Recently, a fellow mentioned that he was putting together a new pro-Israel organization and that he was trying to decide what to name it.
He was considering something like “Peace and Justice for the Middle East.”
My first thought was that this sounds like an anti-Israel group. All he would need to add would be something about human rights and it would be perfect. Of course this is because the people who want to see an end to the Jewish state have co-opted the language of peace, justice and human rights. They own it now, despite the fact that this entails an Orwellian reversal of meaning.
For example, let’s take a local organization, Peace Fresno. They support the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian Arab ‘refugees’. Now I know a number of their members and they say they are against all war. I would like to ask them how the influx of several million violently hostile Arabs into tiny Israel would affect matters of war and peace. Would it make things more peaceful? We know that it would be the beginning of a bloody civil war, 1948 all over again except with ten times the number of combatants. We know this because the Palestinians themselves tell us.
But they would say that the Palestinian refugees deserve justice. Really? Is it just that the Palestinian Arabs, who started the 1948 war under the leadership of the Nazi Mufti al-Husseini and lost it, should have the result of that war reversed after 62 years? Is it just that other refugees, like the 800,000 Jewish ones who fled Arab countries between 1948 and the 1960’s were absorbed by Israel and other countries, but the Arab nations refuse to absorb even one Palestinian?
More generally, is it just that there are 23 Arab nations with a combined population of 358 million and one Jewish state with about 5.5 million Jews, and this is intolerable to the Arabs? Is it just that one unelected royal family rules all of Saudi Arabia, where they have institutionalized racism, misogyny and antisemitism? Is it just that Arab terror organizations are rewarded for their murder campaigns?
Peace Fresno also calls for justice for the ‘victims’ among the ‘peaceful activists’ (Turkish IHH thugs) on board the Mavi Marmara. Justice must mean that you can beat somebody with an iron pipe until his brains start coming out and he is expected to do nothing. ‘Justice’ must mean something different for Israelis and Turks.
And Peace Fresno wants no restrictions on traffic of goods or people in and out of Gaza. Their Hamas friends in Gaza need more building materials, so they can rebuild after the recent war that they started and were losing, at least until the incoming Obama administration made Israel stop fighting. They have already started rebuilding — fortifications and tunnels and a big new prison (with a reinforced basement bunker, I’m sure), not homes. That’s how to promote peace.
Speaking of human rights, the ‘activists’ on the Gaza Flotilla, who belonged to multiple organizations with ‘peace’, ‘justice’ and ‘human rights’ in their names, were asked to deliver a message to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped four years ago (when he was 19 years old) and has been held incommunicado — in violation of international law — ever since. They refused, because apparently ‘human rights’ mean something different for Israelis and Arab residents of Gaza.
So who wants peace? Israel, which wants to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority (PA), or the PA, which refuses to negotiate unless Israel agrees to all of its demands in advance? Hamas, which — still — fires rockets into Israel and continually probes the border, trying to kidnap more Israelis?
Who is more concerned with justice? Israel, whose Supreme Court often issues orders that Palestinian rights require changes in the route of the security fence, whose army command arrests and tries Israeli soldiers for improper behavior in wartime, and which allows security prisoners — even those convicted of multiple murders — access to television and university courses in prison? Or Hamas, which executes ‘collaborators’ and political opponents without trial, and will not let the Red Cross visit Gilad Shalit in his underground bunker?
But it’s no use. The language is corrupted. Better he should call his group “The Zionist League for Preemptive Self-Defense,” in keeping with the adage that if you can’t be liked, you might as well be respected.
Technorati Tags: Israel, peace, justice, human rights, Peace Fresno