“Naqba” + 60 (The Arab Part)
The singular success of the Arab world in its determination not to recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s sovereignty in the Middle East has nothing to do with Palestinians. It has to do with reversing the victim/aggressor relationship with Israel.
The singular success of the Arab world in its determination not to recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s sovereignty in the Middle East has nothing to do with Palestinians. It has to do with reversing the victim/aggressor relationship with Israel.
For years, until 1967 to be exact, the world understood precisely that the Arab states rejected the establishment of Israel and were determined to undo it by force. The Palestinians didn’t figure in there anywhere. But when Israel acquired responsibility for hundreds of thousands of people who were stateless by the choice of the Arab leadership, the problem morphed from the Arab-Israel war to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
Falsely narrowing the perception of the threat to Israel falsely widened the perception that Israel should be “generous” with the “poor Palestinians.”
Then, in a truly disgusting turn, the Palestinians (Hamas and Fatah) used their civilian population as shields in a variety of ways so that Israel would be condemned for civilian deaths, while making Israeli civilian deaths seem like turnabout – “Not a good thing,” say Israel’s erstwhile friends, “but what can you expect? Israelis kill Palestinian children too.” If the killing is simply tit-for-tat, then Israel – as the stronger country – should make sacrifices for peace and help the Palestinians get justice, so the “killings on both sides” can stop. Even Hamas’s admission that it put children on the rooftops so the Israeli Air Force wouldn’t fire – a TOTAL violation of international law governing the use of human shields – didn’t draw condemnation from the West.
It is a perversion of justice and an inversion of risk-to-gain to demand that Israel take “risks for peace” when there is no peace in the offing and the risks are becoming greater.
Try this: Last week two Palestinian women and four children were blown up in the Gaza Strip. Hamas said Israel killed them while targeting the men who accompanied them. In fact, video evidence shows that Israel did target and successfully hit the two men. Then, in secondary explosions, the bombs the men were carrying blew up, killing the women and children. The men believed that the women and children would shield them as they went to kill Jews.
Or this: Hamas is wailing about the shortage of fuel in Gaza. But Hamas blew up the terminal that brings Israeli fuel into Gaza, killing five Israelis who worked there. Since then, Hamas has refused to allow a million liters of Israeli fuel to enter the Gaza Strip, creating the larger, artificial fuel crisis. UNRWA is complaining to Israel. (UNRWA, by the way, just got caught with its proverbial pants down: the headmaster at a top UNRWA prep school turned out to be the chief rocket maker for Hamas.)
Or this: The Washington Times last week complained that Israel was stifling Palestinian entrepreneurs by not allowing the construction of Palestinian-run cell phone towers, even though cell phones have been the detonators of bombs in Israel. And The Washington Post complained that Israel is preventing Palestinian “police” from having sophisticated weapons in the territories, where Palestinian “police” have been involved in violence against Jews.
The real Naqba is that 60 years ago the Palestinian Arabs could have had a state. They have spent those years turning themselves and their children into victims of their own hatred and blaming it on Israel. Unfortunately, there has been a willing audience for hearing that it is the fault of the Jews.