I'm left-wing and Arab myself who
lived in Lebanon until 1984f, but no, I don't believe this conflict is
really a dispute over land
From Times Of Israel - By Fred Maroun APR
24, 2018
I'm left-wing and
Arab myself, but no, I don't believe this conflict is really a dispute over
land.
Left-wing and Arab enemies of Israel make a number of accusations
that they repeat as if they were facts. Here I take apart those myths from a
left-wing Arab perspective.
I summarize the
facts, but I include many links to other articles that provide further
background. Some of the articles referenced are mine, where I reference serious
sources not considered pro-Israel, including Haaretz, BBC, The Guardian, The
Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and The Huffington Post. I also reference
pro-Israel sources that are known for their journalistic integrity, including
The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and The Gatestone Institute.
This article is not
for everyone. It is intended only for a narrow audience: People who are willing
to base their opinions on facts and not lies.
Others are kindly advised to stay away, lest they be contaminated by facts
that they would rather continue ignoring.
Left-wing and Arab enemies of Israel make a number of
accusations that they repeat as if they were facts. Here I take apart those
myths from a left-wing Arab perspective.
I summarize the facts, but I include many links to
other articles that provide further background. Some of the articles referenced
are mine, where I reference serious sources not considered pro-Israel,
including Haaretz, BBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times,
CNN, and The Huffington Post. I also reference pro-Israel sources that are
known for their journalistic integrity, including The Times of Israel, The
Jerusalem Post, and The Gatestone Institute.
This article is not for everyone. It is intended only
for a narrow audience: People who are willing to base their opinions on facts
and not lies. Others are kindly advised to stay away, lest they
be contaminated by facts that they would rather continue ignoring.
1) “Israel
can end the conflict by withdrawing from the “West Bank”
I
would welcome the creation of a Palestinian state, but I would be lying if I
said that the possibility is realistic under current conditions. Israel’s
withdrawal from Gaza, and the resulting transformation of Gaza into a terrorist
base shows what happens when Israel withdraws unconditionally. Since Israel
left Gaza in 2005, many thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza into
Israel and many tunnels were built to try to infiltrate Israel. As reported
by Haaretz in 2014, an online clock timer showed “how much
time has passed since the last rocket was fired; Sadly, this counter never
really gets above an hour”.
Israel
cannot afford to make the same mistake in Judea & Samaria (the correct name for
the “West Bank”) which is much closer to Israel’s large cities than Gaza is. If
Israel withdrew from Judea & Samaria unconditionally, it is virtually certain that
the newly evacuated land would be controlled by terrorists dangerously hostile
to Israel. Until Arabs agree to a reasonable solution that provides Israel the
security it requires, Israel’s military presence in Judea & Samaria
is fully justified, and
even as an Arab, if I want to be honest with myself, I have no choice but to
support it.
2.
“Israel keeps stealing Palestinian land”
Israel’s victories in defensive wars do
not constitute stealing land. The land of Israel that is within the armistice
lines resulting from the 1948 war (and usually referred to as the Green Lines)
was legitimately acquired by Israel in a war of self-defence. Judea &
Samaria and Gaza were also legitimately acquired by Israel in another war of
self-defence in 1967 when several Arab armies congregated around Israel with
the objective of destroying it. Israel later gave back the vast majority of
that land in a peace agreement with Egypt, it voluntarily relinquished Gaza,
and it voluntarily agreed to allow the Palestinian Authority to administer a
large part of Judea & Samaria, referred to as areas A and B. What disturbs
me as an Arab is that Arabs have at every turn made the wrong decisions,
leaving them with less land, and even now that the Palestinians have had a
chance to show their administrative capability in Gaza and parts of Judea &
Samaria, they transformed Gaza into a terrorist base and they chose to fund terrorism in
Judea & Samaria.
3.
“Gaza is an open-air prison / under siege”
When
Israel voluntarily left Gaza in 2005 under the hawkish Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and evacuated all Israeli settlements, it imposed no blockade on Gaza.
