This article is part VI of the Response to “Hate Mail” from an Israel-Hating Conspiracy Theorist series dealing with many of the biased and incorrect claims made against Israel in its fight against Hamas. This one responds to the following: “Wake up and realise that you are selling yourself short, to a cause that is built on hate and racism, when your ancestors suffered and lost many souls because of the Nazi cause which is very similar to yours now! I just hope that when the wheel of time turns and Arabs have power again that we won’t treat Jews the way they are treating us.”
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First, my “cause” and the cause of most Jews and Zionists is to simply support the right of the Jewish people to continue to be sovereign and free in their indigenous homeland, the land of Israel. We do this so that we are no longer dhimmi in Arab lands subject to further pogroms and massacres. And, we believe in Zionism and Israel so we will always have a safe haven to turn to (when the dark hatred of Anti-Semitism rears its ugly face anywhere in the world and becomes rapacious, as it often has throughout history).
We don’t wish to engage in war with anyone and we have extended our hand in peace to our cousins (neighbors) repeatedly. It is why we accepted the Partition Plan when it was proposed in 1937 and in 1948. Also, it is why we have offered multiple times to split our indigenous homeland (1967, 2000, 2001 and 2008) even though all of those offers were answered with rejection and violence.
As for the notion that our cause is “built on hate and racism,” how about you ask yourself why today Israel has approximately 1.5 million Arabs, who are practically the only Arabs in the entire Middle East who vote, have freedom of religion, assembly and speech, and whose women are not treated like property and where Gays are not subject to execution (as they are in ten Arab countries and in Gaza under Hamas).
You may also want to ask yourself if Israel is so horrible, and is massacring Arabs the way you seem to think, how is it that the Arab population in Israel and under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas has grown from barely over 1 million in 1948, to over 4 million today; and that doesn’t include the approximately 4 million Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan and the additional 3 million living elsewhere (according to the Palestinian Authority).
You may also want to ask yourself, if the Jews were the ones engaging in hate and racism, then how is that after the war in 1949 that there were still over 150,000 Arabs living in Israel, while the areas that fell under Arab control (Jordan in Eastern Jerusalem and Judea & Samaria, and Egypt in Gaza) were completely emptied of Jews until 1967?
By the same token, can you honestly answer why the Arab population in supposedly terrible Israel (whose “cause” according to you is “built on hate and racism”) increased ten-fold to at least 1.5 million Arabs (living in Israel), while today there are barely 3000 Jews living in 22 Arab countries? And none living in territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority? Do you know that between 1940 and 1955 that the Arab countries ethnically cleansed – via persecution, massacres, property confiscation and numerous other attacks on their Jewish communities – nearly 1,000,000 Jews?
Did you know that an Arab Judge (George Karra) on Israel’s Supreme Court sentenced the former President of Israel (Moshe Katsav), a Jew, to jail for sexual assault, and nobody in Israel raised an eyebrow over it? Can anyone credibly imagine a member of any minority group doing something similar in any Arab country? In Israel, Arabs and Jews work alongside each other, go to the same schools, same places of public accommodation, medical facilities, etc.
Economically, Arabs in Israel are better off than they are in any other Middle Eastern country and Christian Arabs have a higher per capita income than any group in Israel, including Jews. The Arab life expectancy in Israel is higher, and infant mortality is lower than it is any other country in the Middle East. Does this sound like a place or a cause that is built on “racism and hate”?
To the contrary, this sounds like a country to be proud of; a country making the best of being in a very difficult neighborhood, surrounded by tyrants, despots and kleptocrats who prefer to keep their people filled with hate so their leaders can stay in power and keep stuffing their Swiss bank accounts with $millions – like Yasser Arafat (who stole $billions from his people). While Israel, like all democracies, is certainly not perfect, it also certainly is a country that strives to stay true to its Declaration of Independence where it announced:
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles. It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants. Be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel. Ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. Guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture. Safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the building-up of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness. And appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
Contrast this with the Hamas Charter:
“Leaving the circle of the conflict with Zionism is an act of high treason; all those who do this shall be cursed.” Whoever [when fighting the infidels] turns his back to them, unless maneuvering for battle or intending to join another [fighting] company, he incurs Allah’s wrath, and his abode shall be hell. Most unfortunate is his fate.” (Koran, 8:16)”
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree [a boxthorn plant native to the Levant that apparently likes Jews], would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”
So, is it really so hard to see whose cause is not only “built on hate,” it is actually rooted in hate? And after (hopefully) learning all of this history, do you really think that any Arab would really want the Jewish people to treat them the way Arabs have treated Jews and other minorities (like Yazidis, Copts and Kurds)?
And if you really think that the “Nazi cause is similar” to my cause, to Israel, then you may want to ask yourself why Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a best seller in Arab controlled lands? Why Hamas supporters regularly use the Swastika? Or why it was that the Godfather of Arab nationalism was an ally of Hitler, who lived in Berlin during WWII and regularly called for the murder of all Jews, just as Hamas does today?
So whose cause is more like the Nazis?
So again, whose cause is more like the Nazis? The Jews who just want to live in peace in their indigenous homeland, who have made peace offer after peace offer, and who provide full civil rights to all of Israel’s citizens regardless of race or religion? Or the people who quote Nazi conspiracy theories about Jews, are absolute dictatorships with no freedom for their own people, and speak, just like the Nazis did, of getting rid of all of the Jews in the world?
If you can’t correctly answer these questions, then it is not only your knowledge of history that is truly awful.
Per your request, I have verified and hyperlinked every factual assertion in here. I wish you luck in your quest for “humanity” as you put it. I hope it is genuine.
And the dialog continues…
Continuing the Dialog and Fighting the Hate (Mailer) – Take 2
Tried sharing by FB but its not working. Great article, hope to archive it. Thank you