassah building lives Ben Zion
Gershon, a crippled druggist whose kindness to the Arabs is legendary. We will
never know how many Arabs he treated, most for free or for absurdly low fees.
How many times did the Arabs thank him by blessing his name as they left? Today
the mob shows the way it repays kindness. They burst into the apartment.
Fingernails gouge out the crippled druggist's eyes and he dies as knives pierce
his body. His wife is assaulted and both her arms are cut off—she dies later in
the hospital in Jerusalem. The Arabs attempt to rape the daughter but she
struggles so successfully that they kill her in a horrible way.
The streets of Hebron are a nightmare of shouting
Arabs. Screams are heard from dozens of houses—screams of dying men, violated
women, weeping children...and the pogrom continues. On the road to Beersheba
stands Beit Burland, where many students from the Hebron yeshiva stay. The mob
surrounds the house and breaks down the doors. A student, Arvaham Dov Shapira,
stands and fights bravely with a knife in his hand until he is dead. Another
student, Moshe-Aron Ripps, begs his murderers a moment to say Vidui, the final confession. As he
begins they kill him. Two other students, Shmtiel Izak Bernstein and
Yestiacliar Eliyahu Sandrow, are also victims. The later, almost cut in two by
the mob, lingers and suffers for almost a day before dying. No Jewish house is
safe.
On the road to Jerusalem the mob breaks into the
home of the shochet (ritual
slaughterer), Yaakov Zev Reizman. The terrified Jew runs out the back door but
the mob catches him. He pleads with them and gives them all his money. For a
moment they leave him alone, but as he begins to run again they catch him and
riddle him with knife wounds. He dies in the gutter. His house is a scene of
tragedy. On the floor lie his dead brother and mother-in-law. The house is
looted by the mob, which then leaves on its way to the next victims.
The next home is that of Eliezer Don Slonim. His
house is a prestigious one. Slonim is one of the most important Jews in Hebron.
As director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank in the city, he is also the only Jew to
sit on the Hebron town council. He has many "friends" among the
Arabs. He knows all the notables and leaders of the town. They have promised
him protection. Because of this, Slonim has told as many Jews as possible to
come to his home.
Many Jews have gathered at Slonim’s home. Wrapped in
their prayer shawls, the men stand and pray the Sabbath service in fear as they
hear the howls of the mob and the screams of the victims outside. Many can see
the terrible massacre in nearby Beit Buriand. They can hear the insane mob
pounding on the door of the adjoining house—that of Skolover. Suddenly the windows
of Slonim's house are smashed by a hundred rocks. The Jews scream. Men rush to
bar the door. Outside the house stand hundreds of inflamed Arabs calling for
Jewish blood. Iron poles and beams are being brought up by the Arabs to smash
down the doors. The house of Slonim will be no safer than all the rest.
They charge up the narrow stone steps leading to the
house. For fifteen minutes they pound on the door. Finally they smash it with
iron staves and batter it with poles. Inside, the yeshiva students stand
frantically against the doors, attempting to hold back the murderers. But
suddenly there is a loud crash. A huge hole has been made in the front door and
shots ring out.
Avraham Yanai, fifty-six, a poor Jew from
Constantinople, falls, struck in the arm. A second shot catches twenty-seven
year old Zalman Vilenski, secretary of the Yeshiva, in the face. He collapses
in a pool of blood. Yet another bullet rips the stomach of Yisrael Mordechai
Kaplan, a twenty-two year old yeshiva student from Lithuania. As he falls he
tries to hold onto the door to keep the Arabs out. But only for a moment; He
collapses and dies.
The students show super-human strength and bravery
as they hold back the hordes, but under the assault of bullets they are forced
to retreat with the rest into the inner rooms. The door to the roof bursts open
and Arabs leap into the house. Eliezer Don Slonim, cool and strong to the end,
fires his pistol at the mob, but a heavy metal pipe strikes him in the head and
he collapses. There is no hope left but the yeshiva students fight like lions.
The sound of swords and knives slashing and cutting
is mixed with the cries of women and children. Someone cries, "Shma Yisrael!" Hillel Kalplinski is
attacked by a dozen Arabs who stab him repeatedly. A survivor recalls him
shouting: "I am already dead and they still hit me!" And in a pool of
blood over in the corner, wrapped in his prayer shawl, lies Rabbi Avraham
Yaakov Orlinski, next to his dead wife, who had come to Hebron to spend a quiet
Sabbath with their daughter and son-in-law, Eliezer Don Slonim.
The mob literally rips the belly of a sixty-seven
year old Rabbi in two and his insides pour out. He had arrived just six months
earlier from Russia, hoping to live a life of Torah and peace in the Holy Land.
In this one house where they had gathered for safety, twenty-four people die.
Thirteen more are gravely wounded. Taking part in the slaughter are Arabs who
just the day before did business and laughed together with Eliezer Don Slonim.
They were his "friends."
The slaughter continues for half an hour. Every
piece of property that can be moved is thrown out the door and windows.
Pillows are cut and the feathers fly through the air, some resting on the
bodies of the dead, sticking to them, still wet with blood. The Arabs now
leave, crying, "Let us go; there are no more Jews left to kill." But
they are wrong. Miraculously, Jews have been saved. Eleven of them are squeezed
into a tiny bathroom that somehow the mob failed to notice. Still others lie
under the bodies of the dead. They stagger out to look at the horrors their
"friendly neighbors" with whom they had "coexisted" so
long have left behind. There is a terrible quiet except for the moaning of the
wounded and dying—and of course, the sound of the mob, which has now moved on
to its next victims.
They reach the home of Moshe Goldschmidt, a
thirty-one year old Habad Hasid from Russia. Some fifteen people are hiding in
his house and as the doors are broken down they escape by jumping down into
the adjoining yard. However, Moshe Goldschmidt—apparently counting on being
able to appeal to the pity and mercy of the Arabs—remains behind. He falls to
his knees and pleads with the Arabs, who only laugh at him and humiliate him
before killing him in a brutal and indescribable manner. On to more horrors.
The Arabs are now drunk on murder and brutality, and
their cruelty is fed by atrocity. The scholar, Reb Bezalel Smarik from
Lithuania, is seventy-three. They drag him outside and kill him on the doorstep
of his home. Inside they murder three North American yeshiva students. They now
burst into the adjoining home of Shionio Unger. The twenty-six year old is a huge
man, a mechanic from Poland. He looks like a Gentile and the mob pauses. One
shouts at him: "Are you a Christian?" He can say "yes" and
save his life. Instead he looks with contempt at the mob and shouts: "I am
a Jew!" They leap on him with fury, his courage sending them into a fresh
frenzy. They attack his wife; she loses her mind and dies a few days later,
leaving two orphans.
Next, the baker Noah Imerman is killed as they
thrust his head into his oven. Then it's on to the home of Nahman Segal, from
Poland, who watches in horror as his Arab landlord opens the doors for the mob.
He is holding his three-year old child, Menachem. Someone swings an axe,
cutting through Segal's hand, killing the child. Segal dies a few hours later.
His wife has three fingers cut off and a yeshiva student in the house loses his
left hand.
In the same house the masmid (eternal learner of Torah) of the yeshiva, Simcha Yitzhak
Broida, is dangled head down from the window and tortured to death. Next, the
Hebron yeshiva is demolished. Then they go to the home of Rabbi Epstein. They
throw huge stones through the windows and the families inside are gripped by
terror. The men desperately try to hold the doors against the mob and the women
cry out in panic. Across the street stands the home of the governor of Hebron.
The cries of anguish apparently move him to come out onto the balcony and order
the police—who have been standing by the whole time, just watching—to chase the
mob away. But the mob is not impressed. Three times they return, and three
times the governor calmly orders them to disperse. It is hard to believe that
human beings can behave like such rabid dogs. What happens next helps to
explain how Arabs can do such things.
According to The
Book of Hebron (edited by Oded Avisar, 1970), outside the small hotel
stands Sheikh Talib, the Muslim religious leader of the town. He walks up to a
building in which dozens of Jews sit huddled in terror and looks inside to see
how many people he can count, then he leaves. Some moments pass. Suddenly the
sound of the mob is heard. The Jews look out the windows and see hundreds of
Arabs following the Sheikh.
As they stand around him he says: "You,
Muslims! Inside are ten Americans whose parents are millionaires. Slaughter the
Jews! Drink their blood! Today is the day of Islam! This is the day the prophet
has commanded you! Allah and the prophets have commanded you to avenge the
blood of your dead brethren in Jerusalem! Allah is great! Come with me and kill
the Jews. Inside are beautiful Jewish women. Take them!"
The mob attacks. The yeshiva students inside fight
wildly to hold the doors. At the very moment that they begin to splinter, the
students see what they take to be a miracle—a British officer with five Arab
policemen appear on horseback. Two of the students rush out past the mob to
the policemen. They plead with them to save the Jews inside the house but the
policemen just stare.
The mob now angrily rushes at the two Jews who are
imploring the British officer to save their lives. They attack the one young
man, Yisrael Aryeh. Bloodied, he turns like a madman on his attackers,
smashing them with his fists until he falls dead at the feet of his
"rescuers." The other student seizes the reins of the British
officer's horse and pleads for his life. As he does the mob stabs him again and
again, and as they are killing him an Arab can be heard laughing and shouting,
"Does it hurt, Jew?" The two students die, but their deaths enable
the other Jews, whose presence the Arabs have momentarily forgotten, to flee to
safety.
In the Jewish Quarter of Hebron every house is
looted, every synagogue destroyed—all at the hands of Arab "friends"
and business acquaintances. Only memories haunt those buildings today—memories
of Jews whose intestines were ripped out and whose skulls were so viciously
chopped that their brains poured out. Memories of the elderly Jew who was
castrated before being killed, and of the young Jewish student whose body was
found with a piece of flesh ripped from his throat. Memories of the barber
whose head was stuffed into a toilet, and of the woman who was hanged by her
legs and whose hair was ripped from her head. Memories of the young woman
teacher who was raped by thirteen Arabs before her parents' eyes, and of the
young girl who was saved from being raped only when she pleaded to be killed.
The "merciful" Arabs agreed.
Hebron...where the true nature of the Arab Muslim has been
forever exposed.
Hebron...where the impossibility of Arab-Jewish
coexistence is written in blood.
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The Pogroms of 1936-1938
Despite the Arab riots of 1929, Jewish immigration
and settlements continued to grow. Arab leaders protested against this new
influx of immigrants and launched a campaign of terror in 1936. On April 15,
armed Arabs stopped several cars on the main road between Tulkarm and Shechem,
killing two Jews and injuring two. It was the beginning of more than two years
of terror, destruction and murder of Jews. Four days later, the city of Jaffa
exploded in pogroms, with nine Jews murdered and fifty-seven injured the first
day.
Also, Jewish neighborhoods bordering Tel Aviv were
set ablaze and looted. Five more Jews were slaughtered the next day, and the
massacres spread. A crowd of Jews leaving the Edison Cinema in Jerusalem are
mowed down by Arab bullets. In another incident a bomb was thrown into a
children's schoolyard. The toll mounted as Jews were murdered near Kfar Saba,
Yaknaam, Haifa, and Safad. In Safad a gang of Arabs broke into the home of a
poor scribe and killed him and his three small children. That scribe had done
nothing to the Arabs of Safed. They murdered him simply because he was a Jew
and he was available. The main thing was to kill Jews—none were spared. Women,
children and those "close" to the Arabs were killed. Lewish Billig, a
respected lecturer in Arabic literature at the Hebrew University, who had
devoted his life to Arabic studies and was a "good friend" of the
Arabs, was murdered in his house in Jerusalem.
The first phase of the Arab riots ended with 82 Jews
dead and more than 400 wounded. Damage ran into the millions of dollars.
Throughout 1937 Arabs attacked Jews in both towns and on roads. A few small
bands of Jews started carrying out reprisals, but the Jewish National
Council—the official representative of the Jews—condemned all such reprisals
and urged the Jewish population to maintain the same restraint it had showed
the preceding year. It called on the people to avoid all outbursts or harming
of innocent people in spite of the blatant provocation by Arabs.
It is amazing how little things change. Sixty-three
years later, after making far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians, after
helping them establish their own autonomous areas (which will become a
Palestinian state), they have begun a new "Jihad" because the Jews
refused to hand all of Jerusalem over to them as their new capital. Once again
the Arab beast is free to rape, maim and butcher as many Jews as he can get his
hands on. And once again the Jewish leadership is urging restraint, even to the
point of tying the hands of the IDF so
they cannot properly defend either the Israeli population or themselves—and
again, the world gives its sympathy to the murderer
rather than the victim.
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The Need For
Separation
By 1936 it was becoming painfully obvious (at least
to the British) that the Arabs had no intention of allowing a Jewish state to
be established on what they considered their land. This realization brought two
specific responses from British authorities. First, they appointed a
commission—later known as the "Peel Commission"—to seek a solution to
the problem. In July of 1937 that commission issued its conclusions. It
recommended the partition of Western
Palestine into two separate states—one Jewish, one Arab. Under the proposal,
the British would retain control of a corridor from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The
Jews reluctantly accepted the plan but the Arabs rejected it. In July of 1937
the Arab Higher Committee, speaking for the Arabs of Palestine, issued this
statement regarding partition:
"The Arabs of Palestine are the owners of the country...The
Jews on the other hand are a minority of intruders who before the war had no
real standing in this country and whose political connections therewith had
been severed for almost 2,000 years."
Next, the British introduced a strict limit on
Jewish immigration—a maximum of 8000 between August 1937 and March 1938. This
policy was to become a pattern. The Arabs would riot and kill Jews (and British
soldiers as well), and in response, the British would put new limits on Jewish
immigration and land purchases. In 1939, as the result of still more pressure by
the Arabs, Britain published its infamous "White Paper," curtailing
immigration even further at a time when persecution in Germany was reaching its
height and the Jews desperately needed a place of refuge.
From 1937 to 1947 various partition plans were drafted
by world organizations because it was obvious there needed to be a separation
of the Jewish and Arab populations. The Jewish Agency drafted two different
partition plans of their own, one in 1938 and one in 1946. Ironically, both the
Jewish proposals, and virtually all of the other proposals as well, included
the West Bank within the borders of the proposed Arab state. Thus, the
territory the Palestinians of Israel are demanding today is the very territory
they rejected 50 years ago. On
November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted on its own
partition plan. They set up both a Jewish state and an Arab state in Western
Palestine and fixed their borders. The "national home" that was
promised to the Jews had shrunk to
less than 18% of its original size and was to be in three segments. Jerusalem
was to be an international zone.
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The Jews accepted the partition but the Arabs not
only rejected it, they immediately attacked Jewish settlements all over
Palestine. For the Arabs, who have not changed their position one iota in over
60 years, nothing less than all of Palestine would do. In the twelve days
following the U.N. vote, 79 Jews were killed by Arabs. The British—who were
still responsible for law and order—did not always enforce it. Sometimes they
would disarm a Jewish defense group, which would then be attacked by armed
Arabs. The Jews defended themselves, and in some places, counter-attacked.
During this same period 32 Arabs were killed, some by Jews and some by British
police.
