FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Jerusalem light rail system

Yesterday I complained — yes, I’ve been accused of being negative from time to time — about what seems to be a tendency to ignore the ‘little terrorism’ of Palestinian Arabs, and sometimes even Arab citizens of Israel.

I talked about the stone-throwing that sometimes turns into murder, the use of crime and vandalism as weapons.

There are psychological reasons that Israelis don’t want to deal with these issues, in addition to the practical problems, which I must admit are not simple.

It’s natural to ignore complicated issues that you don’t want to deal with, even if this is irrational and dangerous. Security is expensive, and — perhaps more important — requires focus and attention. It’s easier to just ignore the threats.

There is also a political reason. At the time of the Oslo accords, Israelis were told that peace was just around the corner. They began to relax. Since 2000 it has been obvious to most of them, with the exception of some of the media elite, that this is not the case. But it’s wrenching to go back to the need for constant vigilance.

Here is an example. For obvious reasons I can’t go into detail, but believe me, the details are shocking.

Recently a team of outside security experts inspected the new light rail system in Jerusalem, which runs next to Arab neighborhoods that are known locations of Palestinian nationalist activity. A friend of mine was part of the team. What they found was that the system, bought as a package from a European company, was massively insecure. The design is such that making it secure will be difficult and very expensive. The security people informed the Transportation Ministry and the Prime Minister’s office. Nothing has been done.

The decision to implement a ‘package’ designed for Europe, a package in which the primary consideration was the efficient movement of people and for which security apparently was simply not a consideration, was a serious mistake. The fact that, at least so far, changes to make the system suitable for the Israeli environment have not been made is potentially disastrous.

Ehud Olmert famously said

We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies…

To give this the most generous possible interpretation, what it could mean is that it is frustrating to have to devote so much energy to simple survival. Of course, the solution is not to allow oneself, and the nation, to give in to wishful, fantastic, delusional thinking about how our enemies want peace just like we do. That was Olmert’s answer, and it is not an answer.

Israel is not a ‘normal’ country. Peace is not on offer from its neighbors, and will not be for the foreseeable future. Israelis will have to pay attention to security, to send their children to army service, and to do reserve duty themselves.

And they will have to fix the Jerusalem light rail system, or close it.

Technorati Tags: Israel, terrorism, Jerusalem

Vandalism at Jerusalem's Mt. of Olives Cemetery

Recently, a car occupied by two Israeli Jews was attacked by rock-throwing Arabs in a Jerusalem neighborhood. Luckily, they escaped, one with minor injuries. Sometimes the victims are not so lucky, as in the case of Asher and Yonatan Palmer, murdered last year when a huge rock came through the windshield, striking the driver in the face and causing their car to veer off the road. Here is what I wrote then:

Every single day, hundreds of rocks, blocks, stones, etc. are thrown at Jewish vehicles in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Arab towns or neighborhoods inside the Green Line. Sometime photographers are informed in advance that there will be exciting opportunities to view the heroic resistance to occupation. Throwing ‘stones’ (sometimes as big as a person’s head) is what Palestinian Arab adolescents do for entertainment. Even the great Columbia University ‘scholar’ Edward Said symbolically threw a stone across the Lebanese border at Israeli soldiers.

In the recent case, the driver was also struck in the face, but managed to control the car and get away from a crowd of ‘youths’ who would certainly have torn the two apart if they had been able to. Last October, a woman in labor on her way to Hadassah Hospital and her husband were attacked in a similar fashion; they also managed to escape.

Sometimes the Arabs throw gasoline bombs at cars, and sometimes people are dragged out of them and beaten.

Although the initial stone-throwing is often done by pre-teens or young teenagers, a crowd of older and more dangerous youths quickly gathers. In some cases, the lives of the victims have been saved by older Arabs who have not had the full ‘benefit’ of a Palestinian education.

The fact is that there are places in the Jewish state, in its capital and on both sides of the Green Line, where a Jew may not go for fear of losing his life.

This is not what Herzl intended when he called for a Jewish state as the answer to antisemitism.

Apologists for Arab violence will tell you that they are just reacting to the theft of their land, etc., and that we simply have to give them ‘justice’ and the problems will go away. With all due respect, this is rubbish.

The so-called ‘theft’ did not happen, and the righteous indignation of the Palestinian Arabs at their treatment has been manufactured and carefully nurtured over the years, to create ‘reasons’ to justify and promote the primitive racism that animates the young terrorists to commit murder.

There is no ‘justice’ that can satisfy the Arab leadership short of the removal of the Jews from the Middle East, killing them if need be. Just ask them (in Arabic). It’s not a secret. What is happening increasingly is that every Palestinian Arab is being asked to do his own part in the ethnic cleansing that is their heart’s desire.