Even the anti-Israel Al Jazeera admits that
the blockade “has been in place since Hamas violently took over power from
Fatah in 2007”, two years after Israel’s withdrawal. The blockade was imposed
by Israel and Egypt only after the Hamas authority in Gaza started attacking
Israel. The purpose of the blockade is to stop Hamas and other terrorist groups
from obtaining weapons with which to attack Israel. The legitimacy of the
blockade was even recognized by the United Nations, not
usually known as a friend of Israel since it is controlled by a majority of
countries hostile to the Jewish state.
A
siege is defined as surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way
as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the
resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible. This concept
does not apply to Israel’s blockade on Gaza since Israel provides for the
regular transfer of non-military goods into Gaza from Israel and through
Israel, even when Israel is
under attack from Gaza. Every day, “an
average of 800 trucks enter the Gaza Strip carrying food, medical equipment,
fuel, building materials, agricultural inputs, textile products and more”.
In
2005, the Palestinians of Gaza had a choice. They could have used their newly
acquired freedom to build a strong economy in that coastal and fertile land, or
they could have used that freedom to fight Israel. The fact that they chose the
latter is not Israel’s responsibility, and it is not too late for Gaza’s
Palestinians to choose a different path. As an Arab, I hope that they do so for
their own sake.
4.
“Israel is an apartheid/racist state”
Israeli
laws and police practices do not give preference to any race. All ethnicities,
including Arabs, are treated equally.
Freedom of religion is also guaranteed and strictly enforced, and so is protection of holy sites of
all religions. One proof that Israel values diversity is its fast growing Muslim
population. The only preference given to Jews is that Jews have an unlimited
right of return to Israel, under the Law of Return, which is understandable
considering that one of the reasons Israel exists is to be a haven for Jews who
are persecuted elsewhere. Any of many Muslim and Christian countries, some of
which are very rich, could provide such a law for Muslims or Christians if they
so wished, but none of them do. Israel should be praised by leftists like me
for ignoring race, gender, level of education, and economic background in order
to accept and support any Jews who wish to return to Israel.
Israel
also guarantees freedom of assembly, movement, and voting to all citizens,
which include Arabs. There are a dozen Arabs in the Knesset (Parliament) and an
Arab judge of the Supreme Court. Further, Arabs are very well represented in
Israeli universities, both among students and staff. As a left-wing Arab who
knows the level of bigotry and racism that exists in the Arab world, Israel is
a breath of fresh air. I want the same for us!
Judea
& Samaria is indeed an apartheid system, but to the disadvantage of Jews, not
of Arabs. Arabs can live and travel anywhere in Judea & Samaria, although
Arabs who do not hold Israeli citizenship cannot live in the 1% of Judea &
Samaria that consists of Jewish communities, and they must have a security
permit to visit. Jews, on the other hand, can only live in that 1% and cannot
even travel to large portions that are controlled by the Palestinian Authority
(PA). Overall, Arabs have far more rights and far fewer restrictions in Judea
& Samaria than do Jews. The ban on Jews in
PA-controlled areas reflects the Arab world’s attitude towards Jews since Arabs
countries have expelled practically all Jews they once had.
As a left-wing
Arab, I think that the Arab inability to accept Jews among them is shameful and
counter-productive. Religious and ethnic diversity is an asset, not a weakness.
6.
“Jewish settlements in the “West Bank” are illegal”
There
are reasonable legal opinions on both sides of the question of whether Jewish
settlements in Judea & Samaria are illegal, but there is no dispute on one
fact, which is that the Arab deportations of Jews from Judea & Samaria
during the war of 1948 were illegal and even criminal. The return of Jews to
that land is only fair, and there is no reasonable rationale as to why Jews in
Judea & Samaria should not be welcome within
a Palestinian state if such a state was formed on that land, unless one is to
accept that Arabs are incapable of
living peacefully with Jews.
