Hatred of Jews is the central animating feature of the political and strategic reality of the Middle East. It is hatred of Jews that dictates the legal regimes, foreign policies, military aspirations, cultural mores, educational themes and even public health policies of our neighbours from Ramallah to Tehran.
Despite the centrality of Jew-hatred in all aspects
of public life in the Arab and Muslim world, our neighbors' unrelenting and
irrational abhorrence for Israel and the Jewish people remains a dirty secret
that you aren't supposed to mention in polite company. From Washington to
Brussels, talk of the policy implications of Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred is
prohibited.
Omar Abu-Sneina, a convicted terrorist murderer, is
one of the thousand Palestinian terrorists that Israel released from prison in
order to secure the release of Israeli hostage IDF Sgt.- Maj. Gilad Schalit.
Originally from Hebron, Abu-Sneina was released to Hamas-controlled Gaza.
This week the IDF announced that since his release
Abu-Sneina has returned to the terror business. The Shin Bet (Israel Security
Agency) intercepted a computer memory card he sent his family in Hebron with
instructions for how his fellow terrorists should go about kidnapping and holding
IDF soldiers hostage. The instructions demonstrate how for Abu-Sneina, Israelis
don't even deserve to be treated like animals.
Among other things, he discussed how to hide a
hostage. As he put it, "Avoid hiding [the captive soldier] in desolate
places, tunnels or forests, unless the aforementioned [captive] is a corpse or
a severed head. If the aforementioned is a live human, that must be visited at
least once a week and provided with food and drink, it is best to hide him in a
house, an agricultural farm, a workplace, etc."
Abu-Sneina's coldblooded cruelty and rejection of
the inherent value of the lives of Israelis is not simply a function of the
fact that he is a terrorist. It is a reflection of the values of Palestinian
society. Those values are continuously expressed and reinforced by Fatah- and
Hamas-controlled media outlets, cultural and educational institutions and
religious authorities. The ubiquitousness of Jew-hatred in the daily lives of
Palestinians is so overwhelming it is difficult to imagine any facet of
Palestinian life that isn't inundated by it.
Take grammar lessons. According to a translation
provided by Palestinian Media Watch, the Palestinian Authority's Arabic
language matriculation examinations for high school students include questions
such as "Punctuate the underlined phrase: Do not view the occupier as
human." And "Punctuate the underlined phrase: We shall die in order
that our land may live."
This week, a Palestinian court sentenced Muhammad
Abu Shahala to death for selling a home in Hebron near the Cave of the
Patriarchs to Jews. Shahala was arrested shortly after several Jewish families
moved into the house last month. He was reportedly tortured and quickly tried
and sentenced to die by a PA court.
Leaders of the Jewish community of Hebron wrote a
letter to international leaders this week asking them to intervene with PA
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and demand that he cancel Shahala's sentence. They
addressed the letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, the
director-general of the International Red Cross, Yves Daccord, as well as Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres. In it they wrote,
"It is appalling to think that property sales should be defined as a
'capital crime' punishable by death.
"The very fact that such a 'law' exists within
the framework of the PA legal system points to a barbaric and perverse type of
justice, reminiscent of practices implemented during the dark ages."
They went on to make the reasonable comparison between the PA's law prohibiting land sales to Jews to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws that constrained and finally outlawed trade between Jews and Germans. The letter concluded with the question, "Is the Palestinian Authority a reincarnation of the Third Reich?"
The Palestinians of course are far from unique in
their obsession with hating Jews. Their hemorrhage of hatred, their obsessive
need to reject any move towards peaceful coexistence with Israel, or what the
renowned late Palestinian poet Yousuf Al Khatib referred to picturesquely as
"the Jewish filth of Europe," is matched in every Arab land. And of
course, it is the primary obsession of the Iranian regime.
The parallels between Nazi laws and the laws of the
PA and the Arab states that outlaw all cooperation with Israel and make such
cooperation a capital offense are obvious and straightforward. Yet generally
speaking, anyone who points out this fact is automatically dismissed as an
alarmist or an extremist. Given the PA's relative military weakness when
compared with Israel and the Arab world's current lack of interest in waging
active war against Israel, noting their inarguable ideological affinity with
the Nazis is considered socially and even intellectually unacceptable. The fact
that they lack the ability to implement their ideology renders it improper to
mention it.
The social prohibition on drawing parallels between
the threats facing Israel today and those that faced the Jewish people 70 years
ago is not limited to the discourse on the Arab world's conflict with Israel.
It also extends to polite society's discourse on Iran's nuclear program, which
the Iranian regime has repeatedly made clear is aimed at destroying Israel.
