An Open Letter to the World
Dear World, I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel. Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?)
Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the “brutal repression of the Palestinians”; yesterday it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai campaign.
It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily. Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish people - upset you. We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset.
We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us.
For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.
And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you - in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish state. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you) - and have you love us and so, we decided to come home - home to the same land we were driven out of 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The “radical” Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel. In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.
Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967? And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a “Palestinian State” alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried “no” and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews - was that “upset” caused by the aggression of 1967?
And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of “upset” then? The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who - when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of “itbach-al-yahud” (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream - destroy Israel. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not “repress” them.
Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres. You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction. And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.
If that bothers you, dear world, well - think of how many times in the past you bothered us.
Author unknown
July 23rd, 2006 at 3:37 pm
I admit, before Cliff challenged me several years ago to go back and really study the genesis of the State of Israel, the English mandate, and the surrounding goepolitics of the emerging oil rich Arab League, I had comparitivly little understanding of the complexity of the issues and events leading up to the ‘48 war of independence and subsequent wars of ‘67 and beyond.
I fear for Israel in a world where people are so unwavering in their opinions without the benefit of knowledge.
There is nowhere is history a set of circumstances so imbued with the the politcal, economic agendas of other players world-wide but also in their own lands. Both the Jews and the Palestinians have been pawns in a global tug of war ranging from pure anti-semitism to the Cold-War, oil, and the authoritarian dictatorships of the surrounding Arab states.
It is no surprise Bush doesn’t get it and has just become the first ever US President to put peace in the back seat to whatever the hell his policy is.
Thank you Cliff and Jaques for putting up with my sometimes unsupportable and always overpowering opinions. This is one area where I have turned 180 degrees from where I was. Although, I still hold fast to my position on illegal immigration. I am more than willing to do those jobs.
July 25th, 2006 at 10:06 am
For many years I supported Israel because Israelis upheld a much higher standard of human rights than those who wanted to wipe them out. But now, with Israel bombing children in Lebanon and destroying a democratic government, I have to say there’s no excuse. Let’s yank the $2.6 billion in direct aid to Israel and use it to repair Lebanon’s infrastructure.
July 25th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Israel ‘bombs children in Lebanon’ because Hezbollah hides behind innocent civilians. When children die, the media reacts, and Hezbollah know this. If Hezballah can gain the media’s favor, they’ve won the propaganda war. Which, in actuality, is more important than a military victory.
July 26th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
An excellent article by Robert Spencer concerning the propaganda war:
War Is Deceit
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 14, 2006
“War is deceit,†said the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, and some of his contemporary followers have been putting his words into practice with increasing industry lately:
While international opprobrium focuses again on Israel for a supposedly errant rocket attack last Friday that killed eight Palestinians on a Gaza beach, it has become increasingly apparent that the victims were actually killed by Hamas explosives.
Palestinian Media Watch reports that “Palestinian Authority TV has been repeatedly broadcasting a falsified video clip of the events surrounding the deaths of seven family members on the Gaza beach on Friday. In an attempt to blame Israel’s navy for the deaths, PA TV took unrelated video of an Israeli missile boat firing at Gaza earlier in the day and edited them into the scenes, creating the impression [of] Israeli responsibility….The video of the Israeli navy was unrelated to the deaths, having been filmed earlier in the day and had already released to the media and to the internet by the Israeli army at 4:00 PM, an hour prior to the deaths….[I]t should be noted that not only is the video falsified, but the beach scene clearly backs the Israeli contention that the deaths were not caused by an Israeli shell. Any Israeli shell would have left a giant crater and spread sand over the entire area, as well as on the victims. There is no crater and the beach scene is not disturbed in a way that indicates an Israeli shell could have landed nearby.â€
All this recalls Muhammad Al-Dura, the twelve-year-old Palestinian boy who became an international symbol of alleged Israeli oppression when footage of his being shot by Israeli soldiers circulated around the world in 2000. However, it has become increasingly clear that the event was not what most of the world thought it was, and may have been staged outright by Palestinian propagandists – who do their work very well.