As an
Arab, I know that many if not most individual Arabs are capable of living
peacefully with Jews. If Arab regimes are not capable of it, Jews should not be
the ones punished by being banned from settling on land that has a Jewish history that
is far deeper than any Palestinian history.
7. “It is the Israel-Palestinian conflict”
At the
time when Israel gained independence in 1948, those who referred to themselves
as Palestinians were
the Jews. Zuheir Moshan, PLO Commander from 1971 to 1979 said, “The Palestinian
people does not exist. The creation of a Palestine state is only a means for
continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.” But
even if we accept a distinct Arab Palestinian identity, it is very clear that
the conflict is not between Israelis and Palestinian, but between the entire
Arab world and the Jews, as indicated by the Arab world’s refusal to accept the
1947 UN partition plan that gave the Jews a tiny state where
they had only a slight majority.
Arabs
had a choice from the start, and they still do:
accept the Jewish state and benefit from Israel’s
contributions to the Middle East, or fight the Jews tooth and nail. It is
unfortunate for Arabs like me that they chose the latter. The Arab world
is very slowly moving towards acceptance of Israel, but we are not there yet,
and the support that the Arab world still provides to the Palestinian
extremists in continuing the conflict is an important obstacle to its
resolution.
8.
“Trump caused Arabs to riot in Jerusalem”
The
attacks on Jews in Jerusalem date back to long before US President Donald Trump
was involved in politics. In the war of 1948, Israel barely retained part
of Jerusalem, the Jewish residents were forcibly exiled from the portion that
the Arabs occupied, and Jewish religious sites were destroyed and desecrated.
After the war of 1967 during which Israel took back all of Jerusalem and
annexed it, no Arabs were deported by Israel, and
Israel even voluntarily granted Jordan guardianship of “Haram al-Sharif”, the
Islamic holy site on the Temple Mount.
Haj
Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem at the time, made the claim in
1929 that the Jews wished to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque,
causing a massacre of Jews by Arabs. Israel clearly has the military capability
today to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque if it wished to do so, but it does not, yet
that lie is still repeated, and it is the cause of Muslim riots.
Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem was
simply the recognition of a fact. Trump, in my opinion, did not go far enough,
and should have declared Jerusalem indivisible and
fully part of Israel; a position that Barack Obama expressed
six months before he became President. Arabs like myself who are truly
concerned about preserving all religious sites and all religious rights in
Jerusalem are quite pleased with Israel’s administration of Jerusalem.
9.
“Israel threatens Lebanon”
As a
Lebanese person, I want what is best for Lebanon, and that would be peace with
Israel. Israel has absolutely no interest and
has never had any interest in occupying or threatening any part of Lebanon. Its
only interest has been to prevent terrorist attacks from Lebanese soil, first
by the PLO then by Hezbullah. It is the Hezbullah-controlled
Lebanon that insists on maintaining a state of war with Israel,
and that state of war does not benefit the Lebanese people. It only benefits
Hezbullah and its Iranian master by giving Hezbullah an excuse to remain armed
and to maintain an illegitimate control over Lebanese institutions.
10.
“Israel is run by a right-wing government that is no better
than Hamas”
The analogies between Hamas and Israel’s
Likud partyare
nothing more than a dishonest attempt to demonize Israel. Israel has accepted,
and even initiated, on several occasions, partition plans that would have seen
the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Many Israelis today
typically vote for right-wing parties due to their doubt that the PA will ever
agree to a reasonable peace plan. However, even the current Israeli government,
which is a coalition of mostly right-wing parties, has consistently requested
to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, whereas the PA has consistently
refused. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even released hardened
terrorists in an attempt to kick-startpeace
talks, and as an Arab who opposes terrorism, I thought he went too far, but it
is certainly a proof of his commitment to peace. Before him, Menachem Begin
negotiated peace with Egypt, and Ariel Sharon withdrew unconditionally from
Gaza; both were considered hawkish right-wing Prime Ministers.
