A general point about any nation's "right to exist" and four specific questions about the recent history of the Middle East:
If Israel has no right to exist,
what is America 's right to exist?
Both countries give the same answer: refugees and
settlers from around the world came to our land and built up a nation over more
than a century, making major sacrifices in blood and toil to establish a new
nation based on shared ideas rather than long-time indigenous residence. If
anything, Israel 's claim to
legitimacy is MUCH stronger than the US claim for three
reasons:
1) No one claims that the Brits (and others) who settled
North
America were coming back to an ancestral homeland.
2) No international organization ever recognized their
right to that homeland, As the Faisal Weizmann Agreement of January 1919 and as
the San Remo Conference of April 1920 implemented by the League of Nations did for Israel in 1923 and the
United Nations did confirm the 1920 international agreement in 1947.
3) No one can possibly claim that Israeli settlement
caused a demographic disaster for the native population since the
Arab-PALESTINIAN population of the country is now more than 50 times greater
than it was when additional Jewish return to their homeland began in earnest in
the 1880's. At no time—in no decade—did Arab-Palestinian population decline in
Palestine, but the Native American population in the U.S. drastically declined
(mostly through disease, by the way) from the beginning of European
colonization (1607) until 1900 (when Indian numbers began a dramatic rise).
Four questions:
1) If Palestine was the ancient
homeland of an ancient people with their own strong sense of national identity,
can anyone name, please, the most famous Arab-Palestinians produced in those
centuries and millennia of history? Who was the most celebrated of all in the
long line of Arab-Palestinian kings, or viceroys, or prime ministers? Which Arab-Palestinian
poet or philosopher stirred the world with his words and ideas? Which great Arab-Palestinian
scientist or inventor or composer or painter achieved international or even
regional renown? The inability to answer that question doesn't testify to a
lack of ability or brilliance: it testifies to the synthetic, phony nature of
the invented "Arab-Palestinian" identity. There were no remarkable or
brilliant kings of Arab-Palestine because there were no kings of Arab-Palestine
at all—no Arab nation ever existed in this area, only ill-defined pieces of
various Islamic, Turkic, Byzantine and Roman empires over the course of 2,000
years. The only time any national identity existed centered on this particular
piece of real estate, that national identity was Jewish: that's why the only
famous "Palestinians" who ever existed were Jews, from King David to
Jesus to Moses Maimonides (died in Israel in 1215) to David
Ben Gurion. No "Palestinian" Arab nationalism ever existed, as
distinct from Pan-Arabism, until Yasser Arafat (born in Egypt , raised in Kuwait ) invented it as a
pure fabrication after the June war of 1967.
2) If Arab-Palestinians merely yearn to establish their
own homeland on the West Bank, Gaza and in East Jerusalem, why did they make no
effort to do so—and no progress in doing so—during the twenty years when all
those territories were in unquestioned Arab control (1947-1967) without a
single Jewish "settler" or even resident allowed to live there? The
ancient Jewish Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem , inhabited by a
religious Jewish community without interruption for more than 3,000 years, had
been liquidated of all Jews, with more than 50 major synagogues utterly
destroyed—by explosions and bulldozers—after the Old City fell to Jordanian
troops in 1949 and Jewish cemeteries destroyed and used for construction.
Before the war of extermination launched by President Abdul Nasser of Egypt in May, 1967, there
were ZERO Israeli communities anywhere in "Arab-Palestinian territory"
but no moves toward statehood. Isn't this definitive proof that the whole
purpose of "Arab-Palestinian nationalism" has nothing to do with
building an Arab-Palestinian state (where one never, ever existed) but in
destroying a Jewish state (which did exist in the region going back over 3,000
years ago for more than 1,000 years)?
3) Zionism and additional Jewish return to that ancient
homeland began in the 1880's. Before Hitler even came to power, a half million
Jews had settled permanently in today's Israel and built whole new cities where
none ever previously existed (Israel's largest city, Tel Aviv, was founded in
1909 on empty sand dunes, purchased from their absentee owners, and today the
metro area is home to 4,000,000 Jews and more than 42% of Israel's population).
Question: during all this energetic and fateful Jewish resettlement, when did
the very first Arab-Palestinian refugees lose their homes and find themselves
driven from their ancient patrimony? Answer: only AFTER 1948, and the war of
destruction launched by local Arabs and, ultimately, their Egyptian, Syrian,
Jordanian Lebanese and Iraqi allies in 1948-1949. The population figures are
unequivocal, undeniable, compiled not by Jews and Zionists but by Ottoman
Turks, Brits, and Palestinian Arabs themselves: Jewish settlement didn't drive Arab-Palestinians
from the land, but rather attracted them to it in unprecedented numbers. In
fact, the Arab-Palestinian population not only increased alongside the Jewish
population, but increased at faster rates: between WWI and WWII (1918-1929) the
Jewish population went up by 490,000 and the Palestinian Arab population rose
even quicker and went up by 588,000. Arab-Palestinian life expectancy, living
standards and education levels also improved spectacularly, as measured by all
international and Arab organizations.
