NEW: Blog Uncharted Forest
__________________________________________________
Academic
antisemitism
Boycott discussion: Dispute
with Steven Rose
Some European
academics have called for a cultural and scientific boycott of Israel. One of
the boycott petitions, calling for a MORATORIUM on scientific contacts with
the Jewish state, was instigated by Dr. Steven Rose and published in The Guardian.
Its full text can be found at http://euroisrael.huji.ac.il/original.html.
I sent a letter condemning this moratorium to all signatories of that
petition whose email addresses were included in the list published on
the same website, and received similarly sounding replies from Drs. Rose
and Blakemore, another member of the boycott team. I have decided to
publish my exchange with Dr. Rose because it clarifies the opposing views and
their origins. It follows below in chronological order.
MV:
"The
times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the
Jews. This being the case, the anti-Semite must constantly seek new forms and
forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not
hate the Jews, he is just 'anti-Zionist'!" – ascribed to Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
Discovering a European-supported petition for a boycott of academic ties with
Israel to promote “many peace plans” (http://euroisrael.huji.ac.il/original.html),
I could not help but remember the Western “peaceniks” of the 1970-80’s who
demanded of their governments to stop arming against the threat of communism.
When a delegation of these leftists came for a visit to the Soviet Union (my
country of origin) during the notorious period of “détente,” to embrace those
they wanted to live in peace with, they were arrested and deported after an
attempt to organize a pro-peace demonstration in Moscow. That must have been
a good lesson in the effects of moral equivalence. Just as peace movement in
the West was helpful only to the Soviets and supported by the KGB, today’s
peaceniks are helping terrorists to achieve their strategic goals. Forcing
Israel to stop its fight against terrorism—with no guaranty of the end of
terror—would again serve only the terrorist aggressor.
Why is the anti-Israeli sentiment so popular in Europe? Of course, European
politicians pressing President Bush to restrain Israel may be taking into
account that their electorate is much more Muslim than Jewish. They would not
do it, however, if the rest of the voting population did not support their
pro-Arab stance, and it is not politicians who write boycott petitions and
come to Israel now to defend “Palestinian rights.” Why Europe, which has
tried and failed to appease Hitler by betraying Czechoslovakia and largely
helped him to annihilate European Jewry, makes the same mistake by trying now
to appease the horrific Islamic regimes and terrorist gangs supported by
them? It is hard to imagine that Europe can still think that appeasing a
murderer can earn protection from him. There is another likely reason for
this irrational behavior—an irrational reason. Some Europeans, including,
regrettably, intellectuals, have finally found a way to both legitimize their
deep-seated antisemitism and exculpate themselves—by wrapping antisemitism in
the comme il faut cloth of their “fight for the rights of
Palestinians.”
It comes clear from the text of the petition. Its authors call “odd” the
situation when Israel is treated as a European state in respect to scientific
funding and contracts while no other state in the region is so regarded.
Which other states there would the petitioners consider eligible for such
treatment—whether from the scientific achievement or accountability
viewpoints? This parenthetically introduced rationale for the moratorium on
all support of science in Israel is telling because it clearly has nothing to
do with its purported causes. Obviously, such moratorium would cover
scientists regardless of their political convictions and, as such, is a collective
punishment solely based on nationality. Taking into account
the international character of science, it would also cover those who
collaborate with Israeli scientists and depend on results obtained in that
research. One wonders how would the moratorium treat Israeli scientists
who temporarily or permanently work outside of Israel, non-Israeli scientists
who collaborate with Israelis, or those scientists who openly support Israel?
The proposed moratorium clearly smacks of the “Jewish science” label used
first by the Nazis and then by Stalin’s inquisitors. Since science benefits
all humans, the moratorium, while gaining no political reward for Palestinian
Arabs, has nothing to do with humanitarian causes allegedly supported by its
drafters and has much to do with Jew-baiting.
This is why these humanitarians do not care that those they call
“Palestinians” are in their majority brain-washed descendants of recent
in-migrants to the Land of Israel, who came from surrounding Arab countries
in the end of XIX-XX century on the heels of Jewish repatriation that
transformed the millennia-long desolation of Palestine and created jobs for
Arabs. These human rights activists call Jews living in Hebron “settlers” and
cite Arab majority as the reason for calling the lands “Arab,” whereas the
reason for that majority is that Jews who lived in those lands were subjected
to pogroms instigated by Arafat’s uncle and a personal friend of Hitler’s Amin
al-Husseini, mass-murdered, evicted, and kept from entering Palestine by
the British (just before and at the time of the greatest genocide in
history). These European peace-lovers know and are comfortable with the
knowledge that the only peace satisfactory for Arafat and the Arab world is
where Jews do not fight because there is no more Israel and they are dead—the
same way the fathers and grandfathers of these Europeans were undisturbed by
the trains leaving their cities for Treblinka.
________________________________
Steven
Rose replies:
From:
< S.P.R.Rose@open.ac.uk <mailto:S.P.R.Rose@open.ac.uk>
>
To: < mmv@pitt.edu <mailto:mmv@pitt.edu>
>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 10:36 AM
Subject: boycotts etc
If
you cant tell the difference between being opposed to illegal
occupations, collective punishments and the systematic destruction of a
people by a State and anti-semitism you are in pretty poor intellectual
shape.
And you
should get your history straight. The zionist household in which I was
born and reared was clear that Chaim Weizmann was correct to demand the
colonisation of Palestine by Jews as 'a land without people for a people
without land.'
Steven
Rose
Joint Gresham Professor of Physic,
Visiting Professor, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology
University College London,
and
Director, Brain and Behaviour Research Group and Professor of Biology
The Open University
Milton Keynes MK7 6 AA
UK
telephone +44 (0) 1908 652125
fax +44 (0)
1908 654167
email s.p.r.rose@open.ac.uk <mailto:s.p.r.rose@open.ac.uk>
__________________________
MV
replies:
Dear Dr.
Rose:
Thank you very
much for your prompt response to my letter. I regret, however, that instead
of addressing its substance, you employ a classic straw man argument (let
alone an ad hominem one). I object not to your protest against
"illegal occupations, collective punishments," etc.--you are
entitled to your views, of course. What I do consider antisemitic is
boycotting Israeli scientists BASED ON THEIR NATIONALITY. I am sure that you
are capable of seeing that this is a COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT--why then are you
trying to impose it? And how exactly would you mete it? My colleague in
Israel, for instance, has Palestinian Arab researchers in his team, funded by
a European grant--would you exempt him, or them, or no mercy?
I am not
sure that it serves your argument well when you support your opinion about a
political movement by one slogan taken out of context. Would you apply at
least the same standard to the Palestinian nationalist movement whose slogans
regarding Jews have been the same as its great supporter's, Hitler, as you,
with your knowledge of history, surely know? I also hope you have been as
vocal protesting the illegal occupation of the disputed territories by JORDAN
until 1967 as well as the truly monstrous acts of Arab and Islamic
governments in their treatment of women, minorities, and dissenters
(including your colleagues-scientists).
I envy you
that you have had an opportunity to be raised in a Zionist household. In the
country where I was born and reared Zionism used to be a capital crime,
teaching Hebrew entailed years in the GULag, and attending services in a
synagogue made you liable to be expelled from a school and blacklisted. The
Politburo fully shared your views on Zionism and Israel and would
wholeheartedly support your petition. I doubt, however, you would feel more
comfortable there than in your "zionist household."
I was glad
to receive in response to my letter from one of my correspondents a reply to
your petition by EU Commissioner for Research Philippe Busquin (please see attached). He, in
his diplomatic but sufficiently scalding way, pointed out some of its major
flaws - the same as I did.
Please
allow me to conclude with another quote from Dr. Martin Luther King: "My
friend, I do not accuse you of deliberate anti-Semitism. I know you feel, as
I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice,
and discrimination. But I know you have been misled--as others have
been--into thinking you can be 'anti-Zionist' and yet remain true to these
heartfelt principles that you and I share. Let my words echo in the depths of
your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--make no mistake
about it."
_____________________________________
SR
replies:
From:
<S.P.R.Rose@open.ac.uk>
To: <mmv@pitt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 3:47 PM
Subject: RE: boycotts etc
the
boycott call is not against individual Israelis but against institutional
links. And with respect to the question concerning palestinian researchers,
we have had strong messages of support for the call from palestinians
as you might imagine. The ONLY people who have objected on the grounds of
harming Israeli-Palestinian collaboration are Israelis. Draw your own
conclusions.
_______________________________________
MV
replies:
I am not
Israeli. Nor are Philippe Busquin, the EU Commissioner for Research (please
read his response I attached to my previous message) and my American
colleagues. Draw yours.
Your
"not against individual Israelis but against institutional links" does
not make any difference to me, especially considering that you
seem to disregard the objections of "ONLY" individual Israelis (by
the way, what conclusions would you suggest I should make?). Don't you think
you should pay more attention to Israelis who want to collaborate with their
Palestinian colleagues? Or you think that it is Israelis who mainly benefit
from that collaboration--and who cares about Israelis?
I may be
expecting too much, but you again did not respond to my message, choosing
instead to respond to one example I gave.
There have been no
more replies from Dr. Rose.
Fortunately,
the number of scientists who have protested anti-Israel boycotts and
supported Israel is much greater than that of antisemitic and misguided
scientific allies of Arafat. The updates can be found at http://euroisrael.huji.ac.il/news.html.
Contrary to Rose's wishful thinking that "ONLY" Israeli
scientists protest his boycott initiative and thus are isolated, the
anti-boycott support comes from numerous countries, including Rose's own
Great Britain, whose leading science journal, Nature, has published a
strongly worded objection
to any such boycott, and the National Union of Students condemned it.