Palestinian
authorities, on the other hand, continue to encourage terrorism and
to refuse to pursue peace. That is the real obstacle to peace.
The
Netanyahu government is right-wing by Israeli and Western standards, but it is
in fact far to the left of any Arab regime, including on the issue of peace.
Left-wing people, as well as peaceful Arabs, have every reason to support Israel, and
no reasonable excuse for opposing it.
11.
“Israel commits genocide against Palestinians”
This
is the most absurd of all the myths. The populations of Palestinians in Gaza
and Judea & Samaria keep growing by
record numbers. Even the Ma’an News Agency, a Palestinian news agency, reported
in 2011 that since Israel’s independence in 1948, the Palestinian
population had grown 8-fold; this
is an average of 3.4% yearly growth rate, far higher than the average world
population growth, which varied between 0.8% and 2.1%during
the same period. If Israel is attempting to massacre Palestinians, it is the
most ineffective genocide in history. Yet we know that Israel’s military is
powerful and extremely effective. Israel has clearly never shown any
inclination towards genocide.
But
even though the accusation is easy to refute, enemies of Israel repeat it
anyway because they know that it deeply pains many Jews who still carry the
scars of the Holocaust and who have pledged that “Never Again” would genocides
be allowed to take place. As a left-wing Arab, I am deeply embarrassed that my
fellow leftists and Arabs sink so low as to make this highly callous and
calculated accusation.
12.
“If some Palestinians behave badly, it is out of desperation”
There
are hundreds of groups worldwide that are actively seeking independence and
typically under far worse conditions and with far fewer options than the
Palestinians. Those include Armenians in Azerbaijan; the Jumma people and the
Bengali Hindus in Bengladesh; a dozen different groups in Burma; Mongolians,
Tebetans, and Uyghurs in China; Abkhazians, Ossetians, and Armenians in
Georgia; seven groups in India; and many others over all continents. If any of
these groups was offered a state, as Palestinians were offered several times
already, it is highly unlikely that it would have turned it down, yet terrorism
is typically a very rare occurrence among those groups.
Palestinians
have been mistreated and continue to be mistreated by Arab regimes, and
they face apartheid in
Arab states (which, as an Arab, I am ashamed of), and some may be
understandably frustrated that they do not yet have an independent state, but
they receive extensive support and funding, and
they do not face any sort of genocide at the hands of Israel. Compared to
practically any other group that seeks statehood, Palestinians have far less
reason to feel desperate, yet they are extensively involved in terrorism. Hamas
even admits to
targeting civilians while predictably claiming to have excuses to do it.
Palestinians
have had many choices to make over the last 70 years, and they have far too
often made the wrong ones.
Palestinian terrorism continues in fact because Palestinians are not desperate
and can afford, due to international aid, to hold off on accepting any solutionuntil
they can get what their terrorist organizations have always openly demanded –
the destruction of the Jewish state.
13.
“Israel created the Palestinian refugee crisis”
There
would not be a single Palestinian refugee today if the Arab world had accepted
the 1947 UN partition plan, which the Jewish leaders did – even PA
President Mahmood Abbas admits
that the Arab refusal was a mistake. Both Jewish and Arab refugees resulted
from a war that Israel did not want but the Arab world imposed on Israel. While
the Israel-Arab conflict generated 711,000 Palestinian refugees, it also generated 856,000
Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The Jewish refugeeswere
absorbed by other countries, mostly Israel, but the Arab world refused to
absorb Arab refugees, keeping them in camps with limited rights. As an Arab, I
regret that the Arab world lost the richness of diversity that Jewish Arabs
offered, and I am angry that the Arab world uses Palestinian refugees as pawns
against Israel.
