“Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.” -La Rochefoucauld
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (now there’s a contradiction in terms!) has issued a statement conveying its disapproval of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu’s declaration during a recent cabinet visit to the area when he assured Israelis that “the Golan will always remain in Israel’s hands. Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights.” Apparently the OIC cannot comprehend (or refuses to acknowledge) the prudence of this Israeli government and its decision to “hold the high ground,” as they say in military jargon. Anyone with a basic knowledge of modern Israel’s past wars with her Arab enemies will know that conceding the Golan Heights to those Arab enemies is tantamount to leaving an open breach in her line of defense against those who want Israel “wiped from the face of the Earth.”
Norvel B. De Atkine opines in the Middle East Quarterly that “the Arabs have done poorly in nearly all the military confrontations with Israel. Why this unimpressive record? There are many factors—economic, ideological, technical—but perhaps the most important has to do with culture and certain societal attributes which inhibit Arabs from producing an effective military force.” Why is it that every parcel of ground a vigorous Israeli Army wins in defensive wars against much less competent and seemingly lethargic Arab armies is always depicted by the pro-Palestinians movements as “occupied territories”? Why does the world demand of Israel that she return the territories won as a result of those defensive wars? I have never heard of a debate about the United States giving back California to Mexico, or about Canada giving back Quebec to France, or about Turkey giving back the territory it has “occupied” since its 1974 invasion of the island country of Cyprus. Israel is the only 21st century country besmirched for enhancing its national security by securing those borders contiguous with her overtly hostile Arab neighbors.
In every war between Israel and her Arab enemies, the Arab is the aggressor and the Jew is the defender, although in every war the Jew is the victor and the Arab the loser. And this phenomenon is perpetuated because of the fact that in every war with her Arab neighbors, the Jews of Israel are facing genocide whereas her Arab neighbors, whenever they face defeat, which they often do, they can always crawl into the camp of their nearest Jew-hating Arab ally. Because the Middle East is full up of Jew-hating Arab autocracies but has only one democratic country, which is (yeah, you guessed it) the State of Israel. Because when it comes to the Jews and the State of Israel, there are only two types of Arab Muslims in the Middle East: those who want the State of Israel to cease from existence and the Jews who dwell therein to disappear, and those who want the State of Israel to cease from existence and the Jews who dwell therein to disappear. The Yiddish proverb, “Having no choice is also a choice,” sums up so very succinctly the evident position of the State of Israel in regards to her uncongenial Arab neighbors.
And to add insult to injury, UNESCO approved a measure proposed by several Muslim states on behalf of the Palestinian Authority” that reclassifies the Western Wall as a Muslim site within the al Aqsa Mosque complex, called the Buraq Plaza. It really is surprising how many centuries of Jewish presence in this area of the Middle East the UN is willing to obfuscate for the sake of blatant Islamic imperialism. Even more surprising is the shamelessness with which they carry out this revision of ancient Jewish history for the sake of a people and a country that have no eligible history in the Middle East before Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas excogitated an artificial legend in the minds of their religiously debilitated constituents. To put it bluntly, as Daniel Pipes has noted, “Jerusalem’s founding antedated Islam by about two millennia…”
Christopher Morley wrote that “the unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure is too great for his income of ideas.” The Arab Muslims of the Middle East, always short of ideas for the sake of peace anyway, have in mind no other option for the State of Israel than that it be replaced by an exclusively Muslim “Palestinian state.” This leaves no option and no state for the Jews of Israel. The Jewish existence in the Middle East, from ancient times until now, is more than proof enough that not only are the Arab Muslims unwilling to accept and/or recognize the indigenous right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, they are more than willing to write them completely out of the history of the Middle East. Rather than contrive a way to live in peace with the Jews, the Arab Muslim nations (with much support from Western politicians, academics and journalists) continue to demonize the State of Israel and its Jewish citizens. As Efraim Karsh vividly explains mankind’s malefic tendency toward the Jews: “And why shouldn’t they? The killing of Jews and the destruction or seizure of their worldly properties is hardly news. For millennia, Jewish blood has been cheap, if not costless, throughout the Christian and Muslim worlds where the Jew became the epitome of powerlessness, a perpetual punch bag, and a scapegoat for whatever ills befell society. There is no reason, therefore, why Israel should not follow in the footsteps of these past generations, avoid antagonizing its Arab neighbors, and exercise restraint whenever attacked.”
But Jews are overflowing with ideas. Julie Bien of the ‘Bulletin Bored’ blog reveals that “although Jews make up only 0.2 percent of the world’s population, they win an astonishing 22 percent of Nobel Prizes.” And in pursuit of peace with the Arab Muslim, just to prove that they are serious about peace, the altruistic geniuses among the Jews came up with the insane idea of “land for peace.” And although such a outlandish and self-defeating offer didn’t bring peace with the Palestinian Arabs, this one idea alone (and there are many) has easily outnumbered any that the Palestinian leadership has ever brought to the bargaining tables. Such a contradistinction should tell us everything we need to know about who and what is preventing a long awaited denouement to the conflict between Jew and Arab in the Middle East.
My point here is that the religion of Islam and the hatred of the Jew and Judaism it has for centuries obtruded into the Arab Muslim consciousness is the only obstacle standing in the way of peace between Arab and Jew in the Middle East. The very concept of peace between Arab and Jew, between Arab nations and a modern Jewish state, is a possibility dismissed outright as a “nakba” (day of catastrophe) by the mediocre minds of the Arab world. As Philip Carl Salzman relates, “…all of modern history is a nakba for the Arab world, a self-induced, cultural nakba as the Arab world has clung to pre-modern tribal forms: The seventh century C.E. remains the ideal for the Arab world.” As for the jihadist, the modern day personification of this same seventh century ideal, the Palestinian psychiatrist Sr. Iyad Sarraj remarks that, “Suicide bombings are not prohibited for the Islmamists, because they consider it a Holy War against the Jews, and every Jew is an enemy. They all believe that they are not going to die, that they are moving from one phase of life to another.”
Whatever offenses the Jew was hated for in the time of Mohammed, for the same offenses — even though religiously daresayed into existence –- the Jew is hated by the Muslim umma today. Because living in peace with the Jews, accepting that the State of Israel will never be intimidated by the genocidal wishes of her Arab Muslim enemies, is beyond their understanding.
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