Those who claim the British helped the Jews
establish their state don't know what they are talking about. The time-frame in
which the British government was favorable towards the establishment of a
"national home" for the Jews in Palestine was very short. The Balfour
Declaration was passed in 1917. By the mid-1930s the policy of the British
government was exactly the reverse. It fought the drive for Jewish statehood,
viewing it as a threat to its empire and its relations with the Arabs. The
"White Paper" was meant to be the death knell for the proposed Jewish
state, for it guaranteed indefinitely an Arab majority in Palestine. The
British fully intended that by the time they left, there would only be one
independent state established in Western Palestine—an Arab one.
While it is true that some British soldiers and
officers serving in Palestine were more sympathetic to the Jews than to the
Arabs, and as a result, risked their lives (and endangered their careers) in
order to save the lives of Jews who were about to be butchered by Arab
gangsters, it is just as true that these were all individual cases. British
troops who sympathized with the Jews or helped the Jews did so in spite of
government policy, not in obedience to it, for that policy had become decidedly
pro-Arab. During the partition vote in 1948, Britain abstained—again betraying
its purpose for being in Palestine. Finally, as if to give the Jews one last
slap in the face, when British troops left Palestine on the eve of Israel's
independence they turned over strategic positions and equipment to the
Arabs.
Arab attacks continued unabated from December 12
till the end of 1947. At the same time, there was an increase in Jewish
reprisals. But the Jewish Agency, ever hopeful that the Arabs would listen to
reason and decide to live in peace with the Jews, consistently opposed these
reprisals. On December 10 it denounced them publicly as "spectacular
exploits to gratify popular feeling." Its own defense group, the Haganah,
confined its activities to defending Jewish settlements and repulsing Arab
attacks.
It is important to understand the difference between
the actions of the Jews and the actions of the Arabs in the land, for their
actions reveal what kind of people they are. After decades of watching fellow
Jews being ruthlessly butchered, a few small groups of Jews began to carry out
reprisals. Even so, they were in the minority. The vast majority of
Jews—including the Jewish Agency, which was the official representative of the
Jews—rejected and denounced all such actions. They called for restraint and
they continually reached out to the Arabs in order to try and convince them
that a Jewish state would be a blessing to all.
Even those who did join groups like the Irgun or the Stern Group carried out their reprisals as military operations.
They did not rape or torture or mutilate people. They didn't butcher old men
and women or little children. Neither did they disembowel or drink the blood of
their enemies. In stark contrast, the overwhelming majority of Arabs in
Palestine—especially the Arab leadership—publicly encouraged all Arabs to kill
every Jew they could get their hands on. They publicly encouraged them to kill
them in the most brutal and sickening manner in order to avenge the blood of
their fellow Arabs and bring glory to the Arab nation, as well as to their
demon-god, Allah.
Once agin, nothing has changed since then. On
October 13, 2000, the official Palestinian TV station broadcast the day's
sermon from the Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan mosque in Gaza. The speaker, Dr.
Ahmad Abu Halabiya, is a member of the PA-appointed "Fatwa Council"
and former Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza. His words are very
instructive, for they represent perfectly the Muslim Arab mind-set regarding the
State of Israel in general and Jews in particular. After calling all Israelis
"terrorists," he went on to say all Jews:
"...must be butchered and killed, as Allah the
Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands, and
will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them'...Have no mercy on
the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you
are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and
those Americans who are like them ‑ and those who stand by them ‑
they are all in one trench against the Arabs and the Muslims because they
established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in
Palestine...We will not give up a single grain of soil of Palestine, from
Haifa, and Jaffa, and Acre, and Mulabbas [Petah Tikva] and Salamah, and Majdal
[Ashkelon], and all the land, and Gaza, and the West Bank...Let us put our
trust in Allah, close ranks, and unite our words, and the slogan of us all
should be, 'Jihad! Jihad! For the sake of Palestine, and for the sake of
Jerusalem and Al‑Aqsa!'"
Dr. Halabiya is a PA official—a supposed "peace
partner" of Israel—and he is openly calling for the reconquest of all
Israel and the murder of every Jew in the Muslim world. Those who think the
people of Israel can, or should even try, to achieve "peace" with
demon-possessed murderers like him need psychological treatment! How can you
make peace with people like that? Why should you even try? He and those like
him understand only one kind of
language: the power of the sword. In his mind, Israel's desire to make peace
with her sworn enemies, and her willingness to make any kind of concession necessary to achieve that peace, is
not an admirable quality—it is a sign of weakness. It is a sign that sooner or
later the Palestinians will reconquer
all of Israel.
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The Palestinian "Refugee" Problem
month, as Arabs tried to cut the roads to Jerusalem
and kill every Jew either entering or leaving the city. They also attacked
Jewish settlements around the city. On march 11, they planted a bomb at the
Jewish Agency in the center of the city, killing 13 Jews. The Jews defended
themselves, and in addition, Jewish groups like the Irgun took fierce reprisals.
During the month over 70 Jews and 230 Arabs were killed in the Jerusalem area.
In the Haifa area 20 Jews and over 100 Arabs were killed.
At the beginning of April, spasmodic fighting ended
and Arab military units from Syria, Iraq and Egypt increased their efforts to
drive the Jews from the Galilee and the Negev. But the Jews defended their
settlements. As the British would withdraw from towns, Arabs and Jews would
fight for control of them. The Jews took Tiberias (April 19), Haifa (April 23),
Acre (April 26), Safed (May 11), and Jaffa (May 12). In Safed they repulsed
3000 Syrian and Iraqi troops in house-to-house fighting.
The events leading up to the Israel's War of
Independence in 1948 must be kept clearly in mind. Up until a few weeks before
the war, and for decades prior, the Arabs of Western Palestine had been engaged
in riots, terrorism and pogroms against the Jews in an effort to prevent the
birth of a Jewish state of any size on what they considered to be exclusively
their land. Throughout the 1947 U.N. partition debate the Palestine Arab Higher
Committee threatened war. Jamal Husseini, the committee's spokesman, said:
"the partition line proposed shall be nothing but a line of fire and
blood."
Five days later the U.N. voted for partition and the
Arabs began their war to prevent implementation of the resolution. Roads were
mined, settlements isolated, apartments
in Jerusalem were blown up and convoys ambushed. One such convoy contained 78
Jewish doctors, nurses and scientists who were on their way to the Hadassah
Hospital on Mt. Scopus. It was ambushed and every one was murdered.
Back at the United Nations, the U.N. Palestine Commission was blocked by both Arab opposition and
British refusal to cooperate. It never went to Palestine to implement the
resolution. The result was that the U.N. blamed the Arabs for the war. The
Arabs never disclaimed responsibility. On the contrary, they claimed credit.
Jamal Husseini told the Security Council:
"The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday
that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did
not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight."
The Arabs in Palestine had already begun their war
of "fire and blood" when they
received instructions by both local Arab political leaders and the heads of the
surrounding Arab states to make room for the massive attack that was being
planned. By mid-April they began leaving their villages in large numbers. They were told that after the glorious Arab armies
drove the Jews into the sea they would not only return to their own property,
but would also take possession of the Jew's property.
Of course, the Arabs now deny this fact and claim
they were driven out. But there is ample proof of the self-inflicted exodus.
John Bagot Glubb, the former (British) commander of the Arab Legion and
champion of Arab nationalism confirmed in the London Daily Mail in August of 1948 that: "villages were frequently
abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war." On
September 5, 1954, a Jordanian paper, Ad-Difaa,
put it very bluntly:
"We were masters in our land, happy with our lot...but
overnight everything changed. The Arab government told us, 'Get out so we can
get in.' So we got out but they [the
Arab government] did not get in."
In February of 1962 an Arab citizen of Israel named
Salim Joubran told the story of his own experience during that time:
"The Arab High Command asked us to leave the country for two
weeks to make the battle easier for them. They told us, 'A cannon does not
differentiate between a Jew and an Arab. Leave the country for two weeks and
you will come back victorious...' I heard the Haganah micro-phone asking the
Arabs to remain and live peacefully with their Jewish brethren. The late Jewish
Mayor of Haifa also asked us to go back to our homes. The Histadrut, the Jewish
trade union, was distributing leaflets asking the Arabs to come back. I still
have that leaflet."
Another reason for the exodus was due to the fact
that the Arabs of Palestine, knowing what they
would have done to the Jews had they
won the battles over these cities, were scared to death. They assumed the Jews
would take revenge for all the atrocities committed against them during the
preceding 50 years. And while there is evidence that some Jews were purposely
frightening the Arabs so they would leave, once again, the majority were
telling them to stay put. The British police superintendent in Haifa reported
in a secret cable to police headquarters in Jerusalem, April 26, 1948, that:
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab
populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and
businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be
safe."
Many more examples of this Jewish effort could be
provided but space does not permit it. Jewish leaders like David Ben Gurion,
Golda Meir, the Mayor of Haifa, also the Council of Safed, the Histradrut
(Jewish Labor Union), and many other Jewish spokesman pleaded with the Arabs
not to leave their homes and villages. But the most striking example is that
the call to stay put and live in peace was written right into Israel's
Proclamation of Independence—and this was done after decades of Arab terrorism,
murder and bestiality:
"In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the
Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace and to
play their part in the development of the state, with full and equal
citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions,
provisional or permanent."
Yet nothing could stop the Arab flight, and on May
15, 1948, Egypt, Syria, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq invaded
the one-day-old State of Israel. The Arab armies advanced rapidly, threatening
to drive the Jews into the sea. But the Israelis resisted, and after ten days
they were able to counter-attack. They reopened the road to Jerusalem, won
control of the Coastal Plain, secured the Upper Galilee, and drove the
Egyptians from the Negev. When the dust settled, instead of a tiny grotesque
state in three sections, joined by two narrow checkpoints and with an Arab
population constituting more than 40% of its citizens, there was now a larger
and more stable Israel with only 150,000 shell-shocked Arabs as its citizens.
The following map shows where the Arabs went—36%
fled to surrounding Arab states, while 64% never left Western Palestine at all.
What they did was flee to areas within
Western Palestine that under the partition plan would have been included in the
new Arab state—the state they had rejected in favor of going to war. That area
consisted of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
During the course of the war, the Jordanians captured the West Bank,
along with half of Jerusalem (including all the Old City with the Temple
Mount). The Egyptians captured the Gaza Strip. Thus, the same areas that were
slated to become a second Palestinian
Arab state in Mandate Palestine under the U.N. partition plan were now in Arab
hands.
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As soon as the Jordanians captured Judea and Samaria
(West Bank) they began driving out the Jewish residents, just as they had done
in 1921 after becoming an independent state. The Jewish towns, villages, or
kibbutzim of Atarot, Bet Haarava, Ein Tzurim, Gush Etzion, Kallia, Massuot
Yizhak, Neve Yakov, Revadim and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem
were all swept clean of Jews. Everything Jewish was destroyed or taken over. Thirty-four
synagogues in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem were destroyed.
Two years later, Jordan illegally annexed the West
Bank and incorporated it into the state. It gave all the Arab residents, both
those who had lived there prior to the war and those who had recently fled
there, automatic Jordanian citizenship. This annexation was declared unlawful,
not only by the Arab League, but almost unanimously by the United Nations as
well—the only exceptions being Britain (of course!) and Pakistan.
The Arabs who fled to the Gaza Strip were less
fortunate than those who fled to the West Bank. Egypt would not give them
citizenship and it kept them in primitive "refugee camps." It told
them their only option was to reconquer Palestine. From 1948 till 1967 those
refugee camps were in reality terrorist training camps.
It is important that we keep in mind the factual,
historical events that led up to the war, for regardless of what would
transpire after 1948, these facts are the only basis upon which a just
settlement of the Palestinian question can be resolved. It has been the Arab
intention ever since then to obscure and completely re-invent these realities,
and to a very great degree they have succeeded.
Nobody seems to remember that: (1) The Arabs living in the land started the war to drive the
Jews out of Western Palestine immediately after the U.N. voted to partition the
area into Jewish and Arab states. (2) The Arabs living outside the land presumed they could finish the job the Arabs of
Palestine had started and instructed them to leave their homes, villages and
towns to make room for them to attack. This was the unanimous decision of the
surrounding Arab states, and the local Arab leaders were in complete agreement
with it.
Thus, by all rational, moral and objective standards,
since the Arabs of Palestine started the war, and since they turned their war
over to the surrounding Arab states who ended up losing the war for them, it is
they who caused the refugee problem and it is they who bare the responsibility
of solving it. Interestingly enough, the Arabs admitted immediately after the
war that they were at least partially responsible for the refugee problem.
Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, said on
September 6, 1948, in an interview with the Beirut
Telegraph:
"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct
consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and
the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously, and they
must share in the solution of the problem."
Moreover, once in a while Arab leaders let the truth
slip out. Former Syrian Prime Minister, Khaled al-Azzem, in his memoirs stated
quite frankly that:
"Since 1948 it is we who have demanded the return of the
refugees while it is we who have made them leave. We have rendered them
dispossessed. We have accustomed them to begging. We have participated in
lowering their moral and social level. Then we exploited them in
executing crimes of murder, arson and throwing bombs at men, women and children."
Of course, today the Arabs deny all responsibility
for the refugee problem. They say everything was Israel's fault. Israel started
the war; Israel drove the Arabs out of Palestine by force; etc., etc., ad nauseam. For 50 years Arab leaders
have been arrogantly proclaiming that Israel is responsible for the suffering
of the Palestinian people, and as such, should resolve the Palestinian
"problem." While all the time it has been the Arabs themselves who
are not only responsible for the problem itself, but are also responsible for
making sure that it has remained unsolved all these years!
There are 22 Arab states which constitute a vast
territory, and which have at their disposal a huge supply of resources. The
"refugees" are fellow Arabs who speak the same language, have the
same religion, and are part of the same culture. Let the Arabs either resettle
them and integrate them into their society, or
if they are so concerned that they have a national homeland, let them carve a
new Palestinian state out of one of their
own territories!
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How Many Refugees?
Arab propagandists have always tried to vastly
inflate the number of Palestinian refugees and the United Nations has supported
that lie. Arabs claim the war produced 1,000,000 Palestinian refugees, while
the U.N. puts the figure at a little over 700,000. The preceding refugee map
was based on U.N. estimates, which are questionable.
According to the British
Survey Palestine—which was well-known for its tendency to inflate Arab
numbers—in 1947 there were approximately 800,000 - 900,000 Arabs living in
Western Palestine. Out of this total, some 561,000 actually lived on the
territory that became Israel after the war. Out of these 561,000 Arabs, 150,000
stayed in Israel after the war. Thus, the number of bona fide refugees could
not have been more than 415,000.
In September of 1948 the United Nations Special
Representative in Palestine estimated the number of refugees at 360,000. Yet
only three months later the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization
reported they were feeding 750,000 refugees. Seven months later the figure had
risen to 1,000,000. In 1966, UNRWA set the number at over 1,300,000 when the
true number was actually 360 to 400 thousand—a difference of at least 900
thousand people. By the mid 1980's the number had climbed to 2,000,000 in UNRWA
reports. Today the number is set at up to 4,000,000 by Palestinian spokesmen.
It should be noted that since 1949 these "refugees"
have been fed, clothed, housed and educated by UNRWA, which is largely funded
by the United States (taxpayers!) to the tune of 60-100 million dollars a year.
Think of the irony of this situation. Our tax dollars are housing, feeding and
educating terrorist murders. In the past few decades, our tax dollars helped
kill over 200 American Marines in Lebanon and other Americans, both in the U.S.
and around the world!