In
1952, the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees)
director, Sir Alexander Galloway, put it bluntly when he said, “It
is perfectly clear that the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee
problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United
Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether
the refugees live or die.” The Arab world, not Israel, created the Palestinian
refugee crisis and ensured that 70 years later, it is still not
resolved. Imagine if Canada, 70 years after a Syrian refugee came here,
he, his children, grand-children, and grand-grand-children were still
considered refugees and had much less rights than citizens? There is no doubt
that it would be denounced as racism and xenophobia, yet the Arab world gets
away with the same crime when it comes to Palestinians.
14.
“The conflict is a dispute over land”
Israel
is less than 0.2% of the size of the Arab world, not to mention other enemies
of Israel such as Iran. When the Arab world refused the 1947 UN partition plan,
Israel was even tinier and even more fragmented. The
conflict has never been about land but about Arabs rejecting Jewish self-determination
in the Middle East. After the 1967 war during which Israel took a significant
amount of land in a war of self-defence, Israel sought to return land for
peace, but the Arab world’s response was three Nos: no
peace, no negotiations, and no recognition of Israel.
Why
are my fellow Arabs so afraid of one tiny Jewish neighbour? I never understood
that.
15.
“Zionists are the new Nazis”
Like
the accusation of genocide, this accusation is easy to refute and is mainly
meant to bring back painful memories for Jews. Nazism was marked by two
significant aspects: Military expansionism and a form of racism/bigotry that
led to the coldblooded murder of ten million non-combatants, including six
million Jews. But Israel is not engaged in any racist activity and even less in
any genocide. Israel’s wars were always undertaken in self-defence to stop military
and terrorist attacks. Any land acquired by Israel was legitimate under the
laws of war, and Israel has already returned the vast majority of that land
(most notably the Sinai which alone is more than double the size of Israel) in
exchange for peace, and it would have returned even more if Syria and
the Palestinians had
agreed to peace agreements that Israel was willing to accept.
In
addition to the Jews not being “the new Nazis”, what disturbs me most as an
Arab is that it is in fact the Palestinians who in the past had ties to Nazis and
who today, as explained by Palestinian writer Bassam Tawil,
behave in ways that are similar to the Nazis.
16.
“Even Jews think that Israel is a terrorist state”
Some naïve Jews feel
guilty over accusations that Zionism is a modern form of Nazism, and a few
are simply antisemitic.
However, the number of Jews who buy the dishonest anti-Zionist rhetoric is very
small and very marginal. They are a convenient tool in the hands of Israel’s
enemies, so they are quoted often and their importance is magnified well beyond
their numbers. Their existence, in fact, demonstrates the democratic nature of
Israel and the Jewish community. The Arab world, on the other hand, tolerates
no dissent from imposed opinions.
17.
“Israel targets civilians and children”
When
civilians or children are unintentionally killed in IDF operations, it is
front-page news all over the world, resulting in very negative publicity for
Israel. Israel gains nothing from killing Palestinian civilians, but
Palestinian terrorist organizations gain world sympathy, which is why they
often place civilians in dangerous positions during conflicts with Israel.
Israel goes to great extents to avoid civilian casualties. When civilians are
killed, it is in spite of Israel’s best efforts, not
because of them.
Those
who mistreat Palestinian children are in fact the Palestinian authorities
who teach them hatred towards
Jews and Israel, thus ensuring that the conflict can never be resolved
peacefully.
The
targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists is largely ignored by
mainstream media, but even more surprisingly, while some courageous Arabs such
as Khaled Abu Toameh and Bassam Tawil often
raise the issue of Palestinian terrorists’ violence and abuse against
Palestinian civilians and children, the mainstream media ignores that too. As
an Arab, I believe that this is a form of racism against Arabs, indicating that
the world neither expects much from Arabs nor cares about their wellbeing.
18.