In his address to the nation at the annual
Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem on Wednesday evening, Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took aim at that taboo when he attacked those who
accuse him of belittling the Holocaust by comparing the annihilation of
European Jewry to the threat posed by Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Netanyahu said,
"I know there are also those who believe that
the unique evil of the Holocaust should never be invoked in discussing other
threats facing the Jewish people. To do so, they argue, is to belittle the
Holocaust and to offend its victims.
"I totally disagree. On the contrary. To cower from speaking the uncomfortable truth—that today like then, there are those who want to destroy millions of Jewish people—that is to belittle the Holocaust, that is to offend its victims and that is to ignore the lessons.
"Not only does the prime minister of Israel have the right, when speaking of these existential dangers, to invoke the memory of a third of our nation which was annihilated. It is his duty."
"I totally disagree. On the contrary. To cower from speaking the uncomfortable truth—that today like then, there are those who want to destroy millions of Jewish people—that is to belittle the Holocaust, that is to offend its victims and that is to ignore the lessons.
"Not only does the prime minister of Israel have the right, when speaking of these existential dangers, to invoke the memory of a third of our nation which was annihilated. It is his duty."
Netanyahu is right, of course. Unfortunately for
Israel, raising the Holocaust in the context of a discussion about contemporary
threats to the Jewish people is the rhetorical equivalent of dropping a nuclear
bomb. Just as no one is allowed to use a nuclear bomb, no one is allowed to
mention the Holocaust. And that means that there is ultimately no way to speak
about the violent hatred that animates our enemies in every aspect of their
policy making. From the seemingly anodyne issue of property sales to the
existential issue of nuclear weapons programs, the Jew-hatred that lies at the
foundation of their actions is out of bounds for discussion.
Actually, the situation is both better and worse
than that. Netanyahu's rhetorical boldness in drawing the parallel between Iran
and the Nazis is arguably the only reason that the EU and the Obama
administration have taken any actions against Iran. No, as their feckless
negotiations with the mullahs, their foot-dragging in implementing economic
sanctions, and their outspoken opposition to military action against Iran make
clear, they do not really mind the prospect of Iran acquiring the ability to
wipe out the Jewish state. The only reason they have adopted sanctions at all
is because Netanyahu's Holocaust rhetoric made them fear that Israel would
attack Iran's nuclear installations if they didn't.
On the other hand, when it comes to their direct
dealings with Jew-haters, Westerners not only fail to confront them about their
prejudice. They enable it. For instance, at a townhall meeting during her visit
to Tunisia last month, Hillary Clinton was asked how US leaders can be trusted
when during elections, "most of the candidates from both sides run towards
the Zionist lobbies to get their support."
Rather than reject the anti-Jewish premise of the
question—that Jews exert inordinate control over US politics or that there is
something wrong with candidates expressing support for Israel—Clinton treated
the question as legitimate.
She said, "A lot of things are said in
political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention."
Clinton even congratulated her anti-Jewish
questioner, saying, "I think it's a fair question because I... sometimes
am a little surprised that people around the world pay more attention to what
is said in our political campaigns than most Americans."
Similarly, a report on the behind the scenes goings
on at last weekend's nuclear negotiations with Iran published by Al-Monitor described
the friendly discussion that took place at a dinner Friday night between EU
foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian chief negotiator Saeed
Jalili. According to a European diplomat, the conversation was aimed at
breaking the ice. And it included a discussion of "political party funding
in the US."
The fact that the West refuses to consider the
policy implications of the most powerful force in Arab and Iranian
policy-making and political life does not mean that Israeli policy-makers
should necessarily expand their discussion of the topic—although it would
probably not hurt for them to do so. What it means is that the general policy
debate in the West about the nature of Middle Eastern politics is completely
divorced from reality.
Because the Americans and the Europeans refuse to
acknowledge the elephant of Jew-hatred in the middle of the room, they cannot be
trusted to make reasoned or rational policy decisions. And since they cannot be
trusted to act rationally, Israel cannot rely on the Americans or the Europeans
as allies or partners when it confronts threats from its Jew-obsessed neighbours.
WHY I AM NOT A DISPENSATIONALIST; John Nelson Darby is recognized as the father of dispensationalism later made popular in the United States by Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible. Charles Henry Mackintosh, 1820–1896, with his popular style spread Darby's teachings to humbler elements in society and may be regarded as the journalist of the Brethren Movement. CHM popularised Darby more than any other Brethren author. As there was no Christian teaching of a “rapture” before Darby began preaching about it in the 1830s, he is sometimes credited with originating the "secret rapture" theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove His bride, the Church, from this world before the judgments of the tribulation. Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism, because "God is able to graft them in again," and they believe that in His grace he will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy. They believe that, while the methodologies of God may change, His purposes to bless Israel will never be forgotten, just as He has shown unmerited favour to the Church, He will do so to a remnant of Israel to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham. I am not a dispensationalist; it is unbiblical and thoroughly evil.
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