No reliance can be placed upon statistical figures
from UNRWA because less than 18 months after the war's end, Howard Kennedy, the
UNRWA director, declared that hundreds of thousands of their "hungry
Arabs" were not refugees! In 1961 another UNRWA director, John Davis,
admitted that their refugee counts included other Arabs and said that it would
be "wrong to deny them aid merely because they weren't legally
qualified."
The most exhaustive research into the refugee
problem comes from Joan Peters, who spent 7 years producing her monumental work:
"From Time Immemorial: The Origins of The Arab-Jewish Conflict Over
Palestine." Peters and her assistants painstakingly sifted through
boxes of British governmental data that literally filled rooms from floor to
ceiling, and she searched the entire archives of some of the world's largest
Public Libraries.
In her book, Peters strips away the thousands of nomads that were wrongfully included
with the "settled population" figure in official statistics. She
carefully documents the thousands of government recorded Arab immigrants, and
also the 170,000 in-migrants from the
Arab areas of Western Palestine (non-Jewish settled areas).
This 170,000 should not have been categorized as
"refugees" because they simply went home to their villages and towns
outside of the truce lines after the war. With the "non-settled"
Arabs removed from the population totals, along with the 150,000 that remained
in Israel, Peters concludes that the maximum
possible number of genuine refugees could have
been no more than 340,000—which, by the way, matches closely the U.N. Special
Representative's original estimate of 360,000 back in September of 1948.
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A Weapon Against Israel
The average person has no idea that the Palestinian
refugee "problem" is not a problem at all. Rather, it is an integral
part of Arab strategy in their war with Israel. In 1961, while the
"occupied territories" were occupied by Jordan and Egypt—not
Israel—President Nasser of Egypt said: "If refugees return to Israel,
Israel will cease to exist." That is the purpose behind the continuation
of the refugee problem.
The refugees could have easily been absorbed into
the surrounding Arab nations with all their wealth and resources, but Arab
leaders recognized early that the suffering of the refugees was a powerful
propaganda tool that could be used to eventually destroy Israel. Thus, most of
the bona fide refugees who fled to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the
surrounding Arab states, were confined in refugee camps, denied citizenship
(except in Jordan) and deliberately prevented from integrating into Arab
society. Violently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda was distributed
throughout the camps—which later began to double as training camps for
terrorists—and the Palestinians were told the only option they had was to retake the territory they lost in
1948.
The role of the Palestinian refugee became clearly
defined and was integrated into Arab foreign policy. That role was broadcast
over Radio Cairo in 1957, which stated bluntly that: "the refugees are the
corner stone in the Arab struggle against Israel, [they] are the armaments
[weapons] of the Arabs and Arab nationalism." Suffering was the price the
Palestinians were (and still are) required to pay for the "greater good"
of the Arab nation. Back in 1958, before the U.N. became a center for
anti-Israel bias, a frustrated UNRWA official named Ralph Galloway very
candidly explained the situation:
"The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem.
They want to keep it as an open sore...as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders
do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die."
Neither the Arab nations or the United Nations want
the refugees out of the camps; they want Israel out of the land. The refugee
problem is strictly political. Their suffering is of no real concern to those
who use them. This callous attitude of Arab leaders towards fellow Arabs is one
of the great ironies of "Arab nationalism." In the name of Arab
nationalism, Arab governments condemned their own "brethren" to
decades of needless suffering and humiliation. The Palestinians are usually
silent regarding their feelings of betrayal and of being used, but in an
unusually candid outburst, the Director of the Palestine Congress of North
America, Fawaz Turki, explained his feelings in 1970:
"...as I grew up my bogeyman was not the Jew (despite the
incessant propaganda that Radio Cairo subjected us to), nor was he the Zionist
(if indeed I recognized the distinction), nor was he for that matter the
imperialist or the Western supporters and protectors of the State of Israel. He
was the Arab—the Arab in the street who asked if you'd ever heard the one about
the Palestinian who... The Arab at the Aliens Section who wanted you to wait
obsequiously [in humiliation] for your work permit. The Arab at the police
station who felt he possessed a carte blanche to mistreat you. The Arab who
rejected you, and most crucially, who took away from you your sense of hope and
direction. He was the bogeyman you saw every morning and every night and every
new year of every decade; tormenting you, reducing you, dehumanizing you and
confirming your servitude."
In 1972, the Mayor of Gaza, Rashad Ashawa, refused
to allow Israel to install sewage, water and cleaning facilities for the 40,000
residents of the Shatti refugee camp. Ashawa said that "granting services
to the Palestinians in the camp would make them fully fledged citizens and
make them forget they were refugees." From time to time, Arab leaders have
twinges of conscience and actually publicly acknowledge their part in the
conspiracy of refugee suffering. In 1960, the now-deceased head of Jordan, King
Hussein, frankly admitted:
"Since 1948, Arab leaders have approached the Palestine
problem in an irresponsible manner...They have used the Palestinian people for
selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even
criminal."
In June of 1992 the Middle East Intelligence Digest cited an Arab official of Lebanon,
Haled as Azm, as saying:
"We have brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by
calling upon them and pleading with them to leave their land, their homes,
their work and their business, and we have caused them to be barren and
unemployed though each one of them had been working and qualified in a trade
from which he could make a living. In addition, we accustomed them to begging
for hand-outs and to suffice with what little the United Nations organization
would allocate them."
Years before the Israeli Army liberated the West Bank
and Gaza, the demand for the return of Palestinian refugees to their original
homes and towns inside Israel proper was understood to be the demand for Israel
to commit national suicide. That this is the case is made plain by various Arab
sources.
"It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in
demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, means their return as
masters of the Homeland and not as slaves. With greater clarity, they mean
the liquidation of the State of Israel."
Al-Misri
October 1949
"Any discussion aimed as a solution of the Palestine problem
which will not be based on ensuring the refugees right to annihilate Israel
will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of
treason."
Beirut al Massa - Lebanon
July 1957
In January of 1996, after the suicide bombings carried out by Hamas terrorists operating from the safe haven of Arafat's Palestinian Authority, news of an unpublicized meeting between Arafat and Swedish‑based Arab diplomats in Stockholm reached Israel. In the meeting, Arafat estimated that the final‑stage agreements between the Palestinians and Israel will ultimately bring about Israel's collapse.
He reportedly told the diplomats that a migration of
Arabs to "the West Bank and Jerusalem" and the psychological warfare
the Palestinians would wage against the Israelis would cause a massive
emigration of Jews to the United States. "We will take over everything,
including all of Jerusalem," the PLO leader declared, claiming Israeli
leaders "Peres and Beilin have already promised us half of Jerusalem. The
Golan Heights have already been given away, subject to just a few
details." He went on to say:
"We of the PLO will now concentrate all our efforts on
splitting Israel psychologically into two camps...Within five years, we will
have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem.
All Palestinian Arabs will be welcomed by us. If the Jews can import all kinds
of Ethiopians, Russians, Uzbeks and Ukranians as Jews, we can import all kinds
of Arabs to us...We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare
and population explosion; Jews won't want to live among us Arabs."
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The Palestine Liberation Organization
It is important that people understand what
happened—and also what didn't happen—with regards to both the refugees and the
Arab states between 1948 and 1967. During those years Jordan had control of the
West Bank and Egypt had control of the Gaza Strip. The territory Israel had in
its possession was that which had been allotted to it under the partition plan,
plus a small additional amount.
It was during these years that the Palestine
Liberation Organization was formed as an umbrella organization for the various
Arab/Palestinian terrorist factions that had been formed in the surrounding
Arab states after the war. In 1964, Egypt's President Nasser hired a rabidly
anti‑Semitic lawyer named Ahmed ash‑Shuqairy to create the PLO. The
organization was created to fulfill the duel purpose of serving as a weapon to
destroy Israel, and as an instrument to keep the various Palestinian factions
under a measure of control.
Arafat's "Fatah" faction is the oldest and
most powerful in the PLO. In 1969, Arafat was elected president of this
organization of professional butchers. Fatah is an Arabic term meaning
"conquest." Specifically, it carries the connotation of Muslim conquest of non‑Muslim lands.
Fatah also happens to be the title of the 48th Sura of the Koran. In
that passage Allah promised the prophet Mohammed that if he returned from
Medina (his exile) to Mecca (his home) he would conquer his enemies. Mohammed
returned and was indeed victorious. Thus, the very word "Fatah"
resonates with meaning in the Arab ear. Indeed, Arafat picked a very
appropriate name for his cause.
Other factions were later formed. A Greek Orthodox
physician named George Habash formed the "Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine" (PFLP), which later became the second largest PLO faction.
Na'if Hawatmeh formed the "Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine" (DFLP). Other early factions included the Syrian-backed
"Saiqa" (Thunderbolt) and the Iraqi-backed Arab Liberation Front. By
the 1990s, dozens of splinter groups had been formed from the major factions.
The establishment of the PLO had nothing to do with
"Palestinian" nationalism. At that time there was no such thing as
Palestinian nationalism; there was only Arab
nationalism. This is evidenced by the text of the PLO Charter. Shuqairy omitted
any reference to a Palestinian state. Article 3 referred to a homeland that is
an "inseparable part of the Arab nation." Article 24 stated frankly
that: "this organization shall not exercise any territorial sovereignty over
the West Bank, [Egypt's] Gaza Strip or the Himma area" [Syria's Golan
Heights].
The goal of the PLO was not to establish a
Palestinian state that would be separate or distinct from the rest of the Arab
nation. Neither was the goal to liberate the "occupied territories"
because the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were already under Arab control. In
1964, the only territory that
Nasser's organization could possibly "liberate" was the State of
Israel. Thus, the goal of the PLO from its inception to this very day has been,
as its name implies, the "liberation" of Palestine—all of it. Arafat
has never abandoned this goal, not even for a minute.
In October 1973, after the Arabs had lost their
fourth war with Israel, the PLO became convinced that they would not be able to
destroy Israel militarily within its post‑1967 boundaries. They embarked
upon a new three‑stage strategy for its eventual destruction—which was
later embodied in the PLO's 1974 decision, commonly known as the "Phased
Plan." In brief, the Plan calls for terrorism and negotiations to proceed
side by side in an effort to establish an "independent national
authority" over any territory that is "liberated" from Israeli
rule. This newly acquired territory will then become a base from which to continue and accelerate the war against
Israel. At this point Arafat will try to provoke an all‑out war in which
Israel's Arab neighbors join together to destroy it entirely.
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What Is A Palestinian?
It is a testimony to the Arab's ability to deceive
the whole world that the average person automatically thinks "Arab"
when the term "Palestinian" is used. The truth is that not until
after Israel's War of Independence in 1948 did the Arabs of Palestine begin
referring to themselves as "Palestinians." Up until that point they
prefered to call themselves, very simply, Arabs.
Technically speaking, from 1918-1948 the population
of Palestine (excluding the British) was divided between Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian
Jews). If you lived in the land you were considered a
"Palestinian" by the British government. Palestinian was a technical
term. It did not portray any specific nationality or culture. In those days
there were only two nationalities
living in Palestine—Jews and Arabs. Consequently, there were only two national movements in
Palestine—Jewish Zionism and Arab Nationalism.
While the official title of the territory was
Palestine, and while all people living there had to carry an identity card with
the name "Palestine" stamped on it, in society the term Palestinian
had become synonymous with Jews. Thus, when Britain formed a Jewish group to
help fight Hitler, it was called the Palestine
Brigade. The Palestinian Symphony
was a Jewish orchestra. The Palestine
Post (later renamed the Jerusalem Post) was a Jewish newspaper. Jewish
water and electric companies all began with the name Palestine or Palestinian.
This is why, before 1949, the Arabs of Palestine refused to be called
Palestinians. They considered both themselves and the land part of the larger
Arab world and demanded to be called, quite simply, Arabs.
After Israel was established, Jewish organizations
and businesses dropped the terms "Palestine" and
"Palestinian" and replaced them with the terms "Israel" and
"Israeli"—and the Jewish people began referring to themselves as
"Israelis." The terms Palestine and Palestinian were no longer
synonymous with Jews and Jewish things. It was at this point that the Arab
refugees saw the value of the terms for themselves and their goal of eventually
destroying Israel.
After 1949 the Arabs began to invent, out of thin
air, a distinct and separate Arab Palestinian people and culture. Suddenly
Western Palestine, including what had become Israel, was said to have been a
distinctly separate Palestinian entity before the war, with its own peculiar
national people and culture. Overnight a new Palestinian Arab history emerged, and with it a new political spin:
the Jews had come from Russia, Europe and various other places, and displaced
the "original Palestinian people" who had lived there "from time
immemorial."
No matter that up to 30% of the new Arab refugees
had immigrated to Palestine from all over the world within the past few years,
or decades at the most, just like the Jews had done. No matter that there is
not a bit of difference between the supposedly distinct "Palestinian"
language, culture and religion and that of the "Arab Nation." No
matter that under the Ottoman Empire, Mandate Palestine was part of an area
known as "Greater Syria." All these historical facts meant nothing to
unscrupulous liars and murderers. As Zuhair Moshen, late head of the
Military Department of the PLO bluntly
put it:
"There is no difference between Jordanians,
Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. It is for political reasons only
that we carefully emphasize our Palestinian identity, because it is in the
national interest of the Arabs [ie., Arab Nationalism] to encourage the
existence of Palestinians against Zionism. The establishment of a Palestinian
state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for
Arab unity."
Even if such a distinct national Palestinian
identity did exist, they still do not have the automatic right to sovereignty
as long as their sovereignty directly threatens the sovereignty of Israel. Such
is indisputably the case with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, for
they themselves boast that they will "liberate Palestine [all Israel] with
spirit and with blood."
The next time your Palestinian American friends
start telling you how the Palestinians deserve to have their own sovereign
state because they have lived on the land from time immemorial, ask them a few
simple questions. Ask them when there was ever a "Palestinian" state
run by Palestinians in the region. Ask them if the language they speak is
Palestinian or Arabic, and if their
religion is Palestinian or Islam.
Palestinians have no moral, legal or national right
to self-determination because they are not a distinctly separate nationality.
Does this mean they should continue to suffer? Of course not. The refugee
situation should be resolved. But should it be resolved by giving them a
sovereign state? Not unless the new state is carved out of one of the existing
22 Arab states! Neither the Arabs or the U.S. or the U.N. have the moral right
to demand that Israel give territory it has won in 4 defensive wars to people who are still bent on its destruction!
The intentions of the Palestinians have always been
clear. They have consistently stated that their goal is the liquidation of
Israel. At the moment they will settle for less—a mini-state in the heart of
Israel—but the battle to "liberate" Palestine is an eternal battle.
It will never end until the Jews have
been driven out and the State of Israel dismantled.
In 1988, the local representatives of the
Palestinian population (not the PLO) wrote a five-point "political
document" to clarify their position. In point 1 of the document they
reaffirmed that the PLO was indeed their "sole" representative. In
point 5 they stated:
"We reject any conditions for concessions which demand from
the victim [ie., the Palestinians] things like recognizing [UN resolution] 242
and halting fedayeen operations. After the establishment of a Palestinian
state, it would be the right of sovereignty to recognize or not recognize,
establish or not establish relations with any other state."
These statements are important because Resolution
242 calls on the various states involved in the conflict to
"recognize" the rights of each other (including Israel) to exist
within secure established borders. But the Palestinians say they want to
establish their state before they
recognize Israel's right to exist. They want their Palestinian state
established without having to
recognize the Jewish state! The reference to "fedayeen operations"
means terrorism against Israeli civilians.