July
12, 2002.
- Meanwhile, I have not waited too long to get an answer to my question
above, how the moratorium would treat Israeli scientists working outside of
Israel: a British professor of Egyptian origin, one of the signatories of
Rose's petition, has just fired
her Israeli colleagues from the editorial boards of the two
journals she owns (?) - for no other reason than their nationality (and
she is not unique - June 28, 2003). She did that in
accordance with her "interpretation
of what a boycott of Israel means." Like Rose, "[she is] not actually
boycotting Israelis, [she is] boycotting Israeli institutions." To
emphasize the collective punishment character of her action, one
of the Israelis is a former chairman of Amnesty International's Israeli
branch and has criticized Israel's "policies in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip."
Is Dr. Rose going to protest such a wrong
interpretation of his fight (he himself kindly promises to continue
"to collaborate with, and host, Israeli scientific
colleagues on an individual basis") on the side of Hamas and Hezbollah? I would not
hold my breath.
July
23, 2002. - ...And I shouldn't have. See the Roses' new, verbose and lame attempt to justify their despicable
action. I have written the following to letters@guardian.co.uk [needless to say,
as of August 9, it has not been published].
To
Editor:
On July
15, your newspaper published another letter from Drs. Steven and Hilary Rose,
in which they attempted to justify their call for anti-Israel boycotts,
including the unprecedented boycott of Israeli science. Not only this new
letter, replete with non-sequiturs, does not contain anything new and gives
no response to the numerous critiques of their boycott call (including those
published in The Guardian), but it also contains striking examples of the
authors' intellectual dishonesty uncommon among scientists of the Roses'
caliber.
In
particular, they finish their letter with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., which has nothing to do with the topic of the letter. Being the last
sentence, however, it creates an impression that Dr. King's views on the
topic are somehow positively associated with the Roses' position. Dr. King
did indeed express his views on Zionism and Israel, but they were
exactly opposite to the Roses'. In his words, "The times have made it
unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being
the case, the anti-Semite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his
poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews,
he is just 'anti-Zionist'!... My friend, I do not accuse you of deliberate
anti-Semitism. I know you feel, as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and
a revulsion for racism, prejudice, and discrimination. But I know you have
been misled - as others have been - into thinking you can be 'anti-Zionist'
and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share. Let
my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they
mean Jews - make no mistake about it."
Drs. Rose
object to "collective punishments" by the Israeli government, which
is trying to protect its citizens from the terror that, in proportional
terms, no other country has ever experienced and which is the terrorists'
reaction not to that government's actions but to the very existence of Israel
(Hamas, Hezbollah, and Jihad Islami do not recognize Israel's right to
exist). The Roses do not find, however, anything wrong with their own call
for the COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT - of Israeli scientists, including those (as
the recent example with the two Israeli professors has shown) who object
against their government's policies. Even if they somehow had failed to see
that obvious flaw in their boycott call, I communicated it to them before
their last letter was published (the communication also included the above
quotes from Dr. King). That failure is, therefore, another example of their
intellectual dishonesty.
July
31, 2002. - Hamas supported today the Roses' boycott
of Israeli academic institutions - by its murderous bombing of Hebrew
University. Seven killed, 86 wounded. Out of 23,000 students of this school,
5,000 are Arabs, but, like the Roses, Hamas does not care about that as long
as the Jews are harmed. "Hamas said the attack marks a change in
strategy. It will now use bombs instead of suicide bombers following Israeli
punishments against the families of suicide bombers by demolishing their
homes and exiling them to Gaza" (Jerusalem Post, August 1, 2002).
August
8, 2002. - Dr. Rose keeps trying to prove how much
he hates the Jewish state and has nothing to do with it and his "zionist
household." Today's issue of The Guardian (this newspaper seems
to have no other newsworthy items than anti-Jewish actions of antisemitic
Jews) reported of another act of intellectual terrorism against
Israel by Rose and his marginal accomplices. This time these British "writers, academics
and artists," just a week after the Hebrew University mass murder, find
nothing more pressing than "to renounce their right to Israeli residence
and citizenship in protest at Israel's 'barbaric' policies towards the
Palestinians." As if the families of the recent victims of
"Palestinians" in Israel could not wait to embrace these
collaborationists of Hamas at the Ben Gurion airport.
I remember
only one similar renunciation of the right of return to Israel - by the
members of the Soviet "Anti-Zionist Committee." This was done under
the KGB's pressure, as all other activities of that committee formed by the
Soviet Gestapo to project to the world the "Soviet Jews don't need
Israel" image. Regrettably, the British left are conditioned in antisemitism
so well that they do not need any such pressure.
One point
in The Guardian's report, however, can be viewed as a sign of movement
in the right direction and instills hope. The report's author, Steven Morris,
correctly calls the territories "disputed," instead of
commonly and wrongly used "occupied." I sincerely hope Mr. Morris
does not get punished for his deviation from The Guardian's party
line.
Andrew
Wilkie's "huge problem"
"It
must have been June 1996 when the telephone rang. It was David Shapiro, at
that time the Executive Secretary of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics."
This is a quote from an online article by Andrew Wilkie (awilkie@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk),
an Oxford professor and a world-renowned expert in the molecular genetics of
skeletal malformations. Continues Dr. Wilkie, "Would I like to join a
working party to examine the ethical issues raised by genetic research into
mental disorders?... David reassured me that it would not be onerous. Having
slept on it, I agreed to join."
As it has
just become clear, not only ethical issues were not onerous for Dr. Wilkie,
David Shapiro successfully passed another test of Dr. Wilkie's: he was not an
Israeli. Other people were not as lucky. To wit, Dr. Wilkie has recently received
an application from a PhD candidate for working in his lab. The candidate was
an Israeli. Below is Dr. Wilkie's response, laconic but rich in content, as
befits a true intellectual. The esteemed professor succeeds in expressing his
righteous anger regarding how the Israelis exploit their
"treatment" in the Holocaust to grossly abuse "the
Palestinians'" rights just because these victims of abuse want to live
in their own country. He does not enter into any unpleasant detail as to what
abuses and what exactly country are meant, or how he knows what they
wish. He keeps his style in further communication.
-------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Wilkie" <awilkie@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk>
To: "Amit Duvshani" <duvshani@post.tau.ac.il>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: PhD application
Dear Amit Duvshani,
Thank you for contacting me, but I don't think this would work. I have a
huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from
their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human
rights abuses on the Palestinians because the (the Palestinians) wish to
live in their own country.
I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would
I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army. As you may be aware,
I am not the only UK scientist with these views but I'm sure you will find
another suitable lab if you look around.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Wilkie
_______________________________
Like other
people who received this incredible information about UK scientists, I wanted
to verify it and clarify Dr. Wilkie's position. The below exchange followed.
MV:
Dr.
Wilkie:
I have been forwarded an email indicating that you refused to accept an
Israeli candidate for a PhD program because he had served in the Israeli
army. This basis for your refusal, if true, would render virtually all
Israeli citizens ineligible for your collaboration with them, as military
service is mandatory in Israel. I'd greatly appreciate your letting me know
if this information is accurate, and, if so, whether there are any other
countries you exclude from your scientific contacts.
_____________________
Dr.
Wilkie replies:
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 4:45
PM
Subject: Re: international
collaboration
Please
find attached my unreserved apology for what I have done. I was wrong.
Please feel free to circulate this letter.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Wilkie
__________
The text of the letter
(Oxford University press-release):
27 June 2003
Comments by Professor Andrew Wilkie
A
spokesperson for the University of Oxford said:
"Our staff
may hold strongly felt personal opinions. Freedom of expression is a
fundamental tenet of University life, but under no circumstances are we
prepared to accept or condone conduct that appears to, or does, discriminate
against anyone on grounds of ethnicity or nationality, whether directly or
indirectly. This candidate is entitled to submit an application and to have
it dealt with fairly according to our normal criteria.
"Professor
Wilkie has issued a personal apology regarding remarks he made by e mail to
an applicant for a research degree at Oxford. An immediate and thorough
investigation of this matter is now being carried out in accordance with the
University’s procedures and a report will be presented to the Vice-Chancellor
next week."
Note to
editors:
The full
text of Professor Wilkie’s apology is:
"I
recognise and apologise for any distress caused by my e mail of 23 June and
the wholly inappropriate expression of my personal opinions in that document.
I was not speaking on behalf of Oxford University or any of its constituent
parts. I entirely accept the University of Oxford’s Equal Opportunities and
Race Equality policies."
________________________
MV
replies:
Dr.
Wilkie,
I'd greatly appreciate receiving your response to the questions in my
previous message. As for your apology, it does not appear to be
satisfactory, since it is for the "inappropriate expression" of
your
personal opinions, not for the opinions you expressed. Which is probably
honest if you do hold them, but then your stated acceptance of Oxford's
anti-discrimination policies is not. Your apology leaves an impression that,
given an opportunity, you'd find a more appropriate expression of the same
opinions.
__________________
Dr Wilkie replies:
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 8:55
PM
Subject: Re: international
collaboration
As I said before,
my actions were wrong and I apologise.
Andrew Wilkie
___________________________________
In my
opinion, this repeated apology indicates that Dr. Wilkie regrets his
sincerity rather than his discrimination of Israelis based on their
nationality. It is for Oxford University to decide whether he is compliant
with its policies, which go against abhorrent "personal opinions"
held by the University's faculty and, as Dr. Wilkie intimated, by other UK
scientists. I could not find the anonymous press-release anywhere on the University of Oxford
home page.