4) If Israel is truly an alien presence imposed on the
region by the imperialist, colonialist designs of the United States and its
Western allies, due to the overwhelming power of conspiring Zionists and Jewish
voters, then how many American troops have lost their lives or even risked
their lives on Israel's behalf in the 65 years of the nation's history? Answer:
absolutely zero. In none of Israel 's wars did American
military forces take an active role. In fact, in Israel's War of Independence
(1948-49), while the young nation lost more than 1% of its total population on
the battlefield (the equivalent of 3,100,000 Americans today), the Israel
Defense Forces were crippled by an all-encompassing American arms embargo that
prevented any material or military assistance to the Jewish state. Arab oil
interests have always been more influential on shaping Western policy than
Zionist pressure or pleas.
During all the years of Hitler's Holocaust (1939-45),
and in the three years immediately following the war, the British government
did NOTHING to help Jewish refugees who tried to flee to Israel and in fact blocked
and banned their emigration entirely, arresting and deporting any Jews who
attempted to enter the area of Mandatory Palestine (today's Israel, Arab-Palestinian
controlled territories, and Jordan). As recently as 1967, when Egypt's dictator
Abdul Nasser repeatedly announced his intention to "eliminate" the
Jewish presence in the region and ordered the UN peace-keeping troops to get
out of his way (they immediately complied), the US Secretary of State Dean Rusk
announced to the world that America would remain "neutral in thought, word
and deed" and would do nothing to rescue the threatened Jewish population.
Major US Foreign Aid to Israel didn't begin until
after the October War of 1973, as part of an effort by the Nixon and Carter
administrations to bribe the Israelis, basically, to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt . Part of the peace
agreement brokered by Carter involved promises of aide at its current levels to
both Egypt and Israel . In 1967, Israel
won its war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan without any American planes in its
air force; the nation relied on French "Mirages" it had purchased to
confront the advanced Russian MIG’s used by the other side, the Arabs.
Finally, if pro-Israel policies are the result of Jewish
influence rather than American self-interest, then why do Jewish voters remain
unshakably committed to the Democratic Party which has been consistently less
supportive of Israel 's interests than
the Republicans? The most pro-Israel political figures in American history—“Mr.
Republican" Bob Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush—NEVER
attracted a majority of Jewish votes, but the most anti-Israel nominees—George
McGovern and Jimmy Carter—unfailingly performed well in the Jewish community as
long as they were Democrats. Since FDR, only one Democrat failed to win more
than 60% of the Jewish vote: Jimmy Carter in 1980, who saw the Jewish vote
split three ways (and nearly evenly) between himself, liberal independent
candidate John Anderson, and Reagan. In 2012, Romney (a personal friend of
Netanyahu's for 30 years) was clearly, unabashedly more pro-Israel than Obama
(who had feuded publicly and bitterly with the Israeli government) but Obama
still drew 70% of the Jewish vote.
As to the belief that a more pro-Arab Palestinian policy
on the part of the US would lead to reduced terrorism against American targets,
consider that the worst, bloodiest terrorists outrages in US history all were
launched and planned under the most pro-Arab Palestinian administration in US
history. Bill Clinton not only presided over the Oslo Accords, granting
recognition to the Arab-Palestinian Authority, but met more frequently with
Yasser Arafat than he did with any foreign leader. Yet under Clinton, Islamist
terrorists plotted the first AND second World Trade Center bombings (yes, 9/11
was entirely planned and set up during Clinton), the Embassy Bombings in East
Africa, Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, and so forth. Under that pro-Palestinian
US regime, and the similarly pro-Arab Palestinian Israeli regimes of
"peace makers" Rabin and Peres, Israeli deaths at the hands of
terrorists averaged nearly 200 per year; under the "get tough"
policies of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Netanyahu, those deaths have averaged
less than 20 a year.
These are facts.
Please invite any doubters to check them out, with
independent sources.
The facts—and the four questions posed above—simply
do not conform to the anti-Israel narrative. How, for instance, can you
describe Arab-Palestinians as a people dispossessed when their population
swelled and their conditions dramatically improved simultaneous to mass Jewish
immigration?
No comments:
Post a Comment