Thus, the Palestinians also want to establish their state before ending their terrorist war
against Jewish civilians. Arafat summed up the
Palestinian position very appropriately in 1980. He said, "Peace for us means the destruction of
Israel."
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The Israeli Arabs
The exodus of Arabs in 1948 was more than just a
qualitative loss to the Arabs who remained: it was a quantitative loss as well. Those who fled consisted mostly of the
higher social classes. Wealthy landlords and rich merchants, the religious
dignitaries, lawyers, doctors, engineers, writers, and journalists were the
first to take flight, depriving the remaining population of all centers of
initiative. The Arabs who were left were for the most part fellahin: feudal peasants, ignorant and illiterate. The last thing
in the world they wanted was a political struggle. Knowing what they would have
done to the Jews had the Arabs won the war, they huddled fearfully, hoping just
to live.
They did that and more. These 150,000 Arabs—as well
as the 65,000 refugees who were allowed to return under a special family
reunification plan—were given Israeli citizenship and came under the care of a
liberal, humanistic government that believed in the innate goodness of mankind.
A government that was convinced that if the Arabs were treated well they would
learn to appreciate the Jews and eventually become loyal to the Jewish state.
Thus, the government preceded to institute a clever "head and
stomach" policy, the philosophy of which was: feed and educate the Israeli
Arab into a democratic, liberal, Jew-loving citizen.
For the next 19 years the "progressing"
Israeli Arab would assume a low profile because, after all, he was ignorant and
poor. All he wanted to do was make a living. It's not that he loved the Jews or
their state. Rather, it was that he was traumatized by defeat—a simple person without
leadership, living (until 1966) under military rule that prevented him from
freely moving about. With the help of the government this group that faced
unemployment in the cities, and famine and no source of credit in the villages,
evolved into the comfortable Israeli Arab community of today (over 700,000
strong).
Always ready to glory in its "democratic"
values and good will towards its Arab citizens, and also in commemoration of
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the state, in 1973 the government
issued a pamphlet entitled, Arabs in
Israel. The introduction reads as follows:
The Israeli Arabs
Since the creation of the State of Israel its minority population
has grown from 150,000 to 400,000. During the 25 years of statehood remarkable
accomplishments in many fields have been achieved by this minority. The
principle of equal rights for the Arabs of Israel, proclaimed in the
Declaration of Independence, has indeed been realized. The minorities enjoy
religious freedom, full voting rights and the right of founding political
organizations, both nationally and locally.
The educational system has developed considerably. The number of
students and pupils has grown from 10,000 on the eve of the foundation of the
state, to 125,000 today. 10,000 students attend secondary schools, and more
than 1,000 study at institutes of higher learning. The Arab village has changed
its face since the creation of the state. In the framework of two five‑year
plans basic services were established: roads, water, electricity, schools,
health centers and other institutions of public interest. The completion of
these services marked the beginning of the industrialization of the Arab
village.
Factories and workshops, which also employ Arab women, were
opened; modern, mechanized agricultural systems were introduced, which enable a
more efficient and intensive exploitation and thus a higher yield. 45,000
(11,250 acres) dunams are now being irrigated by artificial means, as compared
to 8,000 (2,000 acres) dunams before the introduction of the new systems. The
socio-economic development of this section of the population greatly advances
its integration into all fields of life of the State of Israel.
While the "socio-economic development" of
the Israeli Arab was advancing, the Palestinian refugees were being kept in
rat-infested camps in the surrounding Arab states, while being encouraged to
continue fighting for the liberation of
Palestine through terrorism. It was quite a contrast. The Israeli Arab was a
legally protected "minority" who was advancing by leaps and bounds;
politically, economically, educationally and materially. The Palestinian
refugee, on the other hand, was like a caged animal. He was abused and
manipulated and treated like a dog by his fellow Arabs. The line separating
these two populations was only a few miles wide, but it was like two completely
different worlds. Those two worlds collided
in 1967.
On May 14 of that year, Egypt began mobilizing its
troops. On May 22, it declared over Radio
Cairo that it had closed the Strait of Tiran to all Israeli ships, which
was an act of war. On May 25, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia moved their
troops to Israel's borders. This was the first time since the armistice
agreements of 1949 that armies had gathered in such large numbers. This massive
movement of troops was accompanied by an outburst of anti-Israel statements by
Arab leaders and their government-controlled radio stations and newspapers.
"With the closing of the Gulf of Akaba, Israel is faced with
two alternatives either of which will destroy it - it will either be
strangled to death by the Arab military and economic boycott, or it will perish
by the fire of the Arab forces encompassing it from the South from the North
and from the East."
Cairo Radio -- May 30"
Our basic
objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to
fight."
Egypt's President Nasser -- May 21
"The existence of Israel is an error which must be
rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with
us since 1948. Our goal is clear ‑ to wipe Israel off the map."
Iraqi President Aref -- May 31
"Under terms of the military agreement signed with Jordan,
Jordanian artillery coordinated with the forces of Egypt and Syria is in a
position to cut Israel in two at Kalkilya, where Israeli territory
between the Jordan armistice line and the Mediterranean Sea is only twelve
kilometers wide."
El Akhbar; Cairo Newspaper -- May 31
"This is a fight for the homeland ‑ it is either us or
the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to
leave. We will facilitate their departure to their former homes. Any of the old
Palestine Jewish population who survive may stay, but it is my impression
that none of them will survive."
PLO Chairman Ahmed
Shukairy -- June 1
The issue in 1967 was not over the size of the
Jewish state, nor the return of the occupied territories, nor the
self-determination of the poor suffering refugees. Rather, the issue was over
Israel's existence—just as it has been up to this day. By June 4, Israel was
out-numbered 3-1 by the Arab forces on its three land borders. All this,
combined with the plain statements coming across the radio and press, convinced
the Israelis that war was imminent. On June 5, Israel decided to pre-empt the
Arab attack and struck air bases throughout Egypt. The battle was over in six days—thus it came to be known as
"The Six-Day War." When the dust
settled this time, Israel had captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the
Golan Heights—and also another 800,000 Arabs.
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An Arab Is An Arab
The majority of Jews seem incapable of grasping a
few basic facts concerning the Israeli Arab. First of all, he is not a normal
"minority." He is a defeated enemy who believes the Jews came from
other nations and stole his land by force. Whether he passively accepts his
minority status or actively resists it, he will always be convinced that the
land is rightfully his.
Secondly, he does not "live by bread
alone." He has nationalistic impulses and tendencies (as do all men) that
can't be bought with indoor toilets and education. Those nationalistic desires
are in his blood and they will never be completely quenched regardless of how
well you treat him.
Thirdly—and this should be obvious but apparently
it's not—he is neither a Jew or a Zionist. Moreover, he never will be! His identity is tied to the surrounding Arab
world through history, language, religion and culture. Everything Zionist is
not only foreign to him, it humiliates him.
What the Israeli Arab needs, the liberal "head
and stomach" establishment will never be able to give him. He needs to
dwell in and feel part of his own
land, where the state represents his
national and cultural aspirations, and where the majority of the people—those
who control the state—are his people.
But when his state is one whose national roots, majority, language, religion,
culture, holidays, and very destiny are different from his own, what do people
expect of him?
The Arab of Israel sits in a land in which he was once the majority, which he controlled, which was Arab, which was
his. The Jew came from Russia,
Poland, Morocco, Brooklyn and took it from him. That is how he sees it. That is
his reality. That is why he has been murdering Jews in the land since 1886, and
why he attempted to destroy the Jewish state at birth. He is a defeated enemy
who suffered a humiliating disaster that turned him into a minority in a Jewish
Zionist state, ruled by Jewish people.
Neither does Israel's Declaration of Independence
have anything to say to this Arab. He is proclaimed a "free" and
"equal" citizen of Israel. Equal in a state that is irrevocably Jewish? Where the majority
will of necessity always be Jewish? Equal in a state that grants automatic
citizenship to Jews who never lived in the land, but denies the return of
"his" people who fled in 1948, many of whom had lived in the land for
generations?
Does he enjoy hearing how Eretz Yisrael was
"the birthplace of the Jewish people" who were "exiled from their land," but "never ceased
to pray and hope for their return?" His Declaration of Independence speaks
of a Jewish exile and a dream of
return. But the Arab is not a Jew and he was not exiled. If anything, the
Jewish dream of return meant that he would become a minority in his own land.
For the Arab who dreamed of Jews not
returning, the Jewish dream was and still is a nightmare! When he is told to
rise and sing his national anthem, "Hatikvah" (The Hope), which
speaks of "the Jewish soul yearning" and "the hope of 2000
years," can he be expected to feel empathy?
In June of 1967, after 19 years of repressing and/or
hiding his true feelings, the Israeli Arab was again able to meet and talk with
other Arabs who were not Israelis,
who called themselves "Palestinians," and who openly spoke of the day
when the Jews would be driven out of Palestine. Israeli Arabs were suddenly
given the opportunity to meet regularly with their own people who were refugees,
who were struggling for what they understood to be a common goal—freedom.
The opening of the borders between Israel and the
liberated areas was seen by the Jewish establishment as a good chance for the
better-fed Israeli Arabs to demonstrate the benefits of Israeli occupation to
the Palestinians. A child could have known that exactly the opposite would
occur—and it did.
The Israeli Arab suddenly realized that he was
neither meat nor milk. He was not a truly "equal" Israeli, but now he
realized that he had not been a "Palestinian" all those years either!
He also realized that he was looked upon by the Palestinians as a traitor who
cooperated with and accepted citizenship from those who had stolen his land. In
one fell swoop, all the factors that went into creating the new radical Israeli
Arab came together.
With every passing year the warning signs of
radicalization became more evident. It would take a whole book just to list
them all. Yet the majority of the Israeli government refused to face reality.
It chose instead to believe that its "head and stomach" policy had
worked, that the Israeli Arab had become loyal to Israel, and that he had come
to accept that his destiny was the same as the Zionist Jewish state.
The myth of peaceful coexistence is a persistent
delusion that grows louder and more frantic in the face of mounting evidence to
the contrary. Together with oranges and diamonds, it ranks as one of Israel's
major exports. But the failure of the government's policy was thrust into the
Jews' face in 1976—just three years after the publication of that idyllic
little pamphlet, Arabs In Israel.
March 30, 1976 -- It's 9:00 A.M. in Sakhnin, an Arab
village in the Galilee (northern Israel). This Israeli Arab village is a model
of social and economic progress since 1948. It has good roads, electricity,
water, schools and appliances in every home. All would agree that it has
greatly advanced its integration into all fields of life in the State of
Israel.
On this morning, more than a thousand free and equal
Arab citizens of Israel are in the street facing a small number of police and
soldiers. It's "Land Day," and the crowd grows larger by the minute.
"Falastin, Falastin!" (Palestine, Palestine!), the mob roars. Other
chants and shouts are heard: "The Galilee is Arab!"..."We will
free the Galilee with blood and spirit!" Rocks are suddenly thrown in the
direction of the soldiers and police.
The small group of security men stare in disbelief
and growing nervousness. A fiery Molotov cocktail smashes against a wall a few
yards away, then more and heavier stones, flaming torches, lighted cans of
gasoline, and by now the soldiers are surrounded by a growing circle of hate‑filled
faces. "Our villages do not belong to Israel," shouts a young Arab.
Another shouts, "We belong to the State of Palestine!" The Israeli
papers report what happens next:
"The dam burst! Men and women shouted, 'We are all Fatah,'
as they threw stones and other objects at the police. The police fired warning
shots into the air which only increased the agitation. The rioters began to
move toward the police and soldiers, threatening to trample them. Not even the
pointing of the rifles at them stopped the mob. 'They're overrunning us,' the
police shouted into their radios"
Ma'ariv - March 31, 1976
"The mob wandered through the main street, raining stones,
torches, and fire-bombs on military and police vehicles. Some of the excited
youth wanted to set up roadblocks. Others moved closer to the security forces
with the intention of burning the vehicles. Facing such a dangerous situation
the soldiers fired into the air, but no one in that crowd of burning passions
paid any attention. The mob of demonstrators noticed the Israeli force
beginning to withdraw. The large crowd began close pursuit of the Israeli
forces. Running hysterically, they threw stones and roared: 'Charge them!'
Thousands moved toward the soldiers, and at that critical moment, the commander
of the force gave orders to fire..."
Yediot Aharonot - March 31, 1976
An Israeli journalist who attempted to get past a roadblock was attacked by Arabs shouting, "Get out of here! This is Palestine!" He later reported:
"It was terrible there. I do not remember such chaos since
1948. Every Jew was a candidate for murder. I saw them with the lust for murder
burning in their eyes. Slogans such as 'Eleyhom' [charge them] and 'Itbach Al‑Yahud'
[slaughter the Jews] are moderate in view of what I heard. From all sides came
cries for the liquidation of Israel, to destroy all the Jews, and for a Jihad. It
is difficult to believe that such a scene could take place in the State of
Israel in 1976...Such hatred of the state and the Jews is difficult to
comprehend. What happened there was not mere rioting or chaos. It was a revolt
in the full sense of the word."
Ma'ariv - March 31, 1976
The revolt spread to villages and towns throughout
Galilee. In Araba, Deir Hanna, Beth Netora, Tira, Tayba, Kalansuwa, Kfar Kana,
Nazareth, and dozens of other places, violence and rioting occurred. For the
first time in Israel's existence, its equal Arab citizens had called a
political general strike. When quiet was finally restored, six Arabs were dead
and more than thirty‑five Israeli soldiers and police injured—shades of
1929 and 1948.
After the Land Day revolt many Jews were
"shocked" and "astonished" that Israeli Arabs could
"turn" on their liberal Jewish benefactors who had taken such
painstaking measures to build an atmosphere of "coexistence."
Everyone was asking, "what happened?" What occurred to
"change" the Arabs? What caused an eruption of such unbridled hatred?
Gallons of ink, reams of paper and countless words were produced in an effort
to understand. Pity. For had people only wished to see, the signs had been
there for years.
February 26, 1979 -- The Jerusalem Post interviews a
university graduate from the village of Kabul who is a perfect example of the
product Israel's "head-and-stomach" policy makers helped produce. He
is a graduate of Haifa's Ironi Aleph High School—a Jewish-Arab school—as well
as of Haifa University's Department of Middle East History. Says he:
"A Palestinian state in the West Bank will not solve my
problems...The PLO is the only body that fights for me...I do not feel this
is my country. I don't care if I have more materially here than Arabs
elsewhere. I am willing to be poor if it is my country...I don't know
where a Palestinian state should be [but] of course I hope it will include my
village."
Let it be noted that his village is in West Galilee;
that is, inside Israel.
January 28, 1980 -- Wise Auditorium at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Some fifty-five years after its founding, the first Jewish university in the Land of Israel—and the largest—watches as its students gather for a "cultural event." The hall is packed to overflowing with more than 600 students who are on their feet, singing the anthem. The auditorium shakes as the loud, proud voices sing:
In the name of freedom, we shall give our lives.
Arab Palestine is the land of our struggle.
We will accomplish the impossible.
We have seen the path from the Negev to the Galilee.
Our front will be triumphant.
