By Simon Fischler
Today there is a movement to delegitimize the state of Israel, brand it an apartheid nation and force upon it a one-state solution.
The people behind this movement are sophisticated in their propaganda and malicious in their intent.
A large part of this anti-Israel and anti-Semitic group happen to be Israeli Arabs. Their attempts to force upon the MAJORITY of Israeli citizens the fabrication and revision of history called the Nakbah is unacceptable!
Israel is both the Jewish nation and a democratic state at the same time (the only democracy in the entire Middle East). All of her citizens have the right to vote -- Israeli Arabs, Bedouin, Druze and Circassians included.
The Arab Muslim population of Israel has far more rights than in any other country in the entire Arab/Muslim world, this is an indisputable fact.
There are thirteen Arab and five Druze members in the Knesset. In Apartheid South Africa black Africans were not allowed to vote at all.
The Arab Israeli population is free to live, work and play where they want in Israel.
The fact that most Israeli Arabs elect to live in discreetly separate villages is a matter more of historical, cultural, tribal and/or religious choice, but under Israeli law, they are legally free to live anywhere.
Some do, and in the Lebanon conflict of 2006, Israeli Arabs were bombed – in Haifa and in many outlying villages and orchards in the North, which is heavily populated with Druze, Circassians and Israeli Arabs of so-called “Palestinian” descent.
Israeli Arabs can marry Jewish Israelis. In Apartheid South Africa black Africans were not allowed to go to white beaches. They were not allowed to use white public bathrooms and most certainly were not allowed to marry whites. They were not allowed to drink from white water fountains, etc. The black South Africans were totally segregated from the white community by law.
The Occupied Territories-
In the occupied territories the Palestinian population has the right to vote for their own government and leaders, and have twice. This cannot be done in Kurdistan, Tibet, Turkish Occupied Northern Cyprus and of course for the Basques in Spain and France.
However, much to the vocal dismay of some misled, left-leaning activists the Palestinian population cannot move about and live their lives as freely as they had in the past.
Why is that?
In 2000, at the Taba negotiations Yasser Arafat was offered full peace, including a Palestinian State on 95-97% of the land of Judea and Shomron (or the West-bank as it is wrongfully called by many today), Arab sections of East Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City and all of Gaza.
Yassar Arafat turned this offer of peace down; Arafat turned down the formation of the Palestinian State.
Why?
He did this because he wanted everything, not just Palestine: he wanted Israel too.
He insisted that Israel accept the unacceptable: the illegal right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees to Israel.
The idea of Israel taking responsibility for a war started by the Arab population of Mandate Palestine and the neighboring Arab states is totally insane.
The “refugees” created by this war can be attributed mostly to the Arab nations that started it. It is a known fact, admitted by many Arabs of the time, that they urged the Arab population of Palestine to flee. Here are some quotes.
ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), as saying: "The fact that there are those refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously..."
ON APRIL 23, 1948 Jamal Husseini, acting chairman of the Palestine AHC told the UN Security Council, "The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce ... They preferred to abandon their homes, belongings and everything they possessed."
IN THE MARCH 1976 issue of Falastin a-Thaura, then the official journal of the Beirut-based PLO, Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen", now Prime Minister of the West Bank PA), then a PLO spokesman, wrote: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."
ON APRIL 9, 1953, the Jordanian daily al-Urdun quoted a refugee, Yunes Ahmed Assad, formerly of Deir Yassin, as saying: "For the flight and fall of the other villages, it is our leaders who are responsible, because of the dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... they instilled fear and terror into the hearts of the Arabs of Palestine until they fled, leaving their homes and property to the enemy."
These are but a few examples of Arab and Palestinians who attested to the fact that the majority of the Arabs fled the new state of Israel because they were told to by their leaders.
There were definitely situations where the newly formed IDF entered and pushed out Arab communities, but in most cases this was a small proportion. With few exceptions, most of these situations were caused by local Arab populations giving refuge to Arab fighters who were attacking Jewish communities, rendering them viable military targets.
What you also do not hear about are the atrocities committed by the arabs against Jewish communities during the Israeli War of Independence.
In fact there were more Jewish refugees created after the Israeli War of Independence when they were robbed of all their lands and possessions and thrown out of Arab countries. There were a total of 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, compared to 700,000 Arab refugees.
We do not hear about the Jewish refugees today because Israel, unlike surrounding Arab nations and North African Muslim countries, opted to follow the UN partition and managed to win its independence in a brutal war that cost her 5% of her population.
Instead of using Jewish refugees from Arab countries as political pawns Israel settled these refugees. Sadly of course the same cannot be said about what the Arab's have done to their supposed Palestinian brothers; keeping them in refugee camps and denying them rights.
One must also remember that neither Jordan nor Egypt allowed the Palestinians, whose areas they were occupying, their independence.
Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem (razing the entire Jewish quarter of the Old City during the War of Independence); Egypt the Gaza strip.
They easily could have given the Palestinians their independence. In both cases it was easier to keep these supposed Arab brethren locked up in refugee camps, fomenting hate and creating another generation to fight and kill Jews.
Why would the Palestinian leadership want to have their refugees settle in a state that is not theirs? Why wouldn’t they want to settle their refugees in their newly formed state?
The only reason for this policy is the unquestionably bigoted and monomaniacal intent to destroy the state of Israel; to wipe out the Jews.
The Hope of the Left, the One State solution and why it is Racist
The idea of a one-state solution would be a great idea if it meant Israel kept all of her settlements bordering the Green Line, while the Palestinians formed a confederated state with Jordan.
This is the only one state solution that will ever happen!
Any other version of a "one-state solution" is considerably less than unacceptable.
The concept that Arabs or Muslims can have as many states as they wish, but the Jews cannot have one state for themselves, is not just old-school anti-Semitism, it is pure racism.
The majority of Israel is Jewish -- 80% Jewish; not South Africa where whites constituted barely 10% of the population.
The mentality and policies of the Radical left, Radical right, Anarchists, self-defined “human rights activists” and their comrades is one of racism/anti-Semitism, although they would no doubt vociferously deny this reality.
Why would the Europeans, especially many of the left in Europe, be so pro-independence for a nation like Kosovo and be so strongly against Israel’s self-determination?
After all Kosovo has always been part of Serbia.
Why is it right for the Palestinians to have a state, but not right for the Jewish nation?
Why is it that a “nation” or people that has been living and connected to this land centuries before there was a conquered land called “Palestine” (named so by a Roman emperor trying to erase an earlier state of Israel) or a prophet called Mohammad?
The only reason is racist/anti-Semitic sentiment.
In truth, it is the Arabs who have executed or proposed policies towards Israel that are far closer to segregation and apartheid.
To this day most Arab states behave as if Israel does not exist.
Most maps found in the Arab world do not have Israel on them. To this day, textbooks in Arab countries and the Palestinian territories either omit Israel, as if it doesn’t exist, or actively describe Israel as an illegal, usurping enemy to be destroyed.
Under any peace agreement supposedly proposed by Palestinian leaders and/or supporters, Israel would have to remove all Jews from the West Bank.
Is that not segregation and/or apartheid?
In Jordan, Jews cannot buy land, which is worse than segregation.
As of 2004 the Saudi Arabian tourism website listed 4 groups of people who would not be granted entry visas:
• Israelis and anyone with a passport “that has an Israeli arrival/departure stamp.”
• Those who don’t abide by Saudi traditions, and those under the influence of alcohol.
• Non-Muslims intending to go to Mecca or Medina, where non-Muslims are banned.
• “Jewish people.”
It is one thing to deny Israelis, but to deny those who have traveled to Israel or to deny any Jew is bigoted, racist and anti-semitic!
Thus, those who rally for the One-State solution are either wolves in sheep’s clothing or ignorant fools; both equally dangerous, at least for the state of Israel and peace based on equality.
The One-State solution has also been proven totally unworkable in the rest of the world, the former Yugoslavia being a prime example. Those who wish to see this happen must truly want to see the Jews driven out of their land again, as the Arabs have promised often.
The Separation Fence-
The separation fence Israel has been forced to build has become the great fallacy of the Radical Left.
Before Arafat and his Palestinians decided against peace and statehood in 2000 and opted for war, there was no barrier. The barrier wasn’t started until the June 16, 2002, two years after Arafat turned his back on peace and instituted Arafat’s War (mistakenly known as the “second intifada”).
Israel only began to build this barrier after five suicide bombings in Israel and 91 Israeli deaths. There were many more suicide bombings carried out until the completion of the barrier. Since its completion there have been none!
Most importantly, had the Palestinians opted for peace, the barrier would never have been built. What the Barrier has brought is relative calm, for both Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank.
Israel has been able to turn over cities and land back to the Palestinian Authority and has taken down some checkpoints. The economy of the Palestinian Authority controlled West Bank has improved since the end of suicide attacks. All of this points to positive attributes of the Barrier.
America has built a partial barrier on the border of Mexico; Saudi Arabia on its border with Yemen; the EU in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta bordering Morocco and India along its border with Pakistan.
Why should Israel not have the right to build a border fence to protect its citizens, not only to keep out illegal immigrants, but would-be murderers and terrorists?
It is absolutely essential that the government of Israel recognize the genuine danger it now faces from those trying to “delegitimize” it with deliberate, malicious deceit. It must dedicate government money, combine her intelligence forces with grassroots supporters fighting on the verbal “front line” and treat this insidious campaign as an existential threat.
In short, Israel -- and its allies -- must do all they can NOW to expose the Jew-hating elements trying to destroy it.
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