The 1948 war, even Benny Morris now admits, was a jihad against the Jews in the land of Israel.
I’m looking forward to Morris’ new history of the War of Independence, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, which has just been published. A fundamental fact about the conflict which has been missed by those who believe that peace can be achieved by compromise, is that from the beginning — long before 1948, even — it has been driven by the Arab struggle to eliminate the Jewish presence in the region. It isn’t a question of borders, minority rights, refugees, or anything else.
Morris, famous for his assertion of an active Jewish role in the flight of the Palestinian refugees (and his unfair and disingenuous treatment of Ben-Gurion in this connection), has finally come to see the fundamental nature of the conflict.
The jihad is difficult to understand for westerners who think that everything can be solved by fairness, economic development, and communication. Recently Rabbis for Human Rights held an ‘alternative’ 60th anniversary celebration for Israel, in which they emphasized the need for Israel to ‘live up’ to ethical principles contained in the Declaration of Independence.
This is not only irrelevant — the jihadists’ desire to expunge Jews from ‘Palestine’ has nothing to do with how the Jews behave — but directly helpful to the enemy. The Arabs’ explicit strategy is to present Israel as denying human rights to Palestinians, by provoking, exaggerating, and even inventing incidents in order to make it seem as though the conflict is about these sort of issues rather than the continuation of a genocidal war. Rabbis for Human Rights and similar Jewish groups assist them in this project of delegitmization by validating their claims.
Western observers then become indignant about Palestinian rights and ignore the Arab and Persian jihad which is trying to take away the most essential of human rights from the Jewish people, the rights to self-determination and to life.
Meanwhile, the murderous jihad continues. A rocket from Gaza took another life today, a woman in Moshav Yesha (her name hasn’t been released yet), a tourist visiting relatives. The rocket struck quite close to her, riddling her body with the ball bearings packed in its warhead.
The body of yet another murder victim is removed, this time from Moshav Yesha
Technorati Tags: Benny Morris, Rabbis for Human Rights, Israel, terrorism, jihad