No, it's not Jewish national anthem, Hatikva. It is
the anthem of Fatah, the guerrilla
arm of the PLO. The Hebrew University students sit down. On the stage a pantomime
begins. An Israeli soldier is torturing a Palestinian. Suddenly, three figures,
faces covered by red kafias, leap on him. As he lies prostrate on the stage,
hands outstretched, the three heroes strangle and stab him to death. As the
pantomime reaches a climax the students are on their feet, cheering and
applauding wildly. The "cultural" evening ends with the moderator
thanking the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) for its
contribution of IL 10,000.
The place is Hebrew University and the students do
indeed study there, most with generous scholarships. They are Israeli
Arabs—free and equal citizens of the state—who are studying to be attorneys and
physicians and engineers and professors. Mostly they are studying to be the
future leaders of the PLO and the "revolution"—and, of course, they
owe their education to the generosity and liberality of the Jews of Israel and
the world.
November 1999 -- Dr. Assad Ganem of the Institute For Peace Studies at Givat
Haviva conducts a poll among Israeli Arabs. The question? Which of the
following options would you choose as a solution to the problem of the Arabs in
Israel? (1) Replace Israel with a Palestinian state. (2) Israel ceases to be a
Jewish Zionist state and the Jews and Arabs will be recognized as different
groups. (3) Israel will continue to be a Jewish Zionist state and Arabs in
Israel will enjoy democratic rights and receive their relative share in the
budgets and manage their educational, religious and cultural institutions. The
results of the representative survey of 500 Israeli Arabs are as follows:
24.8% - Replace Israel with a
Palestinian state.
62.2% - Israel ceases to be a
Jewish Zionist state.
8.2% - Israel will continue to be a Jewish Zionist state.
The overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs reject
Israel continuing to be a Jewish Zionist state. Moreover, they fully support
the cause of their Palestinian brothers, even though they know the Palestinians
have vowed to use their independent state to destroy what's left of Israel. The
title of a perceptive Ha'aretz article that was printed around that time
captured the essence of what had happened to the Israeli Arabs. The article was
titled: From Israeli Arabs To
Palestinians
October 2000 -- The Israeli Arabs of the Galilee display
their solidarity with the new Palestinian Intifada and denounce the desecration
of the Al‑Aqsa mosque by protesting and rioting for a week. During the
rioting 13 Arabs are killed. A month later, Israel's equal Arab citizens are
hesitant to call their uprising an "Intifada." A new term has been
coined to describe the October uprising: haba
(awakening), or haba shabiya (popular
awakening). The term is used in order to distinguish their agenda from that of
the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
Author and poet Salam Jubran, editor of the Nazareth‑based
Al‑Ein, explains that the
Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are demanding national rights. Israeli Arabs fully
support those demands, of course, but the kind of "rights" they want
are of the civil variety. Says
Jubran: "Their struggle [the Palestinians] is an Intifada, ours is a
Haba—these are two very different forms of struggle."
Haba expresses the reality that
a minority that sees itself suffering from discrimination has awakened from a
deep sleep, during which it learned to accept its fate. It denotes a spiritual
and emotional process; a release from a state of stupor; a liberation from
antiquated patterns of thinking and behavior—patterns that represented
surrender and subservience.
Speaking of the Jewish establishment's view that the
Israeli Arab problem will be solved automatically the moment a Palestinian
state is established, Professor Majed Al‑Haj of Haifa University says
this idea: "...is a myth that has now blown up in the face of the Zionist
left. The real struggle of Israel's Arab population will begin the day after
the creation of an independent Palestinian state." Why so?
First of all, explains Prof. Al‑Haj, when an
independent Palestinian state is established, the Israeli Arabs will feel that,
while their Palestinian brothers and sisters have realized their dream of an independent state, they themselves are still
citizens in a country where they are unable to fulfill their demands for
equality.
Ah! Weep for the down-trodden Israeli Arab. All they
want is to "be part of Israeli society" and "fulfill their
demands for equality." All they are doing is struggling for "civil
rights in their own country." What's wrong with that? What's wrong is what
they mean by fulfilling their
"demands for equality." What they want is for the Jewish
establishment to change the structure of government so they will eventually be
able to gain an Arab majority in the
Israeli Keneset. Their definition of "civil rights" was summed up
best in 1976 by an Israeli Arab school teacher named Na'ama Saud:
"Today I am in the minority. Who says that in the year 2000
we Arabs will still be in the minority? Today I accept the fact that this is a
Jewish state with an Arab minority. But
when we are the majority I will not accept the fact of a Jewish state
with an Arab majority."
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Demography And Democracy
Do not feel sorry for the Arabs of Israel. Though
the Jews are far from being righteous or perfect, they have nevertheless gone
out of their way to try and get the Arabs to "accept them." While it
is true that no minority in any land enjoys being a minority because all
minorities experience a certain level of injustice, the Israeli Arab has it
better than any of his Arab brothers in the surrounding Arab states. For over
40 years the Jewish establishment has been obsessed
with proving to the world that it is treating its minority population better
than any other country treats theirs, but it is a pointless obsession, for the
Gentiles have always applied a double-standard when it comes to Jews. They
continually demand of the Jews things they never demand of themselves.
The Israeli government has pumped billions and
billions of dollars into the Israeli Arab community over the years in order to
gain their loyalty. Education hasn't done it. Social and economic prosperity
haven't done it. Massive attempts at integration have failed miserably—and the
most ugly of all these realities is that providing them with "democratic
rights" and "limited autonomy" has only produced a demand for
complete independence. The more the Jew gives the Arab in its midst, the more
the Arab demands everything!
Jewish leaders scratch their heads and wonder what
the Arabs' problem is. His "problem" is not a lack of economic
prosperity. He is neither oppressed nor down-trodden. He does not lack
education. He does not lack political, civil or religious freedom—or any other
"minority" benefit. Rather, his problem is a lack of honor. He wants his land back. He wants to be part of the
majority who runs the country in which he resides. He wants the state in which
he lives to be his state, not someone
else's. This is understandable. This is normal!
Relatively few people understand Israel's real political dilemma because there are so
many complex issues that hide and obscure it. But when you peel away all the
layers and get down to the core of the problem, you will find that the root
issue is very simple: it is impossible to remain a Zionist Jewish state, and at
the same time, a Western-style, liberal Democracy.
Many things reflect this impossibility, but the
thing that reflects it the clearest is the existence of a hostile Arab minority
who will one day become the majority through its phenomenal birth rate—at which
point it will demand proportionate representation in the Knesset. After gaining
that majority it will simply go to the polls and very democratically vote the State of Israel out of
existence and replace it with a state called Palestine. This scenario is still
decades away but the day approaches nonetheless; and Israel can do nothing to stop it as long as it remains
a liberal, pluralistic Democracy.
The clever "head and stomach" policy of
the Jewish establishment—which it turns out wasn't so clever after all!—which
was supposed to produce a loyal, grateful, Arab minority, didn't work. The Arab
still thinks Palestine is his land and he still wants it back. Until he was
educated he didn't know he could use the democratic principles in Israel's
constitution to peacefully overthrow the government and dismantle the Jewish
state. Now, thanks to the generous left-wing establishment, his
government-funded education is beginning to pay off. He has discovered Israel's
"archilles heel."
A choice will soon have to be made by the people of
Israel between Zionism and Democracy. If they choose Zionism, then what the
Arab citizens are now doing is treason
and the government should deal with them as traitors and enemies of the state.
If they choose Democracy, then what the Arab citizens are now doing is perfectly legal and the Jews will have
to let the Jewish Zionist state slip into history. They will have to settle for
living as a minority in Arab Palestine.
This dilemma is not a new development. It goes back
to the founding of the state. In May of 1948, David Ben-Gurion stood in a
renovated museum in Tel Aviv and read Israel's Declaration of Independence to a
packed hall. The state that was established by that Declaration makes it a
model of schizophrenia (with all due respect to Mr. Ben-Gurion) and correctly
reflects the ideological confusion of the people who wrote it. In this document
Israel pledged to "ensure complete
equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants,
irrespective of religion, race or sex." Consider a few other selected
parts of the Declaration:
"Eretz Yisrael was the birthplace of the Jewish people...After
being forcibly exiled from their land the people kept faith with it
throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return
to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom...In the
year 5657 [1897]...the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right
of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country...
...On the 29th November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly
passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in
Eretz Yisrael. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish
people to establish their state is irrevocable. This right is the
natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like
all other nations, in their own sovereign state. Accordingly we,
members of the People's Council...hereby declare the establishment of a
Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael to be known as the state of Israel. The State
of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of
the Exiles..."
Please note the numerous clear statements of what
Israel is meant to be. It is the
birth place of the Jew, not the Arab. It was the Jews who were exiled from
their land and it is the Jews who kept faith with it. It is the Jews who never
ceased to pray and hope for their return. It is the Jews who have the
inalienable right to be masters of their own fate in their own sovereign state.
The State of Israel came into being as a Jewish state. It was the goal of Zionism, the movement of Jewish longing
for a return to their homeland. It is the homeland for which Jews had prayed
three times daily for 1900 years, turning their faces, not toward Mecca or
Rome, but toward Jerusalem. It is the dream, vision, hope, tears and yearning
of a people who suffered humiliation, agony, poverty, robbery, rape, burning,
drowning, pogroms, Crusades, Inquisitions, and Auschwitzes from its varied
hosts throughout the world. It is the conviction that "Never Again!"
is a concept that can be realized only in a land where Jews control their own
destiny, their own police, and their own armed forces. These things guarantee
the kind of respect the Zhid, Kike, Yahud, and Yevrei never
quite received from the mouths, fists and boots of the majority cultures in
which he resided for centuries.
The State of Israel is the Jewish demand for what
every other people sees as its natural right. What the Arab state of Syria is
to the Syrians, and the Polish state is to the Poles, and Burundi is to
Burundians, and Muslim Pakistan is to Muslim Pakistanis, so is the Jewish
state to the Jews. But the same declaration that unapologetically affirms—yea
demands—the right of Jews to have their own state, the same declaration that
declares the land to be their land, and only their land, the same declaration
that demands they be the masters of that land forever, also promises to make its enemies completely "equal
citizens!" Insanity!
Though I feel no sorrow for the Israeli Arab, I
understand how he feels and can clearly see the stupidity of the deception that
is practiced on him by the Jewish establishment. It is a deception that
deceives only the Jew, for the Arab of Eretz Yisrael may be a robber and
murderer of Jews, but he is not a fool. When he is told that he is a
"completely equal" citizen of Israel he knows better.
The Arab looks at the government and asks: Doesn't
the term "free" mean the liberty to work toward an Arab majority in
Israel? Doesn't it mean the liberty to have many, many babies who in due time
will be free to vote an Arab majority into the Knesset? And doesn't the term
"equal" mean that an Arab
Knesset majority would have the legal
right to vote to change the Zionist nature of the state and rename it
Palestine? In short, doesn't being a free and equal citizen of the state give
us the right to go quietly, calmly, peacefully and democratically to the polls, and by majority vote, put an end to
the Jewish state? That is exactly what it means—this much the establishment can
perceive. Thus, almost every Israeli leader, at one time or another, either
publicly or in private, has made statements like the following:
"Do we aspire to be a Jewish democracy, or does our
vision include a million Arab non-citizens held in an unwanted union
with us forever?" [Speaking of why Israel should not annex Gaza and the
West Bank]
Former Foreign Minister - Abba Eben
"The majority of the people living in a Jewish state must
be Jewish. We must prevent a situation of an insufficient Jewish
majority and we dare not have a Jewish minority."
Yitzhak Rabin - 1976
"I do not want to awaken each morning worrying about how
many Arabs were born the previous night."
Former Prime Minister Golda Meir
Imagine what must go through his mind when the
Israeli Arab hears Jewish leaders (who swear that he is equal!) proclaim that
he must forever remain a minority.
What does he think when he hears "dovish" leaders call for the return
of the occupied territories because Israel "needs to retain a Jewish
majority." What does he think when both right-wing and left-wing Jews warn
against having "too many Arabs" in the state? And what answer will
those who say Israel must remain both
Jewish and democratic give to the free and equal Arab citizen who asks:
"If I have enough babies, do I have the right to want a Palestine that is both Arab and
democratic?"
Israel does have a problem. That problem is its
secular establishment, both in the land and in the Diaspora, which refuses to
face a basic fact of nationalism: no people is permanently prepared to live as
a minority under another people in a land it considers its own. The idea of a loyal Arab minority in a Zionist state was
always an illusion. Jews were simply deceiving themselves.
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Islamic Arab Culture
The nationalism that beats in the heart of every
Arab—as it does in all men—is not the only reality the liberal establishment
refuses to face. They also refuse to face the realities inherent in the
unchanging nature of a 3000-year-old Arab culture which became rooted in the
Islamic religion 1300 years ago.
One need only read the Old Testament to understand
the savage and cruel nature of the people who inhabit the Middle East. These
people have had their roots fixed there for thousands of years and are the
descendants of men who have fought each other for the same amount of time. But
the Arab propensity for barbarity is as really old as the Arabs themselves, for
the Lord said of Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar: "He will be a wild donkey
of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him,
and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers" (Genesis 16:12 NIV).
The average person is not aware of the war-like
atmosphere these people live in every day, which for them is very normal! It is
actually quite humorous to hear Arab leaders and officials complain to gullible Western diplomats and
journalists that Israel is the source of all the unrest in the Middle East,
that if only Israel would give the Palestinians their own state, peace would
come to the region. The Middle East was a bloody, insecure region long before
the modern Zionist movement even began. Even if—God forbid—Israel ceased to
exist tomorrow and every Jew on the planet were killed, peace would never come to the Middle East. For you
see, the people of the Middle East like to fight. It's in their blood. It's
part of both their culture and their religion. These people have been fighting
bloody wars for over 3500 years!
Boutrous Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary General of
the United Nations, who is no great friend of Israel—who is also a Muslim Arab
who believes Islam will eventually conquer the world— frankly admitted in 1982
that in the "last three decades alone, more than 30 conflicts between Arab
states have erupted" which had nothing to do with Israel.
John Laflin, an expert Arabist who wrote the very
insightful book, The Arab Mind, says
that "between 1948 and 1973 the Arab world suffered 30 successful
revolutions and at least 50 unsuccessful ones"—none of which had anything
to do with Israel. He adds that during that same time period "22 heads of
state and prime ministers were murdered." He cites the main reason for the
conflicts as "the desire for power."
The truth contained in the Biblical statements:
"his hand will be against everyone," and also, "he will live in
hostility toward all his brothers," is also contained in a wide-spread,
oft-quoted Arab proverb that says: "I against my brothers; I and my
brothers against my cousins; I and my cousins against the world." Ameen
Faris Rihani, an Arab writing of his people's culture, said:
"...all our people are armed, all fight, and all kill for
the least thing. We are very jealous of our rights...If in this village two
houses should suddenly engage in a fight, the entire population would split
into two parties and join in the fight. War could break out in the village.
When it subsides, then, and only then, would the people ask what the cause of
the fighting was. They fight first, and then inquire as to the cause of the
fight. This is our way of life."
Another part of Arab culture is the law of
"blood revenge," which is contained in yet another Arab proverb:
"Blood demands blood." Relatives must avenge the blood of the slain
by killing either the actual murderer or one of his relatives. Even when a
murderer is apprehended, convicted in a court of law and executed, it does not
fulfill the requirements of blood revenge. One of the relatives of the executed
man must die by the hand of one of the victims relatives—and of course, the
murdered relative's blood must be avenged by his relatives. Thus, the vicious
cycle of bloodshed continues on and on.
Every one is familiar with the words, assassin,
assassinate and assassination, but almost no one knows that these words originate in the Middle East. The name
"Assassins" was given to a medieval murderous group of Syrian Muslims
(from the 11th to the 13th century) who belonged to a
sect of Islam known as Isma'ili. In a calculated war of terror, they murdered
sovereigns, princes, generals, governors and even religious leaders of Islam.
Their murders were designed to frighten, to weaken and ultimately to overthrow
the Sunni sect of Islam.
The word "Assassin" is derived from the
Arabic word, Hashshashin, which
means, "smokers of hashish." They whipped themselves into a religious
frenzy by smoking hashish before committing their murders. They were actually
the forerunners of today's terrorists. Another name by which the ancient
Assassins or Hashshashin were known was Fedayeen—a
word that today is commonly applied to all Arab terrorists.
Another important part of Arab culture is what we
would call "saving face." The Arab either "whitens" the
face (saves face) or "blackens" the face (loses face). Face is the
outward appearance of honor—the "front" of honor which the Arab will
strive to preserve even if, in actuality, he has committed a very dishonorable
act. In Arab culture, "honor" and "face" are so closely
related the words are almost interchangeable.
This perceived honor is such an integral part of the
Arab culture a person is considered perfectly justified in resorting to deceitfulness
and falsehood in order to save their own, some one else's, or the entire Arab
world's face. Indeed, an early Islamic theologian named al-Ghazali said:
"We must lie when the truth leads to unpleasant results...it is sometimes
a duty to lie...if a lie is the only way to reach a good result, it is
allowable."
Therefore, lying has been a normal, integral,
prevalent and perfectly acceptable facet of Arab culture for thousands of
years. Until the leaders and politicians of the West understand the full implications
of this reality when dealing with leaders and officials of the Arab world, they
can never hope to arrive at the results they desire. Often one reads statements
made by prominent politicians to the effect that it is not what is said by Arab
leaders publicly in Arabic that
counts, but what they say publicly in English.
Such statements are not only naive but completely absurd! In reality, it is
only what is said in Arabic that contains the truth.
Hatred of anything non-Arab or non-Islamic is axiomatic
in Arab culture—and to them, either Israel or the West (or both) is responsible
for the stagnant conditions prevailing within the Arab world. We are
responsible for disease, for illiteracy, for the lack of Arabic literature, for
maliciously falsifying and distorting their glorious Arab history, etc.
Most Westerners have no inkling of how deep and
fierce this hatred is. Arab children are first indoctrinated with hate in the
home. For those fortunate enough to receive an education, the school system and
text books ensure its students will graduate in the subject. Hatred, especially
toward Israel and the Jews, is nurtured and developed in the minds of Arab
children. In 1961, Suleiman Al-Khash, a former Syrian Minister of Education,
said: "The hatred we indoctrinate into the minds of our children from
their birth is sacred."
It should be noted here that the Arab culture has
some customs of which it can be justly proud. Arab hospitality and generosity,
for instance, are legendary. The problem is that the evil in the culture is so
evil it eclipses the nobler aspects. The two extremes of hospitality and
generosity, and hatred and savagery, make for a very tense and unpredictable
society. A gentle, peaceful man, on the spur of the moment may commit brutal murder.
A man's best friend of yesterday might well be his murderer tomorrow, for once
aroused, his wrath has no limits. How true is the Arab proverb: "At each
meal a quarrel, with each bite a worry."
Into this already volatile, war-like culture was
mixed an equally war-like religion called Islam, around A.D. 600. The level of
ignorance among Westerners regarding the nature of the Islamic religion is
nothing short of incredible. People erroneously assume it is "just another
religion" but nothing could be further from the truth! Islam is actually a
complex religious, political, legal system. It controls the whole of an
individual's life, even in its most intimate aspects.
Ecumenical religious leaders and Islamic apologists
love to stress those ideas that Islam has in common with Judaism and/or
Christianity. While there may be vague similarities in a few areas, the goal of Islam is radically different
from those of either Judaism or Christianity. Also, the methods by which those goals are carried out are completely
opposite. The degree to which Muslim individuals or states try to implement
those goals may vary, but the point is, Islam has a stated goal and too many
people are unaware of what that goal is.
Judaism is primarily concerned with
the salvation and welfare of one specific people (Jews), and one specific
stretch of territory (Israel). It teaches that the Jewish people are holy and
the land of Israel is holy because the Lord has destined that both should play
a part in the redemption of mankind. It is a historical fact that the Jews never tried to acquire any more
territory than that which was allotted to them by God—not even during the
reigns of King David and Solomon, when they were a world power and could have
easily done so.
This is why it is absurd that Arab states,
particularly Syria, claim they are frightened of Israel because it's an
"expansionist power." The Jewish people have always coveted only one speck on this globe. That speck was
given to them by God and it is less than 1% of the land that the Arab states
now occupy.
Christianity is primarily concerned with
the salvation of individuals. In Christian theology, the work of salvation is
not tied to any particular people or specific geographical area. The Church is
concerned about the souls of all
people in all lands. It focuses on
preaching the Gospel to every tribe, nation and tongue.
Islam is very different than
either Judaism or Christianity, for it is primarily concerned with territorial
acquisition and dominion. Its goal is to conquer territory for Allah—all
territory. The goal of Islam is not, and never was, to make all people
believers (Muslims). This is simply because man has no free will in Islamic
theology. It is not the task of the faithful to "convert" people.
Their duty is to conquer territory—Allah decides which individuals on that
territory will find salvation by becoming Muslims. The way in which territory
is brought under submission to Allah is through war—holy war (Jihad).
From A.D. 622 to 632 Mohammed fought 81 campaigns,
killing thousands of his Arab brethren, all in the name of Allah. Islam
conquered the whole Middle East in the seventh and eighth centuries through
war. Territorial dominion, which can only
be achieved through Jihad, is such a central issue in Islam that some learned
Muslim jurists consider it to be the sixth "pillar" of the
religion—the other five being faith, prayer, the giving of alms, fasting, and
pilgrimage to Mecca.
In Islamic thought, the world is divided into two
categories: Dar al Islam (the abode
of Islam) and Dar al Harb (the abode
of war). Dar al Islam is that part of the world which has already submitted to
Allah. Dar al Harb is that part of the world which has not yet submitted to
Allah. Dar al Islam consists of 44 countries, 22 of which are Arabic. The
Islamic view is that Allah's legal system was the original legal system given
to man, hence it is the only valid legal system and the entire world, for its
own good, must be brought into submission to it.
How can Muslims believe that Islam was God's original revelation to mankind when it
was born 600 years after Christ and 1,600 years after Moses? They simply
"Islamized" all of human history. Thus, everyone from Adam to Jesus
Christ is believed to have been either a Muslim teacher or prophet. Supposedly
the Jews stole the original writings of Islam, corrupting and transforming them
into the Hebrew Old Testament. It is believed that Christians further corrupted
these writings and produced the Greek New Testament.
As far as Muslims are concerned, they have every
right to claim all land mentioned in Scripture. How can the Jews claim the land
of Israel belongs to them when Abraham was a Muslim prophet? The land promised
to Abraham belongs to Muslims, not Jews! How can the Jews claim the Temple Mount
has historical ties to themselves when King David was a Muslim prophet?
Not until people come to understand the Islamic
frame of mind will they ever be able to understand the relentless Arab war
against the Jewish state. It is precisely because the goal of Islam is to gain territory for Allah that the loss
of any territory once conquered is a very serious matter.
While "the abode of Islam" can make peace
with "the abode of war" if the situation demands it, it will never
tolerate the loss of any of its own
territory to the enemy. The Land of Israel was once a part of "the abode
of Islam." It is now a part of "the abode of war." The loss of
Islam's supposedly third holiest city (Jerusalem), in the heart of Dar al Islam
to Jews, is anathema! This is seen by Muslims as a defeat of cosmic
proportions.
Adding to the humiliation of both Allah and his
"chosen people" is the fact that the Arabs were defeated by an enemy
which they out-numbered ten to one! The secular, materialistic Western mind
will never be able to comprehend how galling and humiliating it is to have a
superior, sovereign Jewish state in the center of the Islamic world.
Again, the ignorance of Christians regarding the
nature of Islam is unbelievable. Since Islam is touted as a monotheistic religion, gullible
Christians think "Allah" is just an Arabic term for the God of the
Bible. But in reality, Muslims make a distinction between their one god and our one
God. They mock and ridicule Jehovah (the Father revealed in the Hebrew
Scriptures), and turn Jesus Christ (the Son revealed in the Greek New
Testament) into a Palestinian Fedayeen who led the Palestinian revolt against
Rome. No, it's not enough to say there is only one God. Your "one
God" has to be the true God—the God of Israel!
In 1994 the ecumenical chaplain of New Zealand's
Auckland University began letting Muslims use the University's chapel for
Friday prayers. To justify this stupidity he said:
"Christians and Muslims have much in common. We worship
together the God of Abraham and follow Abraham on the journey of faith.
Christians may be surprised to learn that Moslems see Jesus as expressing the
Word of God."
Christians will also be "surprised to
learn" that the Muslim Jordanian textbook for second-year high school
students, General History: Ancient and
Medieval Civilization, says that Jehovah:
"...commands them [Jews] to smear their houses with sheep's
blood in order to save their sons and let the Egyptians perish. He is a God who
feels remorse for creating Adam and for setting Saul on the throne. He is
bloodthirsty, fickle-minded, harsh and greedy. He is pleased with imposture
[engaging in deception under an assumed identity] and deceit. He is loquacious
[very talkative] and passionately fond of long speeches."
Christians will also be "surprised to
learn" that the Koran—which is a cross between Arabian Nights and Mein Kampf—is
filled with anti-Semitism, historical distortions, fantasy and out-right lies.
For instance: Mary, the mother of Jesus, lived 600 years before Mohammed. The
Arabic form of her name is Maryam. Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, lived
1,300 years before Mohammed. Her name in Arabic is also Maryam. In the first
part of the Koran, the two women are portrayed as one and the same person. It
says, "the wife of Moses' father, Imram (Amram), gave birth to Maryam, who
in turn, gave birth to Jesus." In the second part it again states that
Maryam, the mother of Jesus, is the "sister of Aaron."
Similarly, Haman, the villain of the Book of Esther,
is made a contemporary of the Pharaoh of the Israelite Exodus and is said to
have helped build the tower of Babel! It also claims that Abraham was thrown
into a fire by Nimrod! The fact that Nimrod died centuries before Abraham was
even born doesn't matter to Muslim theologians. Christians will also be
"surprised to learn" that Muslims believe every human child is born
with a Moslem disposition, but his parents may make him a Jew, a Christian or a
Zoroastrian. Therefore, they believe the advance of Islam throughout the world
liberates this "divine" implantation.
Christians will also be "surprised to
learn" that Muslims believe Jesus cried "Allah, Allah," (not
"Eli, Eli,") when on the cross, and that they deny His divinity,
death and resurrection. The famous Islamic proverb, "Allah has no
son," should have caused Western Christians to mobilize against Islam's
spread in this part of the world. Instead, we have embraced it and are sharing
our churches, parishes and chapels with these pagans. Much in common, indeed! We
are digging the pit into which the "holy warriors" of Islam will
someday throw us!
Islam and Christianity have nothing in common, for Islam is the antithesis of Christianity. It
endorses murder, torture and animal brutality. It advocates world conquest. It
debases and abuses its women and harshly persecutes all non-Muslim minorities
under its power. It condones and encourages lying, cheating and stealing. It is
viciously anti-Democratic and anti-Semitic. Finally, it is merciless because in
its view, the victim is responsible for his own suffering. Thus, there is no
way you can even appeal to a Muslim's "conscience." Islam is a
religion straight out of the bowels of Hell, whose founder was a
demon-possessed maniac, and it is determined to exterminate the State of Israel.
The Jewish victory in 1948 created the ultimate
challenge to the Islamic world and struck at the heart of Islamic theology. The
size of Israel is immaterial—its very existence is an affront to Allah. For
this reason, 1948 became the day of the greatest shame in the modern history of
the Arabs. The face of both the Arab nation and its god was
"blackened." Perhaps some of the statements made by Arab leaders will
now make more sense to the reader. Note the Islamic inference:
"Our war against the Jews is an old struggle that began
with Mohammed ...It is our duty to fight the Jews for the sake of Allah
and religion, and it is our duty to end the war that Mohammed began."
Al Ahram -- November 26, 1955
"I promise to crush Israel and return it to the humiliation
and wretchedness established in the Koran.
Anwar Sadat -- April 25, 1972
"Surely the judgment of Allah is reserved for them
[Jews] until Palestine is transferred from Dar al-Harb to Dar al- Islam."
Yasir Arafat
"Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam
eliminates it, just as it eliminated what preceded it [referring to the
defeat of the Crusaders]."
Imam Hassan al-Bana
Former Head of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
"We shall only accept war—jihad—the holy war. We have
resolved to drench the lands of Palestine and Arabia with the blood of the
infidels [primarily the Jews, but also all Westerners] or to accept martyrdom for
the glory of Allah."
King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud
"The Jews in Palestine must he exterminated. There can be no
option for those of us who revere the name of Allah. There will only be
jihad."
King Farouk -- Former President of Egypt
"The Zionist conquest of Palestine is an affront to all
Moslems. There can be no compromise until every Jew is dead and
gone."
King Idris -- Former President of Libya
"Every problem in our region can be traced to this single
dilemma: the occupation of Dar al-Islam by Jewish infidels."
Hashemi Rafsnjani -- 1991
President of Iran"Allah has bestowed upon us the rare
privilege of finishing what Hitler only began. Let the jihad begin. Murder the
Jews. Murder them all!"
Haj Amin el Husseini - 1946
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
[Yasir Arafat's uncle]
"The enemies of God have committed aggression on Moslem
lands and desecrated our sanctuaries. It has become the duty of every Moslem
to make the sacrifice to liberate Moslem territories."
Dr. Abdul Halim Mahmoud
Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar
October 8, 1973
"Fighting the Jews and Israel is a religious obligation
and a divine duty."
Ibrahim Ghousha -- January 2, 1993
Senior Hamas Leader
In January of 1994, after the signing of the
September 1993 agreements between Israel and the PLO in Oslo, a Hamas leader
was interviewed on the BBC. The correspondent asked
how he felt about the (seemingly) new situation. His reply was insightful. He
said: "You don't understand...Islam can never
negotiate or recognize Israel."
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Present Realities
Since October of this year a mini-war has been
raging between the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Israel.
Right now the region is very close to a major war. According to virtually all
the news media, it was the visit of Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple
Mount on September 28 that ignited the present conflict. Even though this is
pure Arab propaganda, 99% of the world
accepts it as the gospel truth!
In order to understand what is happening right now,
you have to understand what happened a few months prior to the outbreak of the
violence. In the weeks leading up to the Camp David Summit in July of 2000, the
negotiating position of Prime Minister Ehud Barak underwent dramatic changes.
Whereas, in the early spring of 2000 the Israeli position was for giving the
Palestinians 60% of the disputed territories, that number rapidly grew to 80%
in May and then to over 90% right before the beginning of the Camp David talks.