Am I exaggerating? If you think so, read this 2005 Palestinian Media Watch report:

…the [Palestinian Authority (PA)] teaches an ideology of virulent hatred of Jews and Israel that mandates the killing of Jews solely because they are Jews. The murder of Jews is presented not only as beneficial to Muslims and Arabs, but as necessary for all humankind. These findings are based on a thorough study and analysis of eight years of official PA television and PA-controlled daily newspapers. This report documents how this hate ideology has been taught for years, well before the war started in September 2000, and continues even after the death of Yasser Arafat…

Incitement has gotten worse since then, not better. Official Israel — the government, the police, even the army — often seems to ignore the violence. But when it is ignored, it is in fact condoned, and Arabs are becoming more and more bold in acting out their racist beliefs.

Unfortunately there is no ‘liberal’ solution. The answer is not to protect the rights of Arabs in the PA areas, or reduce discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel. It is not to withdraw from the territories or provide more aid to the racist and terrorist PA leaders. It is not to provide funds for organizations working to weaken or ‘de-Zionize’ the Jewish state, as the New Israel Fund and the European Union are doing.

The real answer is that the Jews of Israel have to push back, to take over the neighborhoods in Jerusalem where they can’t go, or at least to police them so that they will be safe. Roads must be patrolled, and the response to violence and vandalism must be swift and effective. The police, poorly paid, poorly trained, underfunded and under-equipped, need a total overhaul.

I am in Israel right now and the contrast between the opulence displayed on TV and the lack of public resources devoted to ensuring the security of the Jewish population is shocking. But there also seems to be a lack of will, an attitude that “nothing can be done, so why try?” in so many problem areas. For example, consider the Mt. of Olives Cemetery in Jerusalem:

Mourners are still stoned frequently near the cemetery and headstones are regularly defaced and smashed. This on the mountain slopes where Jews have been interring their dead for over 3,000 years. Its proximity to the Temple Mount, as well as the traditional proscription against burials within Jerusalem’s walls, made the Mount of Olives hallowed as far back as First Temple days…

The preferred target of the vandals, who recurrently raid after sundown, is enigmatically the Gerrer Rebbe’s grave, but Begin’s has also been damaged. Vandals have smeared human feces on tombs and deluged them with household rubbish and construction debris. Markers have been daubed in tar and paint. Hate-graffiti has been scrawled and gravestones have been hammered and shattered.

This is not accidental. It is well-understood by the Arabs that crime and vandalism can be a form of warfare. They are pushing as hard as they can to conquer the land piecemeal. Every Jewish cemetery vandalized, every Jewish driver who is afraid to venture on the roads, every no-go neighborhood or road is a victory for them.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs

Thought experiment time:

Perhaps one day, the Jews of the world will finally become fed up. Maybe they will build an enormous spaceship and take their arguments to another planet (we know Jews are smart, so they could do this).

What would happen on that planet might be interesting, but I won’t speculate, although it’s tempting to wonder what a Jewish planet would be like. Like Israel without the foreign workers,  terrorism and reserve duty?

I’m more interested in what the Earth would be like. Imagine a Middle East without Jews (the Iranian regime does this all the time). Pity the ‘Palestinians’, whose culture would suddenly lose its raison d’être. After a few days of enjoying the nice cars and buildings the Jews left behind, they would have to create a real identity for themselves.

Suddenly there would be very little interest in supporting the ‘refugees’. Who would care about them? Not the Arab countries, who treat them like garbage now. I expect there would be fighting between various factions, some Islamist and some secular. Hizballah would take control of the North, Hamas the South, and Fatah the East. The UN would feed them, at least for a while. Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. would each supply its favored faction with weapons, and they would fight until most of the land was swallowed up by its neighbors or under control of various militias.

The former Israeli Arabs, used to a degree of civilization and lacking the pent-up viciousness of the militias, would be out of luck. Their property would soon be stolen or requisitioned by the militias. The US President would make a speech about promoting democracy in the region, and would pick a faction to support, one that could talk the talk, but real power would come from the barrels of guns. It would soon look a lot like Libya, but worse.

The disaster would be blamed on the Jews, but there would be little satisfaction from this, since there would be no way to punish them. Mearsheimer and Walt would have to get real jobs. Many academics would have to find new causes, but none would be as emotionally fulfilling. Certain industries and cities in the US would be decimated; it would be an immediate disaster for the US economy, although it would recover. Europe, where there were fewer Jews, would continue to commit cultural suicide as before.

Without Israel, the Muslim states, sects and militias would concentrate on expanding their power at each others’ expense. Ultimately a few groups would achieve dominance and viciously suppress the others.

In 50 years, the Middle East, parts of what is now Russia, and most of Europe would be divided into Turkish, Pakistani and Iranian spheres of influence, perhaps even empires. All would be Islamist.

The US, still independent, would little by little develop a different culture without the Jewish influence (and under pressure of endemic terrorism). Many Americans would find order more important than preservation of individual rights. The particularly Jewish strains of non-coercive liberalism on the one hand and libertarianism on the other would die out, being replaced on the Left by an oppressive Soviet-style communism and on the Right by Fascism.

