“SAMSON, THE PALESTINIANS ARE UPON YOU!” PART II

“You will kill ten of us. We will kill one of you. In the end, you will tire of it first.”

Ho Chi Minh

 

During the Korean War, Mao Tse Tung ordered many thousands of young men to storm entrenched American positions, assuring their certain death. He thought there were too many men in his country anyway so it was convenient. Iraqi machine gunners in the Iran/Iraq war were psychologically traumatized when Ayatollah Khomeini sent tens of thousands in “suicide brigades” to be mowed down in glorious martyrdom. Yet, while the Palestinians share a similar collectivist attitude about the meaninglessness of individuals, there seems more to it. Many are willing to die for the cause but this is nothing new as Kamikaze pilots and virtually all revolutionaries throughout history were willing to do the same. No, what is different here is that this willingness to die seems more of a death wish. Frequently repeated on Palestinian television is the phrase, “We love death more than you love life”. Maybe we should take their word for it. Maybe theirs really is a culture of death.

 

It’s an oft-repeated canard: “If Arabs laid down their weapons, there would be peace. If Israel laid down their weapons, there would be no Israel”. Is it true? Arab rhetoric, while admittedly hyperbolic and cartoonish, is frightening and often genocidal.

 

 

 The cartoon above depicts rats wearing Stars of David and skullcaps. Arab News, an English-language Saudi state owned daily widely read by expats in Saudi Arabia, is widely regarded as moderate. The imagery may be inspired by a well known scene from the Nazi film “Jew Suess,” in which Jews are depicted as vermin to be eradicated by mass extermination.

 

Is Muslim anti-Semitism inherent or merely a result of the Nakba or “Catastrophe”, referring to the creation of Israel? Maybe both. There were periods of oppression and anti-Semitism over the centuries but Jews, while forced to acknowledge Muslim superiority and pay infidel taxes known as jizya, enjoyed relative peace and security in the Middle East. However, consider common statements like this: On 11/23/37, Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud told a British Colonel: “Our hatred for the Jews dates from God’s condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus, whom they regard as a prophet) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet (Muhammed).” He added, “for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty.”  A well-known Hadith (saying attributed to Muhammad) states that, “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” A July, 2011 poll indicated a staggering 73% of Palestinians believe this Hadith must be fulfilled. Muslims frequently refer to Jews as apes and pigs. This comes from multiple verses in the Koran. Cultural attitudes towards Jews have ebbed and flowed over the years but when the climate heats up, the Koran and Hadith provide theological cover and encouragement for hatred.

 

How do Jews and Christians fare in Arab countries now? Terribly. The number of Jews living in Muslim countries is miniscule, a whopping .01% in Iran. Egypt may have 300. Total. After Israel’s declaration of statehood, systematic violence and expulsions along with the obvious attraction of Zionism essentially emptied the Arab nations of Jews, contributing to a mass exodus of 800,000 to a million Jews in the few years after 1948. 23 Arab nations could not abide by a single Jewish one. It is also widely recognized that the rise of militant Islam has led to a massive exodus of Christians. As of 2012, there were about 12 million Christians left in the Middle East but the exodus has been so drastic, this number is expected to halve by 2020. Christians are becoming extinct in the West Bank and the new crisis in Iraq with ISIS has led to expulsion, robbery, and crucifixion even. ISIS also burned down the oldest Christian church in the middle east in Mosul.

 

Countless news articles decry the death of hundreds of Palestinian children and civilians in the current conflict. Yet Hamas is openly genocidal. While Israelis go to extreme lengths to avoid civilian deaths, dead women and children are Hamas’ intent. Just since 2000, this list shows thousands of rocket and mortar attacks targeted at cities and villages. The Hamas charter states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it…It firmly rejects peace negotiations…[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions…are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad”. Even in the more moderate West Bank, they glorify terrorists by naming streets and squares after the likes of Yahya Ayyash, a bomb maker responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths and schools after people such as Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who attacked a bus, killing 37, twelve of them children.

 

Yahya Ayyash St.

 

 

Martyrdom posters, a staple of Palestinian culture, are plastered everywhere in cities and villages.

 

 

 They love their children.

 

Whether or not their cause is just, what is clear is that they suffer. Gaza has a 50% unemployment rate. U.N. designated refugee camps, which developed from tented cities to rows of concrete blockhouses to urban ghettos indistinguishable from their surroundings, now hold almost