June 28, 2003
________________________________
June
29, 2003.
The press-release has just appeared there, dated June 27, under a nondescript title,
"Comments by Professor Andrew Wilkie." In addition, Ha'aretz
published this story
today.
July 2,
2003.
The story made its way to The NY Times today.
________________________________
August
28, 2003.
I found out that Dr. Wilkie was slated to be one of the two invited speakers
at the annual meeting of the Society of Craniofacial Genetics and wrote the
following letter President of the Society, Dr. Boyadjiev-Boyd:
Dear Dr. Boyadjiev:
It has come to my attention that one of the keynote speakers at the
forthcoming meeting of the Society of Craniofacial Genetics is slated to be
Dr. Andrew Wilkie. Scientific achievements of Dr. Wilkie's notwithstanding,
his behavior as a scientist can hardly be considered exemplary. Dr. Wilkie is
currently under a disciplinary investigation at Oxford for rejecting a
graduate student based on his nationality. The University's press-release (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/wilkie2.shtml)
states, "The University of Oxford is appalled that any member of its
staff should have responded to an inquiry from a potential graduate student
in the terms in which Professor Wilkie (Nuffield Professor of Pathology)
emailed Amit Duvshani on 23 June. A thorough investigation began as soon as
the University became aware of this correspondence. Based on the information
that was collected during this process, and in the light of all the
circumstances, particularly the importance attached by the University to fair
processes of selection, the Vice-Chancellor, Sir Colin Lucas, has taken the
view that this matter should be referred for consideration by the
University's disciplinary panel for academic staff, known as the Visitatorial
Board. While the matter is under consideration by the Board, Professor Wilkie
will not be taking part in the selection of any members of staff or students.
The Visitatorial Board has power to recommend warnings or dismissal or
removal from office." Dr. Wilkie's apology (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/wilkie.shtml),
issued by him when the matter became known to Oxford authorities, indicates
that he regrets his sincerity in expressing his opinions rather than the
opinions themselves.
Dr. Wilkie's fame as a researcher is rivaled by his notoriety as a bigot,
now that the story has become known to the general public from such a widely
read source as The New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/02/international/middleeast/02ACAD.html).
Considering the seriousness of Dr. Wilkie's offense, his selection as an
invited speaker is puzzling, the more so as it may be perceived as the
Society's approval and support of his behavior. In addition to the grave
ethical concerns this would certainly raise, it hardly serves the purposes of
the Society, whose existence, as you note in your presidential message of
April 15, 2003, is threatened "due to its shrinking popularity and low
membership." Withdrawal of the invitation appears to be an appropriate
reaction of the Society to Dr. Wilkie's abhorrent "personal
opinions." I hope you will support this request.
Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.
Dr. Boyd
responded with understanding of this position. Dr. Wilkie, who had been
invited to the conference before the events under consideration, would not be
a speaker at the conference that took place on Nov 4, 2003 (perhaps
unrelated to this letter).
_________________________________
October
28, 2003.
As a punishment, Oxford suspended Wilkie for two months and required him
"to undergo further equal opportunities training" (news-release).
Pembroke College announced that, "in the light of the ruling by the University
of Oxford announced today, Professor Wilkie offered his resignation as a
Fellow of the College and as a member of its Governing Body. This has been
accepted by the Governing Body of the College. Professor Wilkie's resignation
takes immediate effect."
The Palestinian misnomer
The words
“Palestine” and “Palestinians” have become household terms referring to the
Arab population of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip. This
meaning is planned to be codified in the name of the possible future Arab
state discussed between the PLO and Israel. The adoption of this terminology
as official, however, would be a mistake contradicting history and
perpetuating dangerous falsehoods. This argument is based upon well-known
facts that have long been textbook material.
The
term “Palestine” was introduced by the Romans in the 2nd century CE in their attempt
to eradicate all traces of the Jewish existence in Eretz Israel, the Land of
Israel. The name was derived from the Hebrew name of Philistines (plishtim),
long since defeated and extinct enemies of the Jews, who 3200 years ago
occupied a small piece of land between Tel Aviv and Gaza. “Palestine” (Syria
Palaestina) was to replace the name “Judaea,” after the last Judean war
where the Roman troops, vastly superior in number and weapons, had been
repeatedly defeated until all the resources of the Jews were exhausted. The
name of Jerusalem was to be replaced by “Aelia Capitolina,” which,
fortunately, has never become part of common language. The term “Palestine,”
whose official use ceased after Romans, would, however, be revived to
designate the area mandated to Great
Britain by the League of Nations as a consequence of the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Mandatory Palestine included the territory both to the east and to the west
of the Jordan River—contemporary Jordan (formerly Transjordan) and Israel.
The British were charged with “placing the country under such political,
administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of
the Jewish national home.”
After
the British had decided to create the emirate of Transjordan—the Arab
state in Palestine “across the Jordan river,” —they reneged on the
promise to the Jews that was contained in the original mandate where “recognition
has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with
Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that
country.”
In
September 1922, merely two months after that text was confirmed by the League
of Nations, the British used the clause of the mandate that allowed them, “[i]n
the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of
Palestine as ultimately determined,” to “postpone or withhold
application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider
inapplicable to the existing local conditions,” and made the area to the
east of the Jordan (three quarters of mandatory Palestine) off-limits to
Jewish immigration. In the years that followed, up to the very establishment
of the state of Israel, they also restricted Jewish immigration to western
Palestine and made it virtually impossible by World War II.
Thus,
according to the definitions in existence, be it the Roman one or the pre-
and post-Transjordan ones, the territory described by the term “Palestine”
includes either Israel, or both Israel and Jordan. Therefore, calling the
future possible Arab state “Palestine” would imply either a nonexistent
definition of the term or that the state of “Palestine” has not yet reached
its actual borders, incorporating at least Israel (click here to see the official confirmation) or both Israel and
Jordan. The latter interpretation is more likely, because the Palestine
Liberation Organization, under the putative head of the future state, Arafat,
has attempted to “liberate” both Israel and Jordan. This
interpretation is also consistent with the Palestinian National Charter
(1968), Article 2, which states that “Palestine, with the boundaries it
had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.” Also
likely, he will make another “liberation” attempt, if, and when, the second
Arab state in Palestine is established—contrary to history, logic, and
justice. Similarly, “Palestinians” as the term to use for the future citizens
of this state is a misnomer with equally wrong implications. Moreover, this
term has been used to denote Jews living in Palestine as opposed to
those living in the diaspora. Arabs started applying this term to themselves
only after the establishment of Israel, when their stated goal became, as it
had been for Romans, the elimination of Jews from “Filastyn” (the Arabic
version of the word). People to whom it is applied are those who left
the newborn state of Israel. Some of them followed their leaders’ calls to
leave and promises that they would get everything after the Jews are drowned
in the sea. Some feared that victorious Jews would do to them what they,
guided by people like the Jerusalem mufti Amin
al-Husseini, a personal friend of Hitler’s and Arafat’s predecessor in
the role of the "leader of the Palestinian people," intended to do
to Jews. They are still kept in the limbo of "refugee camps" by
their Arab brethren as pawns in their leaders’ cruel game, breeding hatred and terror [more].
There, of course, would be no refugees—and what is now wrongly termed
“Palestinians”—if the Arab armies did not attack Israel in 1948 and lose. Nor
there would be any refugees if the numerous Arab states absorbed them, as
Israel did with no less the number of Jewish refugees from Arab
countries—with no compensation from the latter.
As
John Stewart Mill noted, “the tendency has always been strong that whatever
received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence
of its own.” The use of the term “Palestinians” to denote Arabs is
either a misleading abbreviation for “Palestinian Arabs” (which would then
include the Arabs of Israel and Jordan), or an attempt to reify a nonexistent
entity.
March
2001
Note: useful historical
information on the Palestine and related issues can be found on the Web,
e.g., http://www.palestinefacts.org,
and http://jewishinternetassociation.org.
9-11: Tears or fury?
One of the
reasons why the New York mayor Rudy Jiuliani has become “America’s mayor” in
the aftermath of 9-11 is his unsentimental, business-like approach to the
critical situation. People do like that approach by their leaders under
extreme conditions, when they need reliable guidance and hope for success in
coping with disasters. Albeit the emotions of grief, desperation and fear are
human and expected under such conditions, the leaders may not be governed by
them because this will be translated into their government of the people. The
opposite emotions, however,— like Jiuliani’s cold fury, with which he
returned the $10 million check to a Saudi prince who dared to make an
impertinent remark regarding American actions—are not only welcome, but
desirable as they are associated with strength and self-confidence.
This is why it
seems that the approach generally undertaken by the American administration
leaves much to be desired. On this day, a year after the fanatic
Muslim—predominantly Saudi—attack on the American soil, it seems that the
affect expressed by the administration as well as the American media has
largely been that of teary frustration and pain, not unlike the “why me?”
feelings experienced and expressed by anybody in grief. There has been little
anger, let alone fury, in words or facial expressions of the nation’s
leadership; instead, there is a lot of solemnity, quivering lips,
and—especially initially—calls for reconciliation with Islam that was
translated by the President as “peace” instead of “submission.” The mighty
thunder of the only great power left on Earth, which all terrorists in the
world—from Arafat who donated his poisonous blood to injured Americans, to
Saudi financiers of terror—braced themselves for, has never come. The
mosques, planted in the US and everywhere in the world by the Saudis to teach
hatred in preparation for the whole world to become Dar-ul-Islam, the “abode
of Islam,” are still churning out brain-washed fanatics ready to die while
killing unnumbered “kaffirs” regardless of their age and sex. Arafat has just
recently become undesired in the administration’s eyes, but still remains the
“leader of the Palestinian people” instead of being recategorized into the
oldest living terror chieftain. The “Palestinian” state is still discussed as
a desirable goal, while the majority of its potential citizens support
continued murder of innocent Israelis. The administration is still trying to
convince Arabs that they should support an attack against Iraq, while even its
European continental allies, faithful to their familiar tactic of appeasing
the murderer, deny their support. And American airlines, ready to risk
passengers’ lives in fear of offending “Middle Eastern” guests, waste the
effort of their security personnel, incompetent as it is, on checking the
underwear of grandmothers in wheelchairs for explosive nail clippers they
could hide there.