There would still be Nobel prizes, but they would all be awarded to Muslims. Criticism of Islam would be forbidden in Europe, of course, and Shari’a would be the law of the land in many countries. The number of Christians would decline sharply everywhere. In Europe  Christians would live as dhimmis. In the US, many would convert to Islam, but there would remain a strong Christian presence, including militant groups hostile to Muslims.

Scientific progress in many areas would have been interrupted by the loss of so many scientists. Medical science, in particular, would suffer a severe blow. Epidemics of new illnesses caused by drug-resistant pathogens and biological agents released in the Mideast wars would ravage the world; the Jewish doctors and scientists who would have developed answers to them would be busy somewhere else.

Literature, art and science that was seen as challenging to Islam would be suppressed in much of the world. In the US, it would be ‘controversial’. Books and works of art created by Jews would be destroyed where radical Islam was ascendent.

In the immortal words of Thomas Hobbes, life on earth would again be “nasty, brutish and short.”

Technorati Tags: Jews

Terje Carlsson films on the Gaza beach

Did you know that it’s almost Israel Apartheid Week? It’s happening all around the world on slightly different dates in February and March. Although Fresno will not have an official event, we will be entertained by Historian of the Imagination (I invented the title) Ilan Pappé on February 23, thanks to our local university’s Middle East Studies program.

Here in this conservative, agricultural region, we are treated to anti-Israel events on a regular basis, sometimes almost every week. Last week I attended a showing of the film “Israel vs. Israel,” presented at a local church by the Fresno Center for Nonviolence. The Swedish director, Terje Carlsson, was there to answer questions.

There was nothing exceptional about the film, which was about Israeli Jews who oppose the Jewish presence in the territories. I found one scene instructive, in which Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), one of the film’s heroes, was talking to an Arab who was describing vandalism allegedly committed by “settlers.” To everything the Arab said, in a mixture of Arabic and Hebrew, Ascherman responded “aiwa” (yes). “Aiwa. Aiwa. Aiwa.” Everything he said was simply taken as given, which is the way the foreign-funded anti-state NGOs like RHR respond to all Arab accusations.

What struck me was the way Carlsson (in the film and in person) simply took certain things for granted, and expected his audience to do so also. For example, he said several times “…settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.”

He was clearly impatient when this was questioned, as though nothing could be more obvious. Nevertheless, he was unable to answer when I asked him why the 1929 pogrom and the 1948-67 Jordanian occupation of Hevron somehow rendered the Jewish presence there ‘illegal’. Although he said he had been in Israel for 10 years on and off, making this and other propaganda films — because this is what it was, without even a pretense of ‘balance’ — and was aware that Jews had lived in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem prior to 1948, this question had not occurred to him, nor did he seem to think that the question of international law in this respect was in the slightest bit controversial.

Like many people who share his beliefs, Carlsson was not being dishonest and did not seem cynical. His absorption of the Arab narrative was total, and he considered what he was doing ‘journalism’, not propaganda.

The individuals responsible for the stream of anti-Israel events in town are also not necessarily dishonest or cynical. The folks at the Center for Nonviolence — who would never, ever allow themselves to support terrorism — believe that they are helping one people achieve self-determination, rather than contributing to campaign to put an end to the self-determination of another.

The function of Apartheid Week and similar events is to create the impression that Israel is not only violating “international law” — which often seems to be whatever the speaker wants it to be — but is doing so out of evil intent, viciously exploiting “the natives” as Pappé and others like to say, in every way, stealing their land and murdering them out of sheer colonialist arrogance. In the process, various crimes are simply invented, war crimes, murders, rapes, etc. Once you believe any of this, it’s possible and even satisfying to believe the rest of it.

Which, I think, is what is behind the campaign that goes on week in and week out, and not just during Apartheid Week. It is a process of accretion, and what is being accreted is a layer of hatred and disgust for the Jewish state and the Jewish people. The false propositions about international law, historical fact, etc. that underlie it and provide a handle for ordinary, decent people like the members of the Center for Nonviolence, to join the campaign.

The objective of this campaign is to drive the Jews out of the Middle East, by any means necessary, including (especially) murder. It had been going on, somewhat unsuccessfully, since the beginning of the 20th century, but it received an boost after 1967 when it adopted the strategy of presenting the struggle against the Jews as a national liberation movement of an oppressed people, the ‘Palestinians’.

This struggle received more impetus later, when it was cast in terms of racism, particularly by the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism. So the members of the Center for Nonviolence, for example, can be enlisted in a profoundly racist cause — the removal of the Jews from their homeland — while they believe that they are fighting against racism! This, of course, is the theme of Apartheid Week.

Ideas are one level, emotions are another. Both are part of the campaign. When I attend an event like Carlsson’s film, I always listen carefully to the small talk beforehand. The deeply felt repugnance for Israeli Jews is evident, as anecdotes (invariably false) about Israeli crimes are shared. This may be part of the reason that it’s so hard to refute propaganda by presenting factual arguments.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Israel Apartheid Week, Terje Carlsson