In Canada, some of the jihad terror plot suspects arrested last week have claimed that they are being tortured in jail. David Kolinsky, attorney for one of them, Zakaria Amara, claims: “He is being held in a concrete room, approximately 11 feet by 6 feet. A concrete door. There is no window in the room. There is a small slit that is opened when meals are placed in his room. The light is on 24 hours a day and actually as early as 30 years ago, the federal court trial division of Canada had noted and had accepted expert testimony that this type of treatment is known to cause depression and suicide and has held that this type of treatment is, in fact, cruel and unusual punishment, contrary to the Bill of Rights.â€
Even worse, “My client when he was being searched by a guard, was pinned into the ground. He had the guard’s finger drilled into his cheek and the guard flicked him quite hard in the eye. He told me on Friday, his thumbs are still numb from plastic restraints placed on his wrists at the time and he has not received proper medical attention in that respect…My client advised that as he was being searched, he was touched on the ribs and he is ticklish, and he giggled a bit and the guard held him on the ground and drilled his fingers in the cheek and said, ‘is this funny?’â€
The farfetched quality of claims that Canadian officials are torturing anyone is compounded by these passages from an Al-Qaeda manual captured a few years ago: “1. At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge. 2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison….4. The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge. [These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases.]…6. During the trial, the court has to be notified of any mistreatment of the brothers inside the prison.â€
Are the Canadian suspects following the Al-Qaeda playbook? It should not be dismissed out of hand as a possibility – certainly they were following Al-Qaeda’s ideology and methodology when they planned their attacks.
Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, who a few years ago lived in Phoenix with Hani Hanjour, the jihadist who piloted American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, went to New Zealand – where he was, until late May, taking flight training. He has now been expelled from the country and is back in Saudi Arabia, where he will, of course, find abundant opportunities to continue his jihad adventures.
According to the New Zealand Herald, “the Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali who wandered into the Manawatu Aero Club in March gave no suggestion of fundamentalism. The short, clean-cut Muslim told the club’s chief flying officer, Captain Ravindra Singh, he had obtained his private pilot’s licence in the US and spent several years there before returning to Saudi Arabia to work in his father’s textile business. He wanted to pass the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam so he could return home to train for his commercial pilot’s licence. He wore a baseball cap, smart shirts and baggy trousers and favoured burgers over halal food.â€
This sort of thing really does fool Westerners who are ignorant of how jihadists interact with Western society: journalist Cathy Young asserts in the June issue of Reason magazine that the French Muslim rioters of last November were “by all indications…driven by resentment about unemployment, discrimination, and the generally marginalized status of ethnic minorities in France. In one news report, an 18-year-old rioter named Ahmed was quoted as saying, ‘You wear these clothes, with this color skin, and you’re automatically a target for police.’ He and his friends were not wearing traditional Muslim garb but polo shirts, sneakers, and T-shirts.†In fact, however, the rioters were shouting “Allahu akbar.†They attacked churches and synagogues. They attacked no mosques. But apparently Young would have us ignore all this because they were wearing polo shirts.
However, secular clothing is actually in accord with instructions in the captured Al-Qaeda manual to appear to be a secular, assimilated Muslim with no interest in religion. Speaking of ID documents, it says: “The photograph of the brother in these documents should be without a beard. It is preferable that the brother’s public photograph [on these documents] be also without a beard. If he already has one [document] showing a photograph with a beard, he should replace it.†And in renting an apartment, “It is preferable to rent these apartments using false names, appropriate cover, and non-Moslem appearance.†And in general: “Have a general appearance that does not indicate Islamic orientation (beard, toothpick, book, [long] shirt, small Koran)….Be careful not to mention the brothers’ common expressions or show their behaviors (special praying appearance, ‘may Allah reward you’, ‘peace be on you’ while arriving and departing, etc.)…Avoid visiting famous Islamic places (mosques, libraries, Islamic fairs, etc.).â€
It sounds as if Ali may simply have been following the playbook. Does this mean that every Muslim in secular clothing is a secret jihadist? Of course not. But it does mean that no one should have taken Ali’s baseball cap and baggy trousers as any indication of his assimilation into Western society or acceptance of Western values.
The possibility that someone may be lying all too seldom seems to enter into the calculations of government and military officials – at least in their public statements. When Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state for public diplomacy, opined that the recent prisoner suicides in the Guantanamo detention center were “good P.R. move to draw attention†and “a tactic to further the jihadi cause,†the Bush Administration immediately distanced itself from her remarks. Army General Bantz Craddock, however, noted that the suicides appeared to have been timed to influence the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Hamdan case, in which they will consider whether Gitmo detainees may enter challenges in federal courts. “This may be an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings in that perspective,†said Craddock. And Rear Admiral Harry Harris, Guantanamo’s camp commander, observed that the jihadist detainees “have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us.â€
But doesn’t Islam forbid suicide? Suicide as an act of despair, yes. But the Qur’an exhorts Muslims: “Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward†(4:74). Thus it is entirely possible that the Guantanamo suicides were not acts of despair brought on by American tortures, but acts of war chosen freely by pious Muslim mujahedin who were selling the life of this world for the other, in order to further the jihad.
Would they really resort to a deception that cost them their very lives?
Given their values and priorities, what would have prevented them from doing so?
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.