The somber mood
dominating this day needs to be changed into cold determination guided by
moral clarity. While we are flying flags and erecting memorials, the
terror-supporting regimes of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon need
to be treated in accordance with what used to be called the Bush doctrine,
but is hardly ever repeated anymore: “[e]very nation, in every region, now
has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or
support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
Without such regimes’ support, terror will crumble. The barbaric and corrupt
governments of these countries with their horrible ideology will likely also
crumble to open these countries to the civilized world. Like it was with
communism, which had been considered unshakeable by its US experts, and with
Afghanistan freed from the Taliban, the whole world will benefit from that. I
remember the song that inspired the people in what was then the Soviet Union
in their fight against Hitler’s hordes: “Rise, the giant country, rise for the
mortal fight!.. Let the noble fury rage…”
September 11, 2002
Peace-mongering as disease
treatment
To
successfully treat a disease, one needs to know its etiology, its causes.
Palliatives like treating symptoms sometimes help, but assuming wrong causes
is dangerous and, if the disease is life-threatening, potentially lethal.
Diseases of humanity such as international conflicts require even more exact
knowledge and are even less tolerant to mistakes as they are potentially
lethal to enormous masses of people, if not to humankind in its totality.
Fortunately, in contrast to the frequently intractable etiologies of human
diseases and confusion between causes and effects, the causes of
international conflicts, however complex, often need only an unbiased list of
historical facts to be revealed and differentiated from their effects.
It
is thus very sad to listen to professional peace-mongers like former senator
Mitchell, who, interviewed on Fox News, insists, neglecting textbook truths,
that the problem of the Middle East is not Saddam but the
“Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The conflict implied is between Arabs who
currently live under Israeli “occupation” in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and,
supposedly, only wish to create an ethnically cleansed, Judenrein, state in
those territories, and evil Israelis who do not allow that. Never mind the
fact that there were neither Palestinians who wanted a state of their own in
the “occupied territories” nor the “occupied territories” themselves until
1967. That is, the territories in question, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, had been
then illegally occupied as a result of a war of aggression, but by Jordan
(which renamed Judea and Samaria the West Bank), and Egypt. Israel holds
these territories since 1967, having captured them in a defensive war, which
makes these territories disputed rather than “occupied” (see in-depth analysis by Dore
Gold.) The Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1965—before any
Israeli “occupation.” The goal of the PLO was, and still is—its ruling Charter
has never been rewritten,— “liberation” of the whole territory that used to
be Mandatory Palestine, which includes Israel and Jordan (see Article 2 of
the Charter).
Saddam
is not the whole universe of the causes of ongoing tragedies in that part of
the world. Would not it be parsimonious, however, to suppose that if any
conflict in that area involving Israel had existed before 1967, the conflict
that immediately followed 1967, involving the same sides, would be the same?
Namely, isn’t it clear that, were it not for the Arab states’ refusal to have
Israel, the Jewish state, in their midst, there would be no 1948-49 war, no
Palestinian refugees, no Six-Day War, no “occupied territories,” and—most
likely—no “Palestinian” nation? There would be no “Jewish settlers,” just as
there are none in Eastern Palestine currently called Jordan—as per a fascist,
racist clause in that “moderate” Arab state’s nationality law (1954) that
allows no Jew to become its citizen. (Arab settlers in Israel are Israeli
citizens represented in the Knesset). No UN resolution, however, was ever
proposed to equalize Islam(ism) with racism, and no outcry has been heard
regarding the rights of religious minorities in Saudi Arabia. "Voices of moderation" invariably
call for territorial losses for Israel, hardly ever asking of Arabs anything
more than words (whose meaning radically changes when spoken in Arabic).
There is, however, no logically sound explanation why Israel, or anybody
calling himself Israel's ally, would be willing to create another Arab state,
side by side with Israel. States are not created just because a compact group
of a certain ethnicity happens to reside in a certain territory.
Israel has absorbed a population of Jewish refugees
from Arab countries that is about equal to that of the so-called “Palestinian
refugees” and immensely larger per capita of Israel’s population. There is no
sound reason why Palestinian Arabs should not be accepted as citizens by the
surrounding twenty-one Arab states, from whose citizens they do not differ in
any meaningful respect and from where their majority originally came. There
is no other reason why the Palestinian refugee population has not been
absorbed by these countries but their decision to cultivate its hatred for
Israel, whose right to exist they have never accepted. Conceivably, Israel as
a democratic multinational state could have them as her citizens, and, in
fact, extended this offer to Arabs when she was created, but to have now a
huge mass of people who have sworn hatred of Israel join her population would
be suicidal. Needless to say, hating the Zionist state so much, their only
motivation in joining it would be their hope to destroy it. Israel must
insist on being Jewish state because Arab irredentism continues unabated and
is built in the Islamic ideology. There is also no sound reason why Israel's
ancient capital—the capital of the existing state—should be turned over
to any newly created state to become its capital, and the Arab demand for
this indicates no goodwill either.
Isn’t
it thus clear that there is no “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict, nor is there
even an Arab-Israeli conflict, but there is instead a continued and
unremitting morbid hatred of the Arab and Muslim states toward Israel,
predating even the creation of that state? Isn’t it therefore clear that an
attempt to treat this disease by giving in, forcing Israel to give up any
territory in response to nothing but continued terror, creating another
hatred-based and hatred-fomenting Arab state, led by the PLO, a clique of
life-long professional terrorists, is not going to cure it but rather would
expand the lesion? Unless, that is, this will finally be the end of the
Jewish state, which has always been the goal of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization—after all, this is what “liberation” meant and still means in
that name. Isn’t it also clear that Bush’s offering Arabs “a vision of two
states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security” in
the same speech that reports on the progress in the
war against a source of terror is not only a non-sequitur, but a misguided
attempt to reward another source of terror, the PLO, and punish its enemy,
Israel? It is possible that a state leader’s policy can be sometimes guided
by visions, but those visions must have firm foundations in reality,
otherwise they are mirages. President Bush’s vision of peace and security is
a mirage, even if only because the overwhelming majority of the future
citizens of “Palestine” support suicide terror against Israel. They also, not
surprisingly, support the President’s own enemies, Saddam and Osama, who they
call “beloved.”
Saddam
is not the universe of causes of the Middle East tragedies. Moreover, he is
rather an effect, an eruption of the same pathological process that manifests
in the “Arab-Israeli” conflict, in the creation of other megalomaniacal
dictators like Qaddafi, Nasser, and the Assads, or fascist kingdoms like
Saudi Arabia, and in the backwardness, endless bloody civil and interstate
wars, and terror as one of the main domestic and exported products of the
Arab world. It is no accident that a mass murderer like Osama is worshiped in
that world, and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a forgery that was
loved by Hitler, is a #1 bestseller in the Arab countries. It is also no
accident that a movie based on this book is produced and shown on the main
Islamic holiday, prime-time, on the state-owned TV, in Egypt, the most
moderate Arab state (judging by its “diplomatic” relations with Israel, which
are paid for annually by $2 billion of American help to Egypt).
The
causes of this festering pathological process are grounded in centuries of
oppressive and xenophobic ideological indoctrination and regimes reflecting
the power structure peculiar to Islamic countries. Dictators and kings ruling
these countries do not come from outer space. A direct line can be drawn from
the family system, in which Islam codifies absolute submission to the rule of
man, to the tribal system to the state system, which is invariably centered
around a dictator or, if he gets lucky and happens to be born at a right
historic time, an absolute monarch. Lacking blood relations that protect a
patriarchal family structure, a dictator has to protect himself with an army,
which is, in turn, prone to look outward for enemies, thereby also feeding
ambitions of the ruler and perceptions of his strength. The ambitions tend to
grow, both as self-rewarding indicators of strength and potency and to
prevent taking over by competitors, who try to project even greater strength
and thus claims to power by ever louder threats directed at a common enemy.
These enemies have changed throughout centuries, but there have always been,
since Islam’s birth, constant common ones—Jews and Crusaders, People of the
Book. It does not matter much whether Saddam, Assad or Arafat are secular
dictators as long as they choose the same traditional enemies and invoke
their Islamic heritage and its inherent ideological systems on the
need-to-use basis. To award any of these dictators with any perceived gains
is to feed their power base, strengthening the need for further gains. This
is why Arafat left the negotiation table upon receiving the most spectacular
offer of his whole career of a gangster chieftain. Receiving it endowed him
with enormous strength on a par with state rulers. Accepting it would, among
other things, deprive him of his and other competing groups’ “best”
traditional enemy, which would greatly benefit those groups while greatly
inconveniencing him. Hence, walking out and exercising the newly gained
strength by raising an unprecedented wave of terror.
