The Tyranny of Deceit
It is shameful that pro-Palestinian professors and students on American, Canadian and European campuses pretend that the only reason for the problems in the Middle East is because of Israeli obstinacy as if it is the fault of the Israelis and not the rejectionist Arab world. Not only has every Israeli concession and every act of goodwill and compassion not changed the way Israel is portrayed – but each concession, each accommodation, each withdrawal first from Lebanon, then from Gaza has only fed the furious hatred that Islam and the international community feels for it.
Borders have nothing to do with peace in the Middle East. It is the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, the nation manifestation of the Jewish people, in the midst of the Muslim umma that offends the Arabs and their supporters. For the Israelis, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is another way of having everyone in the region accept the legitimacy of Israel’s presence which the Arabs are not prepared to do. Even if the Jews were to redraw their borders along the lines proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937 hatred towards them would not have been affected. The Palestinians have never been willing to make do with a small state of their own which they have been offered on numerous occasions. They want “justice”, revenge, recognition as victims, and above all else – the “right of return.” For that reason they are unwilling to declare an end to the conflict nor are they prepared to promise to make no further demands in future.
In short, they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. In fact, it is the history of Jews in that land stretching back 3,500 years that offends them which accounts for their threats against Israel when it declares its intention to make the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb national historic sites (the latter of which is attacked daily by the Palestinians with stones and Molotov cocktails) with the aim of restoring them and opening them to the world. The fact that all religions will have freedom of access to such sites is irrelevant to the Palestinians who have spent millions of U.S. and European dollars teaching their children that Jews are “the descendants of pigs and monkeys” who came to the Land as usurpers less than a century ago, that the biblical Canaanites were Arabs, Jesus was a Palestinian, and Abraham was a Muslim, albeit the fact that he lived almost three thousand years before Islam was born! This is all the more disturbing (as Prof. Nissim Dana of Ariel University writes) when one realizes that …..”in the Koran, there are 10 passages which state that Allah bequeathed the land to the Jewish people. In all of these instances, it is written that there is not only the right but the obligation placed on the Sons of Israel to inherit the land. On the other hand, there is no mention in the Koran of bequeathing the land to Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, or any other nation not called the Jewish people.” As for the claim that the Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites, Dana notes that “the Koran says the Canaanites were ordered expelled from the holy land by Allah after they had defiled the land.”
The short of it is this. Israel could grant its enemies every possible concession (and has), but that would not bring peace. Nothing short of Israel’s destruction will suffice. Truth is – anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism when it reaches a certain pitch, and singling out Israel for condemnation and international sanctions – out of all proportion to any other parties in the Middle East – is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is intellectually dishonest.
