The Ethnic Cleansing of Common Sense

This week marks the 56th birthday of The State of Israel. More than any year, this may be her most important. Unfortunately, I feel like that every year. Each year brings with it new challenges and concerns, but this year is different. This year is NOW.

Obviously, the main concern is Israel is the issue of the “Palestinians”. Although before 1948, the “Palestinians” were the Jews AND the Arabs who lived in Palestine, since the Arabs refused to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, they continue to consider themselves “Palestinian”. Since it’s inception, Israel has remained the flashpoint of the Middle East.

But, why?

For 56 years, Israel has offered peace to each of her neighbors and has been rejected time after time. Finally in 1967, having learned that an attack was imminent, Israel attacked Egypt and Syria and crippled their armies in 6 days. Before the attack, Jordan was warned to stay out of the conflict, but due to Arab pressure, the Jordanians mounted an offensive that was quickly turned into a sound defeat. In the aftermath of the war presented Israel with the Sinai desert, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. All of these positions had been used by the Arab states in order to more efficiently destroy the tiny country.

Israel offered to return the land if the Arab nations would recognize their right to exist.

Since that time, Israel has tried in vain to be treated equally in the United Nations. As a true precursor to what has now become the norm, the UN sided with the Arab and Soviet block in equating Zionism with Racism. The reason being, according to the UN, because Arabs are not treated fairly in Israel. Forget about how the Jews are treated. The Arabs, the ones who have refused to recognize Israel’s very existence, feel they are treated poorly and charge the Jews with Racism. Moreover, the UN agreed!

Finally, an Arab leader decided he had enough and accepted Israel’s invitation for peace. President Anwar Sadat realized the cost in money and lives was not worth it. At Camp David, Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin agreed to peaceful relations. In return for the Sinai, Egypt would recognize the State of Israel and agree to desist from further warfare.

All it got Sadat was a bullet in the head.

Since then, only Jordan came to their senses. Because of uprisings instigated by the PLO, the King of Jordan exiled all “Palestinian” nationalists from his country (remember, Jordan was to be the homeland for the Arabs) and gave up his “claim” to the West Bank. Furthermore, the United Nations, not wanting to be outdone, declared all Arabs in the West Bank to be “refugees” and set them up as “refugee camps”. Furthermore, the UN allotted millions of dollars to these “refugees” for their basic needs. Israel offered the majority of these people citizenship, but was turned down due to pressure by other Arab nations. The truth is that these people are not “refugees” and they are not in “camps”. The cities developed during this time have been there for centuries. Israel has modernized it with electricity and sewage treatment, and until the last Intifada, had allowed free movement throughout the country. The Arabs of the West Bank have more freedom in Israel than in any Arab country!

Yet, it’s not enough. Is it jealousy? Or is it something else. Why do they really hate us?

According to Walter Russell Mead, who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, America is hated because of our strong ties to Israel. He opines in the New York Times this week that “The United States simply does not care about the rights or needs of the Palestinian people.” Just like “Zionism is Racism”, the Arabs are crying that we don’t play fair. His argument is that the U.S. is biased against the poor, poor Palestinian people. Aside from the falsehoods in Mr. Meads commentary, and there are many, he believes that the United States is unfairly treating the Palestinian people. Mr. Meads conveniently forgets that the U.S. has bankrolled the corrupt regime of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to the tune of over one billion dollars. Furthermore, he fails to mention that President Bush is the first President to accept the idea of a “Palestinian” state on the West Bank and Gaza. Mead then asks the question “Who takes the agency's place when peace comes and the Palestinians aren't refugees anymore?” (to see the entire article, click – here).

Walter Mead is either a moron, or is an anti-Semite (I know what you’re going to say, that he can be anti-Israel but that doesn’t mean he is anti-Semitic. Well I don’t agree and that’s a discussion for another day). How dare he ignore the fact that the U.S. is close to Israel because Israel is a DEMOCRACY! Israel and America share common VALUES. It wasn’t the Jews who were dancing in the street when the Twin Towers came down. It wasn’t the Jews that bombed the embassies in Africa. It wasn’t the Jews who through wheelchair-bound U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer off the side of the Achilles Laurel and it sure as hell wasn’t the Jews who murdered 11 athletes in the 1972 Olympic in Munich! Why should we be evenhanded? I am sick of every two-bit “expert” spewing that Israel is continuing the “cycle of violence” when they take out an Arab leader who violates the United Nations charter that defines genocide as intending "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Yeah, I know Hamas has not signed the UN charter, but the members of the UN have sworn “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace”.

As of 11:51am CST, the UN hasn’t done a damn thing. Yet, people like Herr Mead think that the Arabs hate us because we don’t treat them nicely. Boo, the f**king hoo.

But wait, there’s more. Not only are they not being treated nicely, they are angry over the fact that Israeli’s continue to live in their land. In the PLO Charter, the Arabs consider ALL the land under the Balfour Declaration to be part of the “Arab Nation” and does not accept the notion that Israeli’s are in of themselves a nation. During the past decade, it was believed that the PLO removed all references to the destruction of the “Zionist entity”. That is not true. For one thing, to remove that would require a complete overhaul of their charter. No, the Arab position is that there is no such entity as “Israel” and that when they say they only want “their” land back, they are referring to the entire region that was conceived by the Balfour Declaration. Even their official website shows a map of “Palestine” where Israel should be.

Nope. They want it all. And they’ll stop at nothing to get it. Including arguing that Jews living in the West Bank are illegal. I don’t know about you, but saying Jews can’t live there sounds an awful lot like Nazi Germany. With the exception of the architects of the Oslo Treaty, you would be very hard pressed to find a single Jew who believes the Arabs truly want to live peacefully with the Jews. Yet, the United States of America should be worried that the Arabs hate us because where not fair to them.

In the last 200 plus years, every conflict that American’s have battled in (right or wrong), have been fought for the preservation of democracy. Why would the United States, or even the United Nations support regimes that offer neither freedom nor human rights? Telling someone that he may not live somewhere because of his religion is clearly a violation of his human rights.

The Arabs don’t hate Americans because of Israel. They hate us because of who we are and because of who they are.