The
United States should be aware that in the part of the world where this
country’s citizens are considered Jews and Crusaders goodwill offers have no
redeeming value and only lead to more demands. It is especially dangerous if
Crusaders are perceived as selling off Jews, which would inevitably happen as
it rings a very familiar bell. Pressure on Israel—in order to get on the good
side of Arabs—will lead to an increase in Arab terror against both Israel and
the West, negating any achievements made in the Iraqi war in the standing of
the West from the position of force. Peace-mongering and attempts to impose
“road maps” leading to creation of another terrorist state will lead to greater
wars, as Middle East dictators will erupt with vying for regional power by
attacking an ostensibly weakened enemy.
March 30, 2003
Sharing the Holy Land
President
Bush has declared that "the Holy Land must be shared between the state
of Palestine and the state of Israel, living in peace with each other, and
with every nation of the Middle East." Perhaps nobody among his
immediate circle can remind the President that the one and only reason why
that land is holy is because it was promised by God - to Jews. The heart of
that Promised and Holy Land is what Jordanians, who illegally occupied it in
1949-1967, renamed into the "West Bank" -Judea and Samaria. This
heart the President feels authorized to cut from the Land of Israel and hand
over to Arabs, whose only claim to it is contained in their worthless promise
of taking vacation from some of their everyday terror acts.
The very notion of "Palestine" was invented by the Romans in order
to replace the land's real name, Judea, and thus eradicate its connection to
Jews - along with its holiness. It is therefore offensive to Jews, just as it
should be to Christians - the President included, - whose concept of this
land's holiness is founded in the Temple rather than in the al-Aqsa mosque
that currently occupies the Temple Mount and is a namesake of a group of
suicidal mass murderers. The word historically denotes the whole territory on
the east (Jordan) and west of the Jordan River (including Israel). Neither
the chief terrorist Arafat nor his deputy Abbas have repudiated the
Palestinian National Charter, which calls for that whole land to be Judenfrei
(as Jordan is, by its nationality law).
The
President should check whether his "vision" of two states living
side by side is not an illusion based on misconceptions and wishful thinking.
The future 22nd Arab state, with which he plans to replace the Holy Land,
with its government of the terrorists, by the terrorists, and for the
terrorists, will have nothing in common with his aspirations.
June
5, 2003
Troubled President
President
Bush has informed the public that he is "troubled" by the
recent Israeli attack on Rantisi and regrets the loss of innocent life.
He is also "concerned the attacks make it more difficult for the
Palestinian leadership to fight off terrorist attacks." He
probably does not see that this "concern" may be perceived as
justification for Abbas's inaction. What is really troubling, however,
is that this language of the State Department has not changed since
before the war in Iraq. It should have, because it has become even more
cynical in the aftermath of the war.
The
president had no trouble sending an army equipped with everything short
of nukes to attack a country that had never been any threat to the US
nor had attacked it in any shape or form, just because that country -
maybe - had some sort of a still unproven WMD program. Neither did the
President have any trouble recognizing that the war would lead to an
immense loss of innocent life (which is still uncounted) or make any
peace process more difficult because of the opposition of the Arab
states to that war. Nor was he troubled by the refusal of the
"Palestinian leadership" to engage in anything more
than ceasefire negotiations with terrorist groups, or by Rantisi's calls
for genocide against Jews, by his leadership in the murderous campaign
against Israeli civilians, and his refusal to even discuss ceasefire
with Abbas.
It is
hard to understand why the President thinks that the Israeli blood
is cheaper than American when it comes to fighting terror. It is
impossible to share his "vision of two states living side by
side," when it is clear that his vision is obscured by double
standards and his readiness to sacrifice as many Jews as he deems necessary
to pave the road to that mirage.
June 11, 2003 (just before the
Jerusalem bus bombing by Hamas)
P.S.
June 22, 2003.
No wonder Powell parroted Bush today, "regretting" the elimination
of another murderer, Abdullah Kawasmeh, a leader of Hamas, declared by Powell
himself "enemy of peace." This is on the day the US Army made
another attempt to kill Saddam and his sons by incinerating a convoy of
vehicles, knowing only "that the convoy was tied to former Iraqi
officials" (see CNN report). There is no end to the State Department's
hypocrisy.
Occupiers and natives
I was invited to celebrate
Independence Day by a nice American couple. Almost everybody there, with a
rare Canadian exception, was a US-born American citizen. I would like to
emphasize this ''US-born,'' the point close to the root of the problems
discussed here.
As
usual, where a group of Jews is gathered, the conversation turned to Israel.
I had known that the hosts were staunch liberals. For this reason, and
because of the traditional voting pattern, I expected everybody to be a
Democrat (which I, increasingly reluctantly, was myself). Unexpected,
however, were the opinions regarding Middle East conflicts. First, even
though, according to the polls, support for the Iraq war is the same among
Jews as in the rest of the population, in this highly educated group it was
scarce. More dramatic, it was even scarcer for Israel. There was little time
left to find out why exactly, but two main points were clear:
Israel was considered a cruel occupying power, and Arabs were unreservedly
viewed as the suffering party.
I
do not need to go into the much discussed issue of why Israel's rule in the
disputed territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza is not occupation - an
interested reader is referred to the in-depth and definitive treatment of
this issue by Eugene Rostow (former Under Secretary of State for
Political Affairs, 1966-1969, and one of the drafters of UNSC Resolution 242)
and Dore Gold.
Jews have full legal right to live anywhere in these territories - the same
as the right to live in Tel Aviv or Haifa. Clearly, however, the pro-Arab
propaganda, operating with lies and distortions, has suppressed the influence
of any objective information. Indeed, the human mind is selective in its
information processing. It assimilates better what goes along with a
pre-existing perspective (which, if not based on objective knowledge, is
called prejudice), and, within the time limits afforded, can absorb only a
limited amount. This is why the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat,
can comfortably lie about "500 victims" of the Israeli operation in
Jenin, perfectly knowing that this lie will be disproved. He does not care
about his credibility - he knows he has none. What matters to him as an
experienced disciple of Goebbels is that this abhorrent misinformation is
thunderously amplified by the media and fills the limited information space,
feeding on old prejudices and supplanting truth, just as poisonous carbon
monoxide supplants oxygen in the blood. This means that even if an equal
amount of truth were to follow, it would be inadequate to set the record
straight.
Any
truth, however, is hardly forthcoming from major media sources, whose
reporting standards have been hopelessly compromised by outright fraud
compounded by anti-Israel bias. Nobody is surprised any longer that The
New York Times published that photograph of a bloodied Jewish youth, Tuvia Grossman,
protected from the Arab mob by a vicious-looking Israeli policeman – with the
title “An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount” - and this
is on the clearly seen background of a gas station (see Mr. Grossman's own account of that lynch attempt). The pro-Arab bias of the
BBC reaches the level that is no longer tolerable even for the British
government, when this government-funded medium suggests that Iraqi lives are
more endangered now than they were under Saddam (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13753-2003Jul5.html).
BBC’s reporting in Israel has deserved its comparison with another notorious
media source, Nazi “Der Stuermer,” which incited Germans to genocide (http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAWJW9PJHD.html).
The
gross distortion of truth about Israel is promoted, as it was regarding
Jews in Nazi Germany, by a distinct group of intellectuals, whose left,
right, Muslim, socialist and other platforms converge on one point – their otherwise
covert or overt Jew-hatred. The difference from the Nazi situation is
two-fold. First, as Martin Luther King incisively commented, “The times have
made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews.”
Second, the left were themselves persecuted by Hitler, so that they had
little chance to join him in his genocidal effort. The same is true about
Jew-haters among the Jews themselves, whose participation in Nazi crimes was
limited to the few collaborationists who served in Judenrats (ghetto
councils) and ghetto police. The times of war usually polarize people’s
positions, and gradations in politically charged opinions become less likely.
Nowadays, in what we – erroneously - perceive as peace, the Jewish opponents
of Israel vary in shades from disliking the thought that they may be
identified with whatever antisemitic/anti-Israel stereotypes and prejudice
the Gentile population may entertain (which in Steven
Rose's case extends to disliking the source of his misfortune of being
born Jewish – his parents) to acting as a supporter of the mass murderers of
Jews. These supporters, the contemporary candidates for the ghetto police and
Auschwitz kapo jobs, include, but are not limited to, Stanley Cohen, the narcissistic Hamas attorney paid from
the money this terrorist group gets from Saudis for murdering Jewish babies,
and the Jewish members of the International
Solidarity Movement who "recognize the Palestinian right to resist
Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle".
Regardless
of psychological and historical roots of anti-Israelism (have I just coined a
term for a variety of good old antisemitism?), the result is the same – the
unshakeable belief that Israel is illegitimate and occupies the land whose
natives – Arabs – have been treated as (or more) unjustly as were American
Indians. The peculiar interweaving of these roots has resulted in the
cancellation of a simple truth that the natives in the Land of Israel
are Jews. Arabs are invaders or, at best, settlers, just
as, before them, were Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and whoever else
tortured the Holy Land. The only difference from other invaders is that Arabs
have never even ruled over “Palestine,” except when 80% of it was cut off by
the British in 1921 and handed over to their puppet Abdullah bin Husayn for
his service as his fiefdom. It is ironic that the emirate, and later kingdom,
where Jews have been prohibited by law from settling, was given a Jewish name
– the name of the Jordan river.
The
Jewish presence in the whole of the Land of Israel has never been
interrupted, despite all efforts of invaders. But even in places where it
was, as it happened in Hevron (Hebron) after Arab pogroms inspired by the
Nazi mufti Amin al-Husseini, this does not make invaders natives - just as
nobody would think of white New Yorkers as Native Americans, even though the
tribes who used to live on Manhattan may not even exist anymore. Being
US-born, even in several generations, does not make you a native of the land.