“Israel is an imperialist project”
Jews
are aboriginal people to the land of Israel. They are the ones who have been
victims of imperialism. They suffered many massacres,
including two sieges of Jerusalem by the Romans (63 BC and 37 BC), massacres by
the Romans (4-6 BC, 36, 66, 115-117, and 132-136), the massacres by Christians
(605 and 1099), the Hebron and Safed attacks by Kurds and Muslims (1517), the
destructions of Tiberias and Safed by the Druze and Arabs (1660), the siege of
Jaffa by the French army (1799), the Hebron massacre by the Egyptians (1834),
the attack on Safed by the Druze and Arabs (1838), The Arab attacks on Petach
Tikva (1886), the
riots in Jerusalem instigated the Grand Mufti (1920), the
Jaffa Arab riots (1921), the
Arab Riots in Safed (1929), the
Hebron massacre instigated by the Grand Mufti (1929), the
Great Arab Revolt (1936-1939), and
the Tiberius massacre by Arabs (1938). As
a result of these massacres, many Jews were forced to flee.
As an
Arab, it is my duty to recognize the Arab responsibility in several of these
massacres, and I wish that other Arabs did the same rather than fabricate
claims of imperialism. The Zionist project of allowing Jews to return to their
land is in fact the opposite of an imperialist project. It is an attempt to
reverse in a small way centuries of imperialist attacks on the Jews. Of course,
the dead and their potential descendants can never be brought back, but Israel
allows the descendants of the Jews who survived to return to the land that they
should never have been forced to leave.
19.
“Israeli Jews are European”
Some
of Israel’s Jews have European lineage, but it would be false to say that all
or even most of them do. There are a little over 6 million Jews in Israel
today. Many of them are Jewish refugees from Arab lands or their
descendants. We know that
there were originally 711,000 Palestinian refugees, and the UNRWA claimed
in January 2015 that living refugees and their descendants total 5 million
people. It is logical then to assume that from the original 856,000 Jewish
refugees from Arab lands, we now have at least 5 million Jewish refugees and
descendants. By that estimate, Arab Jews make up the majority of the six
million Israeli Jews. There are also many Israeli Jews who are descendants of
Jews who never left the land of Israel. Even among the Israeli Jews whose
ancestors lived in Europe, the only ones who would have no Middle Eastern blood
are those who converted to Judaism, but conversion to Judaism is relatively
rare since Jews, unlike Muslims and Christians, do not proselytize.
Israel’s official numbers from 2015 show
the following counts based on paternal country of origin for a total of 6.3
million Israeli Jews:
·
Israel: 2.8 million.
·
Africa: 0.9 million.
·
Russia: 0.9 million.
·
Asia: 0.7 million.
·
Europe: 0.7 million.
·
America and Oceania: 0.3 million.
·
In
addition, implying that Israelis who emigrated from Europe to Israel are
somehow less worthy than Israelis who have been in the Middle East for generations
is offensive. As an Arab who immigrated to Canada, I would not want Canadians
to consider me or other Arab Canadians any less worthy of being here than those
who were born here. That’s what we immigrants call xenophobia.
20.
“Jews have no right to have their own state”
The
Jewish state has at least as much the right to exist as any other state on
earth. Jews have a continuous historyof
over 3000 years in the land of Israel, despite being repeatedly massacred and
forced to flee. If the Jewish people is not allowed to be independent on that
land then no people should be allowed to be independent anywhere. How could I
demand that my fellow Lebanese be independent if I can’t accept the
independence of another people? The reality is that rejecting the Jewish
people’s right to self-determination cannot be described as anything other
than antisemitism,
regardless of whether the person rejecting that right is an Arab like me or a leftist
European.
21. “Europe supported Zionism because of guilt over the Holocaust”
The
reverse is in fact true: Europe’s support for Zionism, although always weak,
was stronger before the Holocaust than during and after the Holocaust.
The
First Zionist Congress took place in 1897, 36
years before the Nazi party came to power in Germany. Britain’s Balfour Declaration supporting
“the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”
occurred in 1917, two decades before the start of the Holocaust, but instead of
helping Zionists, Britain imposed restricted immigration of Jews through
the White Papers of
1922, 1930, and 1939, even while the Holocaust was taking place in Europe.
