THE ARAB LEGACY OF HATE
By
Samuel L. Blumenfeld
NewsWithViews.com
One of the reasons why it is so difficult for the average American to
relate to Arabs and to Palestinians in particular is the level of hatred
that they bear against Israel and Jews in general.
Many American Christians see the restoration of Israel as one of
the great miracles of the 20th century, a fulfillment of
Biblical prophecy, especially since it took place on the heels of the Nazi
holocaust in Europe. And
therefore they see the hatred of Israel by Palestinians and Arabs as not
only anti-Biblical but anti-Christian.
But from a merely psychological viewpoint, such hatred is also
pathological and unhealthy. We
all know that people consumed by hatred cannot lead normal lives because
they are driven by an emotion that not only creates gut-eating inner
stress, but leads to the kind of terrorist acts that took place on
September 11th against America and more recently against
Israel.
Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine goes back quite a ways.
In the years of early immigration before the 1948 war, Jews bought
land from Arabs and made it bloom. Since
Palestine was a British mandate at that time, all transfers of land from
Arabs to Jews were normal real estate transactions.
Jews were not stealing anybody’s land. Despite the legality of
all of this, there were anti-Jewish riots in Palestine that resulted in
many Jews being slaughtered.
But the Zionist movement gained strength in the 1930s when Hitler took
control of Germany and launched his campaign of persecution and terror
against Germany’s Jewish citizens.
Many Jews, reading the handwriting on the wall, emigrated to
Palestine. The whole Zionist idea was to provide Jews with a haven from
persecution, which they could call their own.
During the war against Hitler, the Arabs were pro-Nazi, whereas Jewish
settlers formed the Jewish Brigade to help the British fight against the
German Afrika Korps in North Africa.
Yet, in an attempt to appease the Arabs, the British put sharp
restrictions against any further immigration of Jews to Palestine.
After World War II, when the surviving Jews of Europe examined the
catastrophe they had lived through, they realized that there was no
possibility of returning to the way things were before the war.
Hundreds of Jewish communities had been destroyed.
There was no place for them to return to.
And so, by the thousands they headed to Palestine.
Others headed to North America and elsewhere, but the majority,
renewed in their determination to rebuild Jewish life, went to the land
that held that promise. The
language of the Jews in Palestine was their ancient language of the Bible,
Hebrew. In fact, the revival
of Hebrew was another miracle in the restoration of the Jewish
commonwealth.
In other words, the survivors did not linger in the refugee camps any
longer than they had to. They
were anxious to resume constructive lives in which they could create new
families and raise new children.
Meanwhile, in Palestine, as the Jewish population increased, so did Arab
opposition. The Arabs had
little sympathy with the plight of Jews after the holocaust.
However, it should be acknowledged that many ordinary Arabs worked
with Jews from the beginning of settlement to today. But it was the Islamic religious and political leadership
that harbored the greatest hatred against the Jews.
When in 1948 the United Nations voted in favor of a partition plan to
divide Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, Arab leaders
rejected it. And so, when the
British finally departed from Palestine, leaders of the Jewish community
declared the restoration of Israel as a sovereign state, thus fulfilling a
dream two thousand years old. Christians
around the world realized that what they were witnessing in their lifetime
was a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.
No sooner was the State of Israel founded, than Arab armies from Egypt,
Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded the infant state in the
determination to crush it and drive the Jews into the sea. But another
miracle took place, and Israel was able to defeat the Arab armies and add
more territory to their small state.
Jordan held on to East Jerusalem and most of the West Bank, which
was mainly populated by Arabs, and Egypt annexed the Gaza Strip.
The Arabs who fled Palestine during the war were settled in refugee camps
awaiting some future event that would permit them to return to their
homes. The event they were
told to wait for was the destruction of Israel in which the Jews would
either be exterminated or forced out of the land to somewhere else.
And they led their children to believe that their lives could not
be improved until Arabs were victorious over the Jews.
Meanwhile, despite the Arab boycott and nonrecognition, the Jewish state
grew in population and industry. Several
million Jews migrated to Israel, mainly from Arab countries where they
were persecuted. Also, when
Russian Jews were permitted to leave the communist paradise, many of them
headed to Israel.
In the Six Day War in 1967, Israel again defeated the armies of Egypt,
Syria and Jordan, reoccupied the Gaza Strip, and conquered the Sinai
Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.
For the first time in 2000 years, the Jews had complete control of
their ancient capital and the ancient provinces of Samaria and Judea.
In 1973, Egypt launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur in
an attempt to regain the Sinai. Although
Israel was able to fend off the attack, the war led to peace negotiations
between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin, and the
return of the Sinai to Egypt.
Meanwhile, during all of those years, Israel was regularly attacked by
Palestinian terrorists whose goal it was to destroy the Jewish state.
The chief organizer of this terrorism was none other than Yasser
Arafat, who organized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with the
help of the Soviet Union. As
of today, the goal of the PLO is still the destruction of Israel, and
their chosen method of combat is terrorism.
During all of this time, the movement to destroy Israel has been fueled by
a force of hatred maintained at the highest level by unrelenting
propaganda and incitement. Just
as the previous attacks
against Israel have failed, the present attack will also fail.
But the hatred will hardly go away.
The Arab Islamic leadership will sustain it because hatred and
perpetual war have become their way of life.
It is time for American leadership to realize that Israel must be
permitted to do to Palestinian terrorists what the U.S. is now doing to
their Taliban brothers in Afghanistan.
There can be no Palestinian autonomous entity as long as it harbors
the kind of terrorists who are committing murder and mayhem against
innocent Israeli men, women and children on buses, in restaurants, in
shopping malls, and on the highways.
No nation should be expected to tolerate such a high level of
bloody murder of its people. And no nation can escape its duty to protect its citizens by
the only means that works: a war to the finish against Palestinian
terrorists.
Samuel L. Blumenfeld
is the author of eight books on education, including “Is Public
Education Necessary?” and “The Whole Language/OBE Fraud,” published
by The Paradigm Company, 208-322-4440.
His reading instruction program, “Alpha-Phonics,” is available
by writing The Tutoring Company, P.O. Box 540111, Waltham,
MA 02454-0111.
www.alpha-phonics.com
www.howtotutor.com