The difference in the perception of “nativeness” is all the more striking
considering that Indians left no cities on Manhattan, whereas the
“Palestinian” city of Hevron, under this very name, was the first capital of
Israel under King David, when nobody had even heard of Arabs. The tombs of
the Jewish patriarchs are there, in the place bought by Abraham. That Jews
could come and worship there again only after the Six Day War, after 700
years of prohibition under Muslim “tolerant” rule, had not made the cave of
Machpelah Arab. It is the Jewish names under which this land is known to all
humanity, despite all efforts to rename Hevron into al-Khalil, Jerusalem into
Aelia Capitolina (Romans) or al-Quds (Arabs), and the whole land into Syria
Palaestina (Romans), Palestine (British), or Filastiniya (Arabs). No
Orwellian effort to rewrite history can change the fact that Yerushalayim
(Jerusalem) has been the capital of the Jewish - and no other - State since
King David. Hevron is located in Judean Hills, Judea, the land of Jews.
July
19, 2003
Self-destruction
Israel
is in the self-destruct mode. It ignores the fact that, electing Hamas, the
whole population of Palestinian Arabs has, at last, come in the open as
Israel's sworn enemy. Israel destroys Jewish homes built on the land the enemy wants.
It has bought into the pompous phraseology of world politics, having
forgotten that the world couldn't care less about the existence of the Jewish
state, just as it did not care in 1948, 1967, or 1973.
Israel
may seem to have lived without a war since then, but it has not. The war has
merely changed. And Israel's self-destruct mode that led to the Yom Kippur
war - wishful thinking and arrogance - has been turned on again, helping the
enemy. Only this time, instead of helping by inaction - despite all the obvious
signs of the coming enemy attack, - it is helping the enemy by action. This
time, it is not passive help before the war - it is active help during the
war.
If
the world wakes up tomorrow and finds out that the entire population of
Israel - merely the size of a city, about the same number as in the Holocaust
- is annihilated, what will it do? Build another Holocaust museum and buy
more oil from the murderers? Will the world say it did not know, as if Iran
and its appendages, Hamas and Hizballah, kept their plans secret? Will
it continue finding justification for the murder of Jews in the poverty of
Arabs, their 'humiliation', and the inefficiency of their governments? Will
the UN Secretary General apologize to the speechless Diaspora Jews for another
failure to prevent genocide? - That is, if the UN, after long discussions and
threats of veto by Russia and China, decides that it was indeed genocide
rather than a successful - finally! - 'intifada.' It won't matter, however,
what the world will do, because it will mean the end of civilization. Not
'civilization as we know it,' but the complete end. Not because the world
cannot survive without another 6 million Jews - it has proven it can the
first time around, - but because the civilization will not be able to sustain
the level of cynicism, doublespeak and open lies that will be necessary to
continue dealing with the victorious Islam. The Western civilization will
collapse, because no moral axioms that make up its foundation will hold any
longer.
But
even if Iran and its Arab allies do not manage to wipe Israel off the map, as
they have promised so many times, Israel's government has started doing their
work for them, like the ghetto Judenrats of the past. Accepting ethnic
cleansing, rendering the land of Israel Judenrein without even a token of quid
pro quo, universally perceived as a victory of Islam - this tells the
world that the Jews no longer feel they are entitled to hold on to the land. And
the world tells the Jews, we don't feel that either, if you don't. The
Muslims supply the world economy with its blood - oil, and spill the world's
own blood when they are angry - what can the Jews show for themselves?
Their brains, which, despite the Holocaust, have produced 20% of Nobel
prizes? But the brains are portable, as is, clearly, their homeland. Why
irritate 1.3 billion Muslims with this sore stuck smack in their midst, when
Jews do not want to hold on to the land they have the same
degree of legitimacy for possessing as they do for Tel Aviv?
The
US State Department, which does not want to irritate its Muslim 'allies' and
currently defines Israeli politics, is traditionally pro-Arab. It is also
grossly incompetent, having been incapable to even predict the terrorist
election outcome in the terrorist-admiring population. This incompetence is
also traditional. The same people, including the great Sovietologist, Dr. Rice,
were as incapable of foreseeing the collapse of the Soviet Union right
before it happened, and had spawned the despicable policy of détente that
propped the dying Soviet regime. The US could afford that, because the Soviet
Union was not a mortal threat to the US - not with assured mutual
annihilation that neither wanted.
Israel
cannot afford propping the terrorist Hamas-Fatah regime, because that serves
this regime's avowed goal of Israel's annihilation. Any Israeli action that
would be formerly considered part of the illusory "peace
process" - upon the Arabs' electing the openly murderous Hamas,
such action has turned into aiding and abetting the Hamas's goal. When Israel
conducts the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and Judea, breaking skulls of Jewish children, it sides against
itself and with the murderers. Israel may not survive this kind of
self-destruction. As a consequence, the world will not.
2/4/06
Book reviews
Peters, J. From
Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.
J K A P Pubns, 2001.
This
book is a systematic fact-based account and debunking of pervasive myths
regarding the relationships between Arabs, Jews, and "Palestine." Joan
Peters competently and unambiguously exposes, in particular, a facet of Arab
history that is a series of invasions into the prosperous Jewish lands, from
Medina in Arabia, first populated by Jews-to the "land of milk and
honey," followed by the persecution, extermination and displacement of
Jews and the conversion of the lands into desolation and desert. The robbery
of the territory - including that with the help of the British who gave 80%
of historic Palestine to Arabs to form Trans-Jordan (Jordan) - still
continues in the creation and reification of the mythic notion of Arab
"Palestinians" as the native population of ...
"Palestine," which population is thus naturally entitled to what is
left of that land. This is despite the facts that the only state that has
ever existed on that territory is Jewish, Arabs ruled that territory (and
Arabs in general) only for decades under Omayyads in 7-8th centuries CE, Jews
have had an uninterrupted presence there in defiance of continuous Arab and
Christian violence, and the overwhelming majority of Arabs came there
recently from surrounding countries on the heels of Jewish repatriation that
provided jobs for them. The territorial robbery by Arabs was preceded by and
further extended into the robbery of ideas and Orwellian attempts to displace
Jewish and Christian history, with the immediate distortion of these ideas to
fit the mentality of the plunderer - subjugation of non-Muslims
("dhimmis"), women, and - a logical development - their own
peasants and subjects. This system for its maintenance has required constant
invention of an external enemy, for which Jews and the West in general are
convenient and traditional targets. This is a system of continuous warfare -
and war, as Mohammed said, "is deception." It is this deception
that is exposed and destroyed by "From Time Immemorial."
February 2002
Friedman,
T.L. From Beirut to Jerusalem (Updated with a New Chapter). Anchor,
1990.
The
book attempts to compensate the lack of depth and informative reporting by
personal anecdotes and descriptions of the author's thought processes
triggered by very newsworthy but scarcely described events. Posturing as
omniscient judge, he grades peoples and governments, particularly Israel and
Israelis, probably assuming that he has a right to do that as a Jew (and what
kind of Jew would the Jew-hating and terror-supporting Saudi crown prince
Abdullah trust, as it has recently happened, to be his personal
spokesman?). As for his self-perception as a Jew, he provides a telling
detail: on Israeli Remembrance Day, when, on a siren signal, everybody stops
to honor those who fell fighting for Israel, he, "still sitting in [his]
car, was the only one not affected" (p. 275). He seems to take unhealthy
pleasure in unreservedly assigning Israel as a country "a one-year
warranty - that no one is sure will be honored" (p. 277). Importantly,
the credibility of the narration is undermined by what looks like the author's
lack of knowledge (which would be strange) or misinformation, as when he
repeatedly excludes what is now Jordan from mandatory and historic Palestine.
April 2002
Letters and
emails
Jerusalem-Yerushalayim
2.21.2001. - Thank you for your
message. This idea [internationalization of Jerusalem] has actually been
discussed a lot. My guess is that one of the reasons why the idea of the
internationalization of Yerushalayim is so popular is the very fact that
people think of the city as "Jerusalem." This, i.e., the fact that
they read about this city in their own language starting as children--and it
is called by an oh-so-familiar name--gives people a feeling they can consider
it their own. Related to that, it would probably be difficult for any
non-Arab Christian to think of it as "al-Quds," wouldn't it? That's
how Arabs think of it, though, which makes the city "theirs."
Since, however, it's about as legitimate as thinking of it as
"Jerusalem," there is a chance that Christians would readily
endorse shared sovereignty over it with Muslims (even though they used to be
very much against that, especially during the Crusades).
The problem is, both these religions hold the
city holy (although Muslims officially rank it #3, as you know--I don't know
whether there is a rank ascribed to it by any branches of Christianity) only
because it is holy to Judaism. Hence, to Jesus; hence, to Mohammed (with a
possibility that the latter did not consider it holy at all). This is somehow
frequently forgotten. Muslims used to remember it well, when, under Turks,
they handed the keys from the Old City to Yerushalayim's Chief Rabbi on the
death of one sultan and the accession of another. Arabs did not raise any
intifadas then about that--they could not care less (the city was also
considered a backwater by Turks), and the Turks dealt harshly with rioters.
There is probably no precedent in history for
making a city exterritorial just because, in addition to the nation to which
it belongs, somebody else considers it holy. Imagine what the Saudis would
say if Iraqis and Jordanians suggested to make Mecca exterritorial because it
is holy to all Muslims--and this is just Muslims only, and Mecca is the #1
Muslim holy place and is not even the kingdom's capital.