Mr. Barak specifically mentioned 4 red lines that he
would not cross when he left for Camp David. They were: (1) no division of
Jerusalem, (2) no return to the 1949 borders, (3) no return of Arab refugees,
and (4) no foreign army west of the Jordan River. He violated all 4 at the
summit. In fact, he violated almost every red line in existence. He went so far
that even the "doves" of his own party started resigning. When he
arrived at Camp David, what he said to Arafat was basically this: "Look,
if you want peace, I am willing to give you more than any other Israeli
government has ever been willing to give. Everything that can possibly be put
on the table is now on the table. We will never concede any more than this, so
now is the time to make a deal."
Nonetheless, Arafat rejected this far‑reaching
proposal because he really doesn't want to make peace—he wants to take all of
Israel. Plans began to be made by the PLO for a new wave of violence, a new
Intifada. This pre-planned Intifada actually started the day before Sharon made
his visit to the Mount.
On September 27, two explosive devices were
detonated by Palestinian terrorists near Netzarim, a Jewish farming community
in the Gaza Strip. A 19-year-old Israeli Army Medic was killed. Armed Arabs
then proceeded to attack Israeli soldiers present with submachine guns.
On September 28, Sharon visited the Temple Mount. He
took a large contingent of Police and Security personnel, not only for his own
protection, but because the Arabs had threatened a day earlier to resort to
large scale violence in order to take control of the Western Wall area below the Temple Mount. Sharon did not
enter any mosque or do anything provoking.
People may not realize that Israeli politicians have
visited that area many times in the past, as has Sharon himself, without
drawing such fire from the Palestinian camp. The fact is, thousands of Israelis
and tourists from all over the world visit this site daily without causing
riots. An Israeli police post is located on
the northwestern corner of the compound, and armed Israeli soldiers regularly
patrol the area. In other words, Sharon's visit did not introduce any new
dynamics into the arena. Moreover, prior
to his visit, Sharon called the head Imam (religious leader) who is responsible
for the area and assured him that nothing out of the ordinary was planned. The
Imam said there would be "no problem."
None of this was reported in the media, of course.
Neither did the media report that during his visit, it was three Israeli Arab Parliament members who actually started the
riot. They followed Sharon into the Temple area and began shouting,
"murderer, out." This stirred up the Muslim bystanders and Sharon
soon left to avoid trouble. After he left, Palestinian worshipers began
throwing stones, bottles and chairs at police, who responded with tear gas.
Thirty Israeli policemen and four Palestinians were lightly wounded, and only one
round of tear gas was fired by Israeli police.
After the incident, Arafat called Sharon's visit
"a dangerous process conducted by Sharon against Islamic sacred
places." He then called upon Arab and Muslim states to take action to
protect the Islamic holy shrines. This was followed with a statement by the
Moslem Brotherhood Movement's Central Committee in Jordan, stating, "This
is an atrocious act which requires Moslem and Arab leaders to declare Jihad
(holy war) to liberate...the shrines in Jerusalem." They then called for
"shedding the blood of those Jews if they implement their outrageous crime
and establish their alleged temple in the yards of the blessed Al Aksa
Mosque."
These words, as well as many other official militant
statements by Palestinian leaders, were the fuel that ignited the streets. As
is often the situation, the hysteria and chaos spread like wild fire among the
Palestinian communities, and riots broke out in various hot spots.
On September 29, a morning joint patrol of Israeli
and Palestinian soldiers—this was part of the Oslo peace process security
framework—were drinking coffee together while on break. As the Israelis
returned to their jeep, one of the Palestinian soldiers, Nail Suliman, walked
over to the Israeli jeep, shouted Allah
Akbar, and emptied his clip into the heart of Joseph Tabaja, a 27‑year
old Jewish immigrant from Ethiopia, killing him and wounding his partner. This
Palestinian soldier then escaped to the PA controlled area where he turned
himself in and was temporarily detained, pending a quick trial and soon
release, as is the norm in these matters.
Palestinian officials immediately issued a complaint
that the Israeli forces had provoked
(!) Suliman into murdering them. This is an example of the brazen deception, treachery,
and twisted logic Israel faces every day.
Just after the noon prayers, as Muslim worshipers
began to exit the mosques on the Temple Mount, hundreds of them tried to
overpower Israeli Border Patrol guards and began to throw stones over the
retaining wall down onto Jewish worshipers, 120 feet below as they were praying
by the Western Wall. With over 22,000 rioting Muslims on the Mount, the
situation was explosive. At that point Israeli Border Patrol reinforcements
entered the Mount and began to disperse the rioters, first using rubber bullets
and tear gas.
On September 30, armed Palestinians attacked an IDF
defense station at Netzarim Junction, which guards the road into the Jewish
town of Netzarim. The gun battle was long and fierce. It received world-wide
attention because a young boy and his father were caught in the cross-fire and
the boy was killed. The death was captured on video camera. Just as Sharon was
blamed for starting the violence, so Israeli soldiers were automatically blamed
for the death of the boy. The film was shown on CNN and all the big networks
over and over again for days. It was the perfect propaganda tool, as it was
used to demonstrate the heartlessness and cruelty of the Israeli soldiers.
Unfortunately, neither Agence France Presse (the company who had shot the video) or any
other news agency ever bothered to explain or show the context in which that
shooting took place. After a quick investigation, Israel willingly took
responsibility for the incident—case closed. Problem was, too many pieces of
the puzzle didn't fit. For instance, some by-standers said the boy was
participating in the stoning of the Israeli outpost when his father came to
drag him home. If this was true, he was not an innocent victim.
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All the various media outlets reported that the boy
and his father were "on their way home from school" when they just
happened to pass by the spot where that heavy gun-battle had been going on for
quite a while. But if you examine the photo, what you'll see is that the battle
scene is a highway junction in the
middle of wide open fields. This junction is near a Jewish town which was the
target of a band of Palestinians. Directly to the north and south of the
Israelis are two Palestinian locations from which shots were being fired at the
Israelis, and diagonally across the intersection from them is another
Palestinian position from which shots were fired. In other words, the Israeli
position, which was designed to guard the road into the Jewish town, was
surrounded and being fired upon from three
sides by Palestinian gunmen. For reasons which none of the media has ever
thought worth exploring, the father and son are caught in the line of fire
between the Israelis and the Palestinians across the intersection. But the
Israelis cannot see them because they're crouched behind the concrete
protection right alongside the Palestinian firing position.
Independent investigators who were not automatically
anti-Israel began examining the evidence, even going so far as to re-enact the
whole episode using dummies. They became convinced that the boy was not shot by
Israeli soldiers after all, but was in fact shot by his own people. Why? For
publicity! One picture of a young boy being shot by those heartless Israelis is
worth a million dollars to the Palestinians.
Once you've absorbed the physical situation, a
couple of questions have to be asked. (1) Since there are no Palestinian homes
or towns in the area, what were the father and son doing there to begin with? They
were not walking home from school! There are no stores there, no playgrounds,
nothing. (2) Why didn't the Palestinian gunmen, who were right next to the
father and son, and who had to be aware of their presence, do anything to
protect them or at least signal to the Israelis that there were innocent
civilians caught in the crossfire? The answer to these questions are obvious.
The boy was undoubtedly there as part of the original confrontation with the
Israelis. If the father came to take the boy home, he is one of a very small
minority of Palestinian parents who do not routinely offer their children on
the altars of "Jihad."
According to an Israeli physicist and former IDF sniper named Yosef Doriel, the re-enactment of the shooting shows that the boy was killed by Palestinian sharp-shooters rather than by Israeli soldiers as had been claimed. Doriel appeared on Israeli television to report that the incident—which became a cause celebre for Palestinian terrorists and "dovish" Israeli protestors—was in fact a cruelly staged hoax. Doriel said he had several reasons to believe it was not the Israelis who shot the boy. In an interview with Arutz Sheva news service, he said:
"For one thing, the boy and his father were hiding behind,
and to the left of, a barrel that was between them and the Israeli forces. In
the video clip, you see four clean bullet holes to the side of them. These were
not shot by the Israelis. They are clean and full holes, not mere grazes that
would have been formed by the 30‑degree angle of the Israelis.
They came from Palestinians stationed more directly in front of the father and
son to make sure that the two would stay put. Suddenly, you see the boy lying
down in his father's lap, with another bullet hole in the wall directly behind him.
Again, it could not have come from the IDF position, which was behind the
barrel and off to the side. It could only have come from the Palestinian
position, which was more directly in front of the father and the boy.
This is the bullet that went through his stomach and out his
back. At that point in the video you can hear the firing, but the Israeli
position was far away! What really happened was that a Palestinian advanced to
a spot very close to the photographer and shot the fatal shot. You can also notice
that at the moment of the shots, the photographer suddenly shook and the
picture was blurred—a sign that the shots came from close to him. The
Palestinian forces staged the event. The Israelis were firing for sure, but the
fatal shots came not from them. It came from the Palestinian position in
front of the boy and behind the cameraman."
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Notice the full bullet holes in the wall. That boy,
who has now become a martyr for the cause of Islam, was the product of
"hate" education, just as all Palestinian children are. His fifth
grade Arabic language primer has a special sixteen
page section that details the command for every Palestinian Arab child to
engage in a Jihad to wipe the Jews out of Palestine—all of Palestine. It
explains that a child who dies in the fight to liberate Palestine will become a
"Shahada" (martyr) and
enter the world to come. And just in case the child does not get the message
from the words in the book, the final page of the primer shows an Arab military
assault on Palestine. That’s why he was at Netzarim Junction to begin with. He
went there to help "liberate" Palestine. He went there to confront,
hurt, and kill if possible, the infidel occupiers of his land. But it wasn’t
the infidels who killed him. It was his own Arab brethren who killed him.
On August 3, 2000, the New York Times reported on a front page feature how Arafat had
delegated more than 25,000 children to spend the summer in special military
training camps where kids from ages 8 to 16 were trained in the art of guerrilla
warfare. The aim is to engage thousands of Palestinian Arab youth in a Jihad to
liberate Jerusalem. They were taught how to make firebombs and lay ambushes
while practicing the killing of Israeli civilians and soldiers alike.
They were also taught the role that Arab children
had played in fighting Israeli troops in Lebanon in the early 1980's. The PLO
distributed small, lethal weapons for youngsters to fire at Israeli tanks and
armored personnel carriers at short range. The children would stand in the way
of Israeli troops, seeming to pose no threat, then they would fire deadly RPG
missiles at point blank range. At first the Israelis refused to shoot them
because they were children. But after the casualty list started climbing they
had no choice—nor do they have one today. Truly the Palestinians are a sick
breed. In 1972, former Prime Minister Golda Meir
said:" We can forgive the Arabs for
killing our children, but we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their
children."
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This
cartoon, taken from an Arabic newspaper, reveals the obnoxious hypocrisy of
the Palestinians. First, they train their children to kill Israeli soldiers,
then they complain to the international media when these kids get killed! |
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Giving Away God's Land
When the Most High gave the nations their
inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of
Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted
inheritance.
NIV Deuteronomy 32:8-9
From one man he made every nation of men, that
they should inhabit the whole earth; and he
determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
NIV Acts 17:26
One of the things secular, humanist governments (and people) will never do is acknowledge that God is ultimately sovereign in the affairs of men, and that His word—the Scripture—is infallible and unchanging. That word states unequivocally that He has not only determined the "times" of the nations—when they would appear and disappear in history, how long they would stay, and what they would do—He also determined the "exact places where they should live." But what is even more astounding (and this is something Gentiles just can't stand!) Is that the Lord set those boundaries "according to the number of the sons of Israel."
When it comes to territorial divisions of the earth,
the land of Israel was reserved for
the possession of a people not yet born. It was chosen by God to be the
physical location on this planet from whence He would display marvelous
wonders. The theater was small, but well suited for the convenient observation
of the human race—at the junction of the two great continents of Asia and
Africa, and almost within sight of Europe.
This truth irritates the secular humanist because he
thinks he is the only "god" in the universe. He cannot stand to even
consider the possibility that he is not in control of earthly events. He wants
to sit on the throne and decide who gets what territory, and for how long. But
regardless of what he thinks, it is the Lord God who ultimately decides these
issues.
But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is
a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land
which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year
even unto the end of the year.
Deuteronomy 11:11-12
And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet
of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the
old store. The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.
Leviticus 25:22‑23
The land of Israel wasn't special because of who
lived on it—when Abraham received the promise, demon-worshiping,
blood-drinking, child-sacrificing Canaanites dwelt there. It was special
because it belonged to God. It was special because of the destiny it would
fulfil. Long before Abraham was even born, God had been caring for this land. His eyes
were "always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of
the year."
The Lord made it clear that this piece of real
estate was His—The land shall not be sold
forever...the land is mine."
Because it was His, Jews were not allowed to sell the land permanently to each
other. It had to revert back to the original family every 50 years, in the Year
of Jubilee. If God was that concerned
about keeping the land within the original allotted tribes and families of
Israel, think of how He must view the actions of today's Jewish establishment,
which just 3 months ago was ready to give the whole West Bank to Muslim pagans forever!
But if you turn away and forsake the decrees
and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them,
then I will uproot Israel from my land,
which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for
my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples.
II. Chronicles 7:18‑20
Also, because it was God's land, He retained the right to give it to whoever He chose. Even though He took the land away from the Canaanites and gave it to the children of Israel, He warned Israel that if they did not obey Him, He would take the land away from them and give it to somebody else.
For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of
Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them
down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my
people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations,
and parted my land.
Joel 3:1‑2
Regardless of how much the Arabs feel the land is theirs—the
land is not theirs. The land belongs
to God. It is He who took the land away from its original inhabitants and gave
it to the children of Israel. It was He who sent those same children of Israel
into exile twice as punishment for their persistent rebellion against Him and
gave the land to others. In like manner, it is He who has brought those same
children of Israel back to the land in our day. The nations of the world never
complained that God was unjust when He drove
the Jews out of the land and gave it to Romans, Byzantines, Catholic
Crusaders, Arabs, Turks, and finally the British. Thus, they should not
complain today that He is unjust to bring
the Jews back to the land!
Many people are not aware of the geographical
realities that are involved in the current dispute between Israel and the
Palestinians. The land that is being given to the Palestinians on which to
erect their new state is the heart of
the land promised to the Jewish people by God. What the world refers to as the
"occupied territory" or the "West Bank" is actually
Biblical Judea and Samaria. In Scripture this area is also
called "the mountains of Israel." It was the inheritance of the
tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Joseph.
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As above map shows, the West Bank and "the
mountains of Israel" are nearly identical. Abraham was in the mountains of
Israel when God spoke to him and promised the land to his descendants. In fact,
God spoke to Abraham about this promise three times, and all three times he was
in the "occupied territories." So much of Israel's history is
connected to this area. Bethel, Ai, Shilo
and Shechem were all made famous by
Abraham, Jacob and Joshua. Also, the bones of Joseph were buried in this area. Bethany—the home of Mary, Martha and
Lazarus; Bethlehem—the home of David
and the birthplace of Jesus; Hebron—where
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah and Jacob are buried; and Jerusalem—where the Temple stood, where
David and Solomon ruled, and where Jesus died and rose again are all located in
the mountains of Israel.
It is God's
will that the Jewish people posses the "mountains of Israel."
That is precisely why, even though they were out-numbered 3-1 in 1967, God gave
them the victory in the Six Day War and this territory fell back into their
hands. But the governments of Israel have been basically secular and humanist,
and they do not see God's hand in such miraculous events. Also, they are
obsessed by the delusion of "peaceful coexistence" with the Arabs. In
addition, they are trying to be a liberal Democracy, like America.
