The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 10, 2004 - 11
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PALESTINIANS WERE GIVEN A
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STATE AND LAND
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In 1948, Arab States and Palestinians rejected the gift
of a sovereign Palestinian state in favor of a war to
destroy Israel, the only non-Arab presence in the
Middle East. The new Israeli state occupied 1% of all
the land in the Middle East, but that was too much for
their Arab neighbors. Lebanon was also a non-
Muslim state and the only other democracy in the
Middle East, until Muslim Arabs and the PLO
destroyed it.
THE CLAIM THAT ISRAEL HAS TAKEN LAND IS FALSE.
In 1948, the United Nations allotted land to both Israel
and Palestinians to form new states. This was land
that had been ruled by Ottoman Turks for 400 years.
It became a British mandate after Turkey's defeat in
the First World War. The land had never belonged to
a Palestinian state or to a people that called them-
selves "Palestinians."
During the Arab war against Israel in 1948, Egypt and
Jordan swallowed the West Bank and Gaza, which
ceased to exist as independent entities for the next 17
years. During the entire 17 years, there were no com-
plaints from Palestinians over the occupation and era-
sure of their homeland by fellow Arabs-
Arabs did not care because they considered them-
selves - Palestinians and all -- part of the greater Arab
nation. The goal of Palestinians has been - in their
own words -- the destruction of the "Zionist entity,"
i.e., the State of Israel itself. That's why there has
been no peace in the Middle East for more than fifty
years.
Arab States and Palestinian Leadership have always
referred to the creation of Israel as "the Nakhba" - the
catastrophe. The creation of a Jewish state in the
Muslim Middle East is viewed by Arabs and
Palestinians as a catastrophe that must be undone.
This is why there can be no peace without regime
change in the Arab world.
THE WAR IS NOT ABOUT A STATE OR LAND.
It is about the fifty-five year Arab war to eradicate the
existence of a Jewish state in the Arab Muslim Middle
East. There are two hundred million Arabs in the
Middle East livin on 99% of the land, and six million
Jews living on 1-0. No serious person can imagine
that these Jews are an imperial power threatening
Arabs.
THE GENOCIDAL WAR BEING WAGED AGAINST ISRAEL
was once unthinkable in a post-Nazi world. Now it is
gainin round through the support of the internation-
al left.Te left's mission is to de-legitimize Israel and
make its Jews vulnerable to the Arab attack.
The left rationalizes the Palestinian terror campaign
as a campaign of "desperate" people. In fact the ter-
rorists have twice ruled out the hope of peace and are
squandering billions in past and promised gifts from
the West in order to pursue their pathological hatred
of Jews.
The only reason Israel has a military presence in the
West Bank is because Arabs have waged four
aggressive wars against Israel from this base and
refuse to negotiate a peace.
stinian Land
Palestinian despair is not despair over being thwarted
in the desire for a state. It is despair at not being able
to destroy "the Zionist entity," whose very existence is
a thorn in the side of an Arab world that is xenopho-
bic and filled with hate. It is despair at not being able
to "liberate" Palestine "from the Jordan to the sea."
THE LEFT RATIONALIZES THE JEW-HATRED
that is institutionalized in the Arab world and that
drives its anti-Israel agenda. This hatred is expressed
in Arab States' mass production of anti-Semitic prop-
aganda like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; their
campaign to stigmatize Jews with the very symbols of
their Nazi exterminators; and their training of small
school children to aspire to be murderers whose vic-
tims are Jews. The left turns a blind eye to the virulent
racism these acts reveal. Or worse, assists it.
NEVER BEFORE IN HISTORY HAS ANY GROUP -
oppressed or otherwise - sunk to such moral depths
as to kill their own children, telling them that if they
murder other children along with themselves they will
go to heaven. Not even the Nazis attempted such a
perversion of religion or of basic human instinct.
Sixty-percent of Palestinians are on record as sup-
porting these acts of genocide against Jews.
Would the left encourage anyone but Jews to surren-
der to the demands of such an enemy? Can anyone
think that the obstacle to co-existing with such evil
really comes down to a few settlements or a disputed
fence designed to keep the murderers at bay?
THE SETTLEMENTS ISSUE IS A RED-HERRING.
There are more than a million Arabs settled in Israel
who enjoy more rights than Arabs in the rest of the
Middle East. On the other hand, Jews are not allowed
to live in the Arab world itself, in settlements or other-
wise. If they were, the Jewish settlements could be
incorporated in a Palestinian state, in the same way
that Arab settlements are incorporated in Israel.
Arab leaders were allies of Hitler in the 1930s and
1940s, and Communism after that. Arab intolerance
and racism are expressed in their acts and alle-
giances, including their support for black slavery i n
Arab and Muslim Sudanwhere more than a million
black Christians have been slaughtered by the regime
in recent years.
ISRAEL'S WAR AGAINST PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS
and America's war against AI-Qaeda are the same war.
With the creation of the AI-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the
Palestinian Authority has formally joined the Islamo-
fascist jihad launched by Osama bin Laden. The goal
is to liquidate Israel, and establish in its place a radi-
cal Muslim state at war with America and the infidel
world.
Only a denial as dee and wide as that of the 1930s
will refuse to see th holocaust coming. Yet, the
American left and its international comrades are in
full-throated support of Jew-haters in the Arab world
and their efforts to de-legitimize Israel and to portray
Jews as the cause and not the victims of this terror.
David Horowitz