The root of the problem is not in the name of
the city, of course, but in the very existence and legitimacy of Israel, with
which neither the Western nor the Arab mentality seems to be able to come to
terms. That's why there is a notion that anybody but not the Israelis can
decide what should be done with the Holy Land (another convenient euphemism
allowing one to disregard the primary reason for its holiness) and Jerusalem,
and what capital, if any, they should have. It's encouraging that there are
at least some (eg Buddhists) that "might not be interested" in
having their say about converting another nation's capital into an
international retreat :-) . I also know for sure that Yerushalayim's
being under Israel's jurisdiction has never prevented anybody, Christians
included, from meditating there (unless meditating included stoning)--ask
anybody who visited the city. The same cannot, of course, be said about the time
when the Old City was under the Arab (Jordanian) control.
On a lighter note, there might be some logistic
problems with your retreat plan: one part of the city is internationally
recognized Israeli (if we need this recognition for "the claim of the Israelis
for possession of and political sovereignty over Jerusalem")--I am
afraid Israelis won't cede it to be a retreat. As for a "place with no
materialistic culture at all" [you want it to be] -- the other
part, particularly a huge portion of the Old City, has been converted by
Arabs into a market, including a meat market with sheep heads prominently
displayed (I could show you a tape of my own production), which is hardly
conducive to meditation. The Old City, by the way, IS Yerushalayim: there was
no city outside its walls until at least mid-19th century, and there were
twice as many Jews as Muslims or Christians there even then. So you may not
need what is already recognized as Israeli, after all, and will first have to
convince Pal. Arabs that they need to forget about east Jerusalem as their
capital, which they unconditionally claim as such even before having any
state. And anyway, if the "human species needs to try the experiment of
having a genuine place of peace to visit but not to live in" [as you put
it]--why should it be at the expense of tiny Israel and its capital, where
people have LIVED IN for over 4,000 years?
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my
right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief
joy."
________________________________
Winning war on terrorism
(president@whitehouse.gov)
10.2.2001 - In biology--my field of
work--there is a clear understanding that infection cannot be stopped unless the
infectious agent is controlled. In the current situation with the increasing
spread and severity of terrorism, one of the most likely agents of religious,
moral and monetary support for terrorism and anti-Americanism is the
currently predominant orthodox branch of Sunni Islam. This branch originates
from Saudi Arabia (Wahhabi, absolute monarchy with no dissent or
political parties allowed, the Shari'a law no less enforced than under the
Taliban). The other, no less orthodox, branch of Islam, is, of course, Iran's
Shi'a.
However strong our desire is to exculpate these
versions of Islam (again, currently covering almost the whole religious
Islamic community) as such, there seems to be no deviation from these
orthodox interpretations of the Koran and Hadith by terrorists, which is
probably why there have been no fatwahs prohibiting terrorism as commonly
understood in the West. Instead, the "killing of innocents" is
condemned by almost all Islamic clerics--with any Muslim's understanding that
infidels and unbelievers are not innocent, whereas if any righteous Muslim
happens to perish in the terrorist act, he, just like the perpetrator,
becomes a "martyr" with the consequent benefits. The fact that
orthodox Islamists have access to Western education and technology is
analogous to bacteria's obtaining genomic components that provide them with
resistance to antibiotics and increase in virulence. Regrettably, reading the
Koran and Hadith leaves an impression that, if they are accepted as a guide
for physical and spiritual life, other than an orthodox interpretation of
these sources is difficult and requires effort and intelligence that are
unlikely to be widely available.
It is thus likely that if an Islamic
reform--viz., its forced global deradicalization--is not included in
strategic planning, the war on terrorism is to fail in the long run. As long
as Islam remains in the form of its current predominant strains, it will
continue erupting in increasingly more severe terrorism and create conditions
propitious for other kinds of societal disorder. The latter is especially
noteworthy considering the fast spread of Islam in the world, the US
included. It should be taken into account that the goal of orthodox Islam is
world-wide conversion. No homeland defense or counter-terrorism agency is
capable of coping with that problem, any more than local disinfectants are
capable of helping in leprosy.
The reform cannot be conducted without the
removal of orthodox Islamic governments. A working model for their
replacement in an Islamic country was provided by Ataturk (the threat of
orthodoxy in Turkey would also subside if other countries are reformed). The
removal of the Taliban (or even Saddam, who represents an eruption rather
than a causative agent) is insufficient. Links to Osama need to be found in
the Saudi government starting with the king and crown prince Abdallah, all
princes arrested and their assets seized and redistributed by the new regime
with an Ataturk-like outlook. Saudi citizens are unlikely to mind, because they
know that the princes rob them. This is likely to press orthodox
Islamic regimes (regardless of whether Sunni or Shi'a) into starting a jihad
(the terrorists' plan they will pursue anyway), which should lead to their
replacement with Ataturk-like secular governments. This will move action from
the level of a poorly defined "terrorist network" to the
transparent level of states. The PLO--a terrorist organization that usurped
the rights of moderate Arabs and has had an explicit goal of the physical
elimination of Israel--will be disbanded, its leaders tried, and the
"refugees" resettled in Jordan and other countries where they
currently live in "camps," thus solving the "Palestinian"
problem and ensuring security for Israel. The war will result in the
deradicalization of Islam similar to how Germany was denazified and Japan was
demilitarized. The combined resources of Arab and other Islamic states are
unlikely to withstand a NATO or US/British/Israeli assault.
8.7.2002. - A follow-up.
Fortunately, understanding that the roots of terror are in the sands of Saudi
Arabia seems to be reaching the decision-making level. As reported by the Washington Post (Thomas E. Ricks,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, August 6, 2002, Page A01), a briefing
by a Rand Corporation analyst presented
on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board that advises the Pentagon on defense
policy concluded that "Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our
allies." It correctly described Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of
evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East. It
indicated that the "Saudis are active at every level of the terror
chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from
ideologist to cheerleader." The paper informs that "One
administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly
within the U.S. government. 'People used to rationalize Saudi behavior,' he
said. 'You don't hear that anymore. There's no doubt that people are
recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem.'"
Whereas the briefing suggested removing Saddam first,
describing him as a larger problem may be related to his immediate
capabilities with weapons of mass destruction. The "kernel of evil"
characterization (clearly in the development of the "axis of evil"
metaphor) and the "prime mover" role point in the right direction.
Leaking through the media this information, including the recommendation
"that U.S. officials give it [Saudi Arabia] an ultimatum to stop backing
terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested
in the United States," can be considered an ultimatum by itself.
______________________________________
Peace in the Middle East
(oped@nytimes.com)
4.10.2002. - After saying many times
that the President “understands” Israeli actions, the administration has given
no explanation for its demand for Israel to stop its offensive and withdraw.
In a striking demonstration of double standard, President Bush cites “daily
humiliation of Palestinians” at check-points, perfectly knowing the reason
for these check-points’ existence and—contrary to his own statements—invoking
the notion that somebody’s grievances can justify terror. The Israeli
government, however, performs its duty by protecting its nation following the
Bush Doctrine and pursuing terrorists and those who harbor them. Israel is
much more considerate of civilian casualties that the US in its current war
effort, abstaining from using its air force, and risking soldiers’ lives for
the sake of innocent civilians. It may be worth remembering that the United
States has had a harsh and—still—unique response to one of its enemies that
used to send suicide bombers against its military: two nuclear attacks on
heavily populated cities with exclusively civilian population, immediately
killing 115,000 people and maiming countless others. This has frequently been
justified as an operation that prevented many more deaths. Japan was hardly a
threat to the United States' existence. The Arab world has had the goal of
Israel's annihilation from the moment of its birth. It is not going to change
overnight after over half a century of antisemitic incitement from Arab
leaders. There are thus no “two sides that need to talk to each other.”
Israel has never had a purpose of eliminating an Arab state, but the Arab
world has never reconciled itself with Israel’s existence. Israel should be
helped in its fight, instead of protecting terrorists from it by stopping
Israeli military operations, and the US needs to expand its operations to
uproot the causes of terrorism. Only elimination of terrorism can bring peace
to the Middle East.
Jerusalem, Israel's
capital (president@whitehouse.gov)
August 11, 2002. - Israel is the only
sincere ally of the United States in our war against terror. Israel has also
been under continuous Arab and Muslim attack since the moment of its birth.
It has defeated its enemies in all wars it has had and is currently waging a
war imposed on it by the bloody Arafat regime supported by Saudi Arabia,
Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. These are the same enemies that the US will
have to deal with.
While it has been victorious, Israel is the only state in contemporary
history that is not allowed to benefit from its victories and is criticized
for the collateral damage that Israel ensures to be minimal by risking lives
of its own soldiers in its response to aggression. Even the eternal capital
of Israel, Jerusalem, which had been illegally held by Jordan before it was
liberated in 1967 after Jordan attacked Israel, is not recognized as such by
the "international community," including," regrettably, the
United States.
The long-promised transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the recognition
of the city as Israel's indivisible capital by the US government would be a
clear signal to both friends and enemies that justice prevails in this world,
not only in the World To Come.