An embargo was imposed by
the United States and supported by Europe on the sale of weapons to Israel and
the Palestinian Arabs, starting in December 1947, soon after the United Nations
announced a partition plan for Palestine. The embargo did not prevent Arabs
from obtaining weapons, but it severely affected Israel which was able to
survive only due to secret sales of armaments from Czechoslovakia, with
the quiet approval of the Soviet Union. None of the countries that should have
felt guilt for the Holocaust, most notably Germany, helped Israel get
established or survive the Arab onslaught.
22. “Israel’s support for LGBT rights is a cover for its crimes”
Israel’s
support for LGBT rights should be praised, not
demonized. Accusations of “pinkwashing” are in fact themselves a smokescreen for
supporting Israel’s enemies who consistently use terrorism and hatred to ensure
that the conflict continues.
As a
left-wing Arab, I have supported LGBT rights all my life and I have always been
disturbed by the fact that LGBT rights are practically non-existent in the Arab
world. Instead of denouncing Israel’s support for LGBT rights, leftists should
show their support for Arabs by demanding that Arab states emulate Israel.
23.
“The BDS movement is a reasonable response to Israel”
The
boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement is not an appropriate response to
Israel because Israel’s actions are lawful and justified. The BDS movement
– founded by
Omar Barghouti who opposes the
concept of a Jewish state – is in fact detrimental to
peace, and it is driven by antisemitism not
by peaceful idealism. Even if we ignore the anti-Semitism widely promoted by
BDS advocates on university campuses, social media, and elsewhere, the stated demands of
the BDS movement alone show the truth about the BDS movement. The BDS movement
presents an image of respectability, but that is far from the truth.
Since, its objectives, if achieved, would result in
the killing of Jews and the return of the remaining Jews to the stateless and
precarious status that they had before May 1948, the BDS movement represents an
anti-Semitism at par with Hamas.
As an
Arab who would like to see the Arab world become modern, liberal, democratic,
and innovative, I would like to see exchanges between Israel and its neighbors,
and lots of it, including trade, tourism, economic cooperation, cultural
exchanges, and much more.
24.
“Hatred of Israel is okay because anti-Zionism is not
antisemitism”
Hatred
of an entire people is never justified, and it is particularly wrong in the
case of hatred of Israel because it is very clearly based on antisemitism and
not on legitimate reasons. The related claim that Arabs cannot be antisemitic
because they are Semites is a deflection based on a misleading and false interpretation of
the term antisemitism. As
explained by Encyclopedia Britannica, “The
term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to
designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time”.
Anti-Zionism is in fact antisemitism,
whether the person holding the belief is an Arab like me, a leftist like me, or
neither.
25.
“Israel is the cause of conflicts in the Middle East”
Israel’s
enemies have accused Israel of initiating or encouraging conflicts to divert
attention from itself. They have accused Israel for example of supporting ISIS.
None of these accusations have ever been supported by credible evidence. The
reality is that the Middle East has been involved in wars and conquests for
many centuries. The Jews were several times massacred and expelled. Middle
Eastern wars have a long history and were caused by several factors unrelated
to Israel, including the two world wars, Shia/Sunni rivalry, Turkish imperialism, Roman imperialism, Persian imperialism,
the Muslim empires, European imperialism,
and tribalism.
Israel on the other hand, has
only had one objective, existing in peace, which it has so far not been allowed
to do. As an Arab who would like to be able to visit my native country Lebanon
without risk of being jailed because I communicate with Israelis, peace cannot
come soon enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fred Maroun is a
Canadian of Arab origin who lived in Lebanon until 1984, including during 10
years of civil war. Fred supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state,
and he supports a liberal and democratic Middle East where all religions and
nationalities, including Palestinians, can co-exist in peace with each other
and with Israel, and where human rights are respected. Fred is an atheist, a
social liberal, and an advocate of equal rights for LGBT people everywhere.
Fred Maroun writes for Gatestone Institute.