When they liberated the mountains of Israel they
inherited 600,000 more anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Palestinians. What were
they to do with them? They couldn't annex the new territory without giving all
these Palestinians Israeli citizenship—and doing that would have jeopardized
the delicate population balance between Arabs and Jews. They couldn't transfer them out of the territory
because in the eyes of the world that
would have been completely "un-democratic"—and Israel has always
taken great pride in the fact that it is the "only Democracy in the Middle
East." So, being stuck in a lose-lose situation because of their
philosophy and secularism, they opted to bargain with those who have every
intention of butchering them at the first opportunity.
They began to give the Palestinians limited
autonomy, hoping that they would eventually accept Israel's right to exist and
make a deal whereby they were in charge of many aspects of their lives—but no
sovereignty. In other words, they wanted the Palestinians to settle for a
situation where they seemed to be
free, where they felt free to a
certain degree, but where in actuality they were not free. More delusion! The
policy was doomed to fail from its very inception. For 33 years the
Palestinians have never budged an inch in their demands. It is the Israelis who have had to make one
concession after another for the good of democracy and for the welfare of the
world.
First they recognized the PLO as the official
representative of the Palestinians and began negotiating with them, which under
Israeli law was a crime. Then they
accepted the inevitability of a
sovereign Palestinian state in the heart of Israel, and began negotiating from
that point of view. From there it was all down hill, till at last the current
Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, in an insane and frantic effort to procure a peace
deal at any cost, violated virtually every red line Israel had established
since 1948, a list of which follows.
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Red Line -- Since Israel
liberated and united Jerusalem in June, 1967, it was the policy of every
government, including Barak's, that it would remain united under Israeli
sovereignty.
Violation -- At the Camp David
summit he offered to transfer part of the Old City, also the Arab‑populated
neighborhoods of East and North Jerusalem, and finally the Temple Mount itself,
to Palestinian sovereignty.
Red Line -- Since Israel
captured the West Bank after being attacked by Jordan in the Six Day War, it
was the policy of every government that there would be no return to the
armistice lines of 1949 that lasted until 1967. These were called
"Auschwitz borders" by Abba Eban since they left Israel as narrow as
9 miles wide and very vulnerable to attack from the south, east and north.
Violation -- While reports on
how much land Israel will give up vary, all of the numbers point to the fact
that Barak proposed returning to the 1949 lines, with minor changes only. The
latest reports say that Barak offered 88% of Judea, Samaria and Gaza at Camp
David, but reports before the summit mentioned numbers as high as 96%. He has
already offered all of the Golan Heights to Syria.
Red Line -- The Palestinian
"right of return" to the areas they evacuated in 1948 was an
absolutely non‑negotiable issue since the establishment of the State of
Israel in 1948. For over 5 decades the "right of return" has been
considered by every government to be synonymous with the destruction of the
state, since it means that Israel would be flooded with hostile, non‑Jewish
residents.
Violation -- Barak has been
negotiating how many Palestinians will be allowed to return to Israel within
the Green Line, under the guise of "family reunification." The
numbers being discussed are in the thousands or tens of thousands.
Red Line -- Since the
conclusion of the War of Independence in 1949, the idea of redividing the land
acquired by Israel in that war was inconceivable. Tiny Israel is far too small
to be further whittled down.
Violation -- Barak has proposed
transferring territory in the southwestern Negev to the Palestinians, in return
for the portions of Judea and Samaria that he hopes to annex to Israel.
Red Line -- No foreign army
west of the Jordan River, whose valley forms a natural barrier against invasion
from the East.
Violation -- As is well‑known,
the Palestinian "Police" force is really a nascent army, with assault
rifles, armored personnel carriers, naval vessels, and‑tank and anti‑aircraft
missiles. A sovereign Palestinian state, which Barak was willing to agree to at
Camp David, would have the right to create a real army with no limits. Since
this state would have borders with Jordan and Egypt along with its own air and
seaports, Israel would be powerless to monitor or control the flow of weaponry.
Red Line --
Since Israel acquired it in June, 1967, the Jordan Valley was considered vital
to Israeli security, never to be ceded to a foreign government, since it is a
natural defense against invasion from the east and almost uninhabited.
Violation -- Ehud Barak is now
willing to grant the Palestinians full sovereignty over the Jordan valley.
Red Line -- All governments
since 1967 have agreed that the early warning stations atop the central
mountain ridge of Judea and Samaria would remain in Israeli hands. These bases
give Israel clear line‑of‑sight and radar view of substantial
portions of Jordan and afford a few minutes warning in the event of an air
strike from the East.
Violation -- According to
Barak's position before and during Camp David, these warning stations will have
to be abandoned since they are deep inside what will be Palestinian territory.
Red Line -- Since the
beginning of the Oslo process it was understood by all negotiators that Israel
would maintain control over the strategic Samarian mountain aquifers that hold
over 30% of lsrael's water supply.
Violation -- Control of theses
aquifers is now being negotiated. [Note ‑ Israel is in the midst of a
drought, and even with the aquifers under Israeli control there may not be
sufficient drinking water within a few months.]
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At the failed Camp David summit, Arafat presented a
document laying out his five
"red lines" which, unlike Mr. Barak, he stuck to. The document was
described in the Palestinian press as the "Five Nos"—a play on the
infamous "Three Nos" that came from the Arab League after the Six Day
War. The PA delegation made it clear that if they did not get what they wanted
via negotiations they would pursue their goals by other means (ie., another
Intifada).
The Five Nos of the PA were: (1) Israel must
withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, including from East Jerusalem, (2) all Jewish
settlements inside PA territory must be dismantled, (3) discussions of any
final‑status issues like Jerusalem and the refugees will not be put off,
and no partial framework deal will be accepted, (4) neither will any solution
to the refugee problem be accepted that accommodates Palestinian refugees
outside their homeland [Israel proper], and (5) absolutely no Israeli military
presence inside the new Palestinian state.
In short, Arafat was demanding that Israel acquiesce
to its own destruction. Even though Barak was not willing to agree to commit
national suicide—at least not at that point—he was willing to give away virtually all of Judea and Samaria. God
stepped in to stop the man's madness. One week, with the help of our honest and
upright President, a Grand Deal was
going down in which Barak was giving the Golan Heights back to Syria, and Judea
and Samaria to the Palestinians. The next week everything started falling
apart, and a few months later the whole deal was off—not by Barak's choice of
course—but it was off nonetheless.
I feel no empathy or pity for the Palestinians,
regardless of how much they have suffered, for it wasn't the Jews who caused
their suffering. It was their own hatred
and stubbornness that caused them to reject the original U.N. partition plan
which granted them self‑determination and a sovereign state. It was their own hatred and stubbornness that
caused them to start a war they eventually lost. It was their own hatred and stubbornness that caused them to flee the
country, en mass.
Nor will I cry for the Palestinians, for it wasn't
the Jews who perpetuated their suffering these past 50 years. It was the hatred
and stubbornness of their fellow Arabs
that caused it by giving them no other option but to reconquer the land God has
returned to the Jews. It is the insatiable hatred of the Arab states for
Israel, and their adamant refusal to recognize her or make peace with her that
has caused—and continues to cause—the suffering of the Palestinian people. If
they want delivered from their suffering, let the Palestinians turn their guns
and stones and Molotov cocktails on those who are causing their suffering!
As long as they break every written agreement they
sign, as long as they boast they will destroy Israel the first opportunity they
get, as long as they keep teaching their children to murder Jews and to become
martyrs in the struggle to liberate Palestine, as long as their TV programs and
Radio programs and school text books are filled with anti-Semitic and
anti-Israel incitement and propaganda, as long as their religious leaders
continue to use mosques to preach hatred and Jihad and terrorism, as long as
they shoot innocent civilians and blow up busses full of children...they deserve to suffer...not only in
this life but in the next one as well!
The blindness of secular liberals is limitless, for
they look at a person like Arafat—who is a demon-possessed murderer—and assume
he is basically a "good ol boy." Instead of arresting him and hanging him unceremoniously for all the
atrocities he has committed, heads of state fawn
all over him, U.N. officials make him an unofficial member of the United Nations, the press turns him into a freedom
fighter icon and the masses sympathize
with him!
This same blindness causes Western leaders and
officials to ignore his many statements—like the one he gave in a mosque in
Johannesburg in May of 1994, not long after the famous "handshake" on
the White House lawn—which reveal his true intentions:
"What they [the Israelis] are saying is that [Jerusalem] is their capital. No, it is not their capital. It is our capital. It is the first shrine of Islam and the Moslems. This agreement [referring to Oslo], I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce. But Mohammed had accepted it and we are accepting now this peace offer. But we continue our way to Jerusalem, to the first shrine, together and not alone. We are in need of you as Moslems, as warriors of jihad."
The agreement Arafat was referring to in that speech
was the one Mohammed made with the Koraish tribe, which allowed him to pray in
Mecca, which was under their control. Mohammed signed the agreement because he
was politically and militarily weak. The agreement gave him a chance to improve
his political and military strength. Two years after signing it, when he had grown
strong enough, he abrogated the agreement, slaughtered the tribe of Koraish,
and conquered Mecca.
This is precisely what Arafat intends to do
regarding Israel. He never has, and still doesn't, have any intention of
keeping any agreement he makes with the "infidels" (Jews and
Westerners). Signed agreements mean nothing to him. For you see, under Islamic
law such agreements are merely battle tactics to improve one's position and/or disarm the enemy to
such a point that he can ultimately be conquered.
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Conclusion
There are many issues that we have not even
attempted to address because it is impossible to examine the Arab-Jewish
conflict in all its length and breadth in a single book, much less a short
primer.
For instance, a small percentage of Palestinians are
Christians—and here we are talking about genuine
believers, not those who simply wear the "label" Christian. These
brethren are in an extremely difficult situation. When they refuse to participate
in the "liberation of Palestine" they are branded as traitors and are
eventually killed. The Palestinian Christian population has shrunk by over 65%
in the last two decades. Some were killed but most have fled for their lives.
There is also a small percentage of Israeli Arabs
who consider living under an Israeli government to be the lesser of two evils when faced with the choice between it and a
PLO dictatorship. This reality was highlighted recently when some of the Arabs
of East Jerusalem began paying delinquent taxes.
In the State of Israel, Arab citizens pay only a
fraction of the taxes required by Jewish citizens. Over the last 10-20 years
they have basically stopped paying these taxes and the government has not tried
to collect them. But when they found out that Barak offered Arafat East
Jerusalem—which meant that they would lose their Israeli citizenship and become
citizens of the new PLO state—some of them immediately started paying off all
their taxes as part of an effort to convince the government not to hand East
Jerusalem over to Arafat.
These Arabs know exactly what kind of people Arafat
& Co. are, and they know exactly what kind of life awaits them in a PLO
state governed by terrorist murderers. Although they have no great love for Israel,
and in fact would love to see it become a democratic Palestinian state, they
would rather live in Israel than in the up-and-coming PLO state. Also, even
though most of the charges made by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs of abuse and
discrimination by Israel are bogus, some
are valid. Living in such a rough neighborhood, being under a constant stress
from enemies without and enemies within, has taken its toll on the Jewish
people. They have in effect been fighting a 100-year war for survival. Thus, while
we are not excusing any genuine abuse
on their part, and while it should be
addressed and corrected, you have to keep these issues in their proper
perspective.
Many other issues regarding the conflict, some of
which are very complex, could be examined, but none of them would change the basic historical realities presented
in this short primer. Thus we will bring this study to a close with one final
perspective.
There are literally dozens of organizations who's
only function in life is to criticize Israel, condemn Israel, and weaken her
resolve to continue existing. There are many journalists and government
officials in the world who have made careers out of bashing Israel—and the
Israelis certainly have their fair share of character flaws with which to
provide these people ammunition. The nations are demanding that Israel uphold a
standard of morality and righteousness that they themselves will never reach in
a million years—and that includes the United States, which in these days is
looking more like a third-world "Banana Republic" than "the
greatest Democracy on earth."
However, the issue of Israel's existence has little
to do with whether or not the Jewish people are righteous and moral, or whether
or not they deserve to have their own state. The issue of Israel's existence
has to do with the righteousness of God's
character. What is at stake here is God's
honor. Regardless of Israel's faults, the very existence of a Jewish state
glorifies God because it reveals His faithfulness to His promises.
The Lord said He would judge Israel's sin and
rebellion by scattering them across the face of the globe. But He also promised
not to utterly forsake them, and He said that one day He would gather them back
to the land from the four corners of the earth. In addition, He also made it
clear that He would not do this as a result of any righteousness on their part,
but "for his great name's sake." He made a promise that did not
depend on what they did; it depended on the faithfulness and unchangeableness
of His word.
For in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of
the height of Israel, saith the Lord GOD, there shall all the house of Israel,
all of them in the land, serve me: there will I accept them, and there will I
require your offerings, and the firstfruits of your oblations, with all your
holy things. I will accept you with your sweet savour, when I bring you out from the people, and gather you out of the
countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you
before the heathen. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall
bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up
mine hand to give it to your fathers. And there shall ye remember your ways,
and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe
yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed. And ye
shall know that I am the Lord, when I
have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways,
nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord
GOD.
Ezekiel 20:40‑44
For my
name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee,
that I cut thee not off. Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen
thee in the furnace of affliction. For
mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name
be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another.
Isaiah 48:9‑11
We have sinned with our fathers, we have
committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. Our fathers understood not thy
wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but
provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea. Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his
mighty power to be known.
Psalms 106:6‑8
For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake: because it
hath pleased the Lord to make you his people.
I. Samuel 12:22
For His
great name's sake, He did not utterly cut off the Jewish people. For His great name's sake, He kept them as a
separate people in all the nations to which they had been driven. For His great name's sake, He did not allow
Adolf Hitler, and all those before and after him who were driven by that same
burning hatred of Jews, to completely expunge them from the planet. For His great name's sake, He gathered them
back to the land from all over the world in our day. For His great name's sake, He enabled them to win 4 major wars in which
they were out-numbered in both men and military equipment, sometimes as much as
10-1.
Israel is a testimony to the faithfulness of God's promises. It is a testimony that He cannot
and will not lie. Moreover, the continued existence of a superior Jewish state
in the heart of the Muslim Arab world is a demonstration that the God of Israel
is mightier than the demon-god of Islam. Muslim Arabs know very well the
difference between the god they serve and the God of the Hebrews. They mock and
insult Jehovah. Yet 250 million of
them, with all their wealth and resources, and with all the military equipment
they get from Russia (some of which is free), cannot blot out this minuscule
country that has "blackened" the face of Allah and the entire Arab
nation.
God did not re-establish the Jews in their land and
keep His hand of protection on them all this time because they deserved it, or
because they were serving Him. He is
doing all this for His great name's sake! He is keeping His word to
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is keeping His word to Moses and Joshua—and every
Christian on this planet should be grateful
there is a Jewish state in the Middle East. For if God would not have kept His
promise to the Jews, what assurance would we have that He will keep His promise
to us?
Let the reader beware! Don't let yourself get caught
up in the humanistic spirit that has overtaken the whole world, which exalts
the wicked and condemns those who seek to do what is right. Don't get caught up
in the "relativity" that says we have no right to "judge"
who is right and who is wrong with regards to the Arab-Jewish/Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Those with any sense of justice, once they have learned the truth,
will never again be caught defending the Arabs.
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Bibliography
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The
Mountains of Israel: The Bible & The West Bank. Jerusalem:
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