October 1, 2002. - Follow-up. As today's
New York Times reports
in Debating Israel's 'Capital' (I don't know why Capital is in
quotes in the title of that brief report), "President Bush, at the risk
of angering the Arab and Muslim worlds, signed legislation today [September
30] that requires his administration to identify Jerusalem as Israel's
capital." As reported
by the Jerusalem Post, Section 214 of the Foreign
Relations Authorization Act, "United States Policy with Respect to
Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel" that was signed into law by Bush,
prohibits the use of congressionally approved funds for any US government
document that lists countries and their capital cities but does not identify
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel." Sounds great, doesn't it? It is
unclear, however, how exactly the US risks the fearsome Arab and Muslim anger
in this case (if not because of the pervasive hatred of the US in the Muslim
world). The clause calling on the president to immediately begin relocating
the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was said in the statement by the
White House, "if construed as mandatory rather than advisory, [to]
impermissibly interfere with the president's constitutional authority to
formulate the position of the United States, speak for the nation in
international affairs, and determine the terms on which recognition is given
to foreign states. US policy regarding Jerusalem has not changed." This
disgusting policy, promised to be changed by every presidential candidate
only to be reneged on the promise after election, is that the US does not
recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying such recognition would
prejudge final status negotiations with Palestinian Arabs, who want part of
Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The White House invokes a
national security waiver every six months to avoid moving the embassy
to Jerusalem, as required by a law passed in 1995.
Response to an
"Open Letter from American Jews"
In summer of 2002, a letter with this title was
circulated via email soliciting signatures in its support. It also
appeared as a (very expensive) full page ad in the New York Times (July 17).
The letter purported to offer a solution to the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict
from the positions that have deserved this letter's publication
and signature collection at an Israel-hating "Palestine Media
Watch" website. (You won't find there any reports of the extrajudicial
Palestinian killings of SUSPECTED "collaborators," including a
35-year old mother of seven after her son was tortured into a
"confession"). I sent my response to this letter to its originator,
Alan Sokal, with no luck for getting a reply (the quoted text informs of the
letter's content).
August 1, 2002. - Dear Dr. Sokal:
Whereas I wish nothing more than peace for Israel (in addition to my love for
her, my close relatives live there), I am writing to express my disagreement
and deep concern with the letter. The reasons include but are not limited to,
the following:
1. There is no "Palestinian" people - there are Arabs living in
Israel, Jordan, and disputed territories (please see http://www.pitt.edu/~mmv/israel.htm#misnomer);
2. the Arabs have no "legitimate fears" outside of Israeli response
to terror;
3. they suffered no "great wrongs at the hands of the other" [the
letter suggests that "both
the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have suffered great wrongs at the hands
of the other"];
4. their notion of "compromise" does not include Israel's
existence;
5. they have already got MORE THAN their "fair share of the land and
resources of historic Palestine" (Jordan) wherein Jews are explicitly
constitutionally banned from settling;
6. "partition along the pre-1967 border as modified only by minor
mutually agreed territorial swaps" would be extremely dangerous for and
unfair to Israel (the territories were gained as a result of a war of defense
- and not from "Palestine," but from Jordan and Egypt who had
illegally occupied them after a war of aggression); the territories,
according to the legal definition, are not occupied, but disputed;
7. "Israeli evacuation of all settlements in the occupied territories
except those within the agreed swapped areas," i.e., ethnic cleansing of
Jews, should logically be reciprocated by all Arabs' "evaculation"
from Israel;
8. "Arab recognition of Israel and renunciation of any further
territorial claims," even if made, cannot be trusted any more than
Arafat's Oslo and other promises (the "Hudaybiya" peace); it cannot
be enforced because their governments will not be made responsible for
anti-Israel terror just as they are not now;
9. "Palestinian acceptance of negotiated limitations on the "right
of return" in exchange for financial compensation for refugees" is
(a) as trustworthy as anything they ever lied about, (b) the terrorist groups
would negate any such acceptance, (c) there has been no "right of
return" for any refugees anywhere in the world, (d) nobody has
compensated or is going to compensate Jewish refugees, including those from
Arab/N. African/Muslim countries (half of the Israeli Jewish population), (e)
the Arab refugees' plight is completely the responsibility of Arab states who
created them in the first place by attacking Israel in 1948 and then
prevented them from absorption and immigration;
10. the assumption that "Despite the current carnage... Israelis
and Palestinians [may still be] willing to accept a compromise"
based on the polls "several years ago" is wrong because the CURRENT polls
indicate otherwise;
11. presenting the situation as that "majorities on both sides support
provocative military actions" is egregiously wrong as it equalizes
deliberate terror and defense against it, and calls terror attacks a
"military action" on a par with the IDF's response to them, thus
legitimizing them;
12. American "national security is deeply undermined" not by
"instability and injustice in the Middle East" (to whom?) but by
the existence of the virulent strains of Islam that legitimize terror and
violence and by the incessant indoctrination of the young people to that
effect by Arab and Islamic governments, in schools, mosques, and the media;
13. "the international community"'s taking "the lead in
promoting" "a workable peace" is vague, condescending to both
parties, and will unlikely be agreed upon by at least one of them;
14. the HIGHLIGHT of the letter is in the point that the US "has an
extraordinary leverage on Israeli policy, if only our government would dare
to use it," which indicates that it is directed at prompting the US
government to pressure Israel - and Israel only - to make more unreciprocated
concessions with no guaranty that the other party will even consider any;
15. a suggestion that "Foreign troops may well be required to enforce it
[two-state settlement], and they must be prepared to accept casualties"
shows how little trust the letter's drafters have in the positive outcome
that is supposed to result from a long gradual process. This outcome cannot
be termed "an imperfect peace," and it does not differ from
"endless war."
Finally, I request and sincerely hope that the authors change the title of
the letter by deleting "American Jews" from it, because, as it
stands now, it can be conceived of as the letter's expressing the opinion of
all or the majority or at least a significant proportion of the American
Jews, which may be an erroneous assumption. Even if it were not so (which we
cannot know without, at least, a poll), it could imply that those Jews who,
like myself, disagree with the letter, are not American, or not Jews, or
both.
Beauty of Gaza
8/27/2006.
- At a press-conference, Steve Centanni, a Fox News reporter just
released from Arab captivity in Gaza, expressed his hope “that
this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover the
story because the Palestinian people are very beautiful, kind-hearted, loving
people… The world needs to know more about them. Don't be discouraged."
Perhaps, to fully understand this beauty and kindness, one has to be
kidnapped at gunpoint and spend a couple of weeks in really close proximity
to these people. “Held at times face down in a dark garage, tied up in
painful positions.” And “forced at gunpoint to make statements, including
that they had converted to Islam.” These beautiful people should be hired by
travel companies to arrange vacations.
This is a clear case of Stockholm syndrome (unless he was still
too afraid to show his real feelings). Centanni’s expressed lack of concern
for his colleagues’ safety, which he seemingly values less than the
“Palestinian” beauty, is not otherwise justifiable. The “beauty” of the
Palestinian people is also well known – from their happiness
about the 9/11 American deaths. Centanni’s liberator, the “kind-hearted”
Hamas prime-minister Haniyeh, is one of those who planned and executed
murders of Americans and Israelis. It may well be that he arranged the whole
operation – from kidnapping to release.
8/30/2006.
- On the Fox News' "On the Record" tonight, Olaf Wiig, Steve
Centanni's photographer captured and released with him, admitted that he
indeed had experienced Stockholm syndrome. Steve did not comment on that, and
there was no discussion of the press-conference, their conversion to Islam,
or any details on the "loving people." Steve's brother, Olaf's
wife, and Jennifer Griffin (a Fox News Middle East reporter - usually from
Jerusalem or Gaza) talked briefly about the effort made to achieve their
release, sometimes risking their own security. Jennifer noted
particularly the Israeli Fox News chief, who obviously ran a high risk. At
the meeting that she described, there were representatives of about all Gazan
terror groups (those were called by names without mentioning the T word).
Since they did not appear to cooperate and seemed to work on their internal
problems, Jennifer got angry with them (she said, "we got angry,"
but I have a distinct feeling it was herself) and "read them the riot
act." She must have been pretty confident in her own invulnerability and
the certainty of the reporters' release to show such bravado.
Only
once during the program's hour, Gilad Shalit, still in captivity, was
mentioned in passing - Olaf had heard Gilad's name during the
"interview" he had with his captors. No international reporters
rushed to demand Gilad's release, with or without the riot act. There is no
certainty even in his being alive, just as there is none for Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, captured by Hizballah more
recently. The fate of Benny Avraham, Omar Sawayid and Adi Avitan, captured
and murdered by Hizballah in 2000 under the UN observation, does not offer
comfort. Perhaps the names of the Israeli captives, including
Ron Arad, Guy Hever, Tzvi Feldman, Yehuda Katz, and Zehariah Baumel
were not mentioned for the same reason why there was not much discussion
about Steve and Olaf on the news while they were with the "beautiful
people" - to preclude any provocation that could jeopardize their
lives. That reason was clear, and expectations were high - as is now
justified. Unfortunately, no such confidence exists regarding captured
Israelis. And it is not very likely that Jennifer Griffin or any of her
colleagues will feel comfortable enough to demand their freedom.
Misplaced
blame
(this Letter to the Editor, published in
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on November 23, 2003, p. E-6, was in response to the editorial
in that newspaper).
About this site
This website
started when I failed to abstain from reacting to the seemingly illogical
behavior of a portion of scientific community. The calls for boycotting
Israeli scientists were on the top of, and even less forgivable than, the
similar and habitual inconsistency of many political figures, the media, and
the lay public in their treatment of Muslim terror.
Please do
not hesitate to send me an email at the link below if you wish to be notified
when a new item appears on this site.
Michael Vanyukov
Pittsburgh, PA
USA
Site posted: May 4, 2002
Updated:
August 29, 2006
©Michael Vanyukov, 2002-2006
Number of new
visitors since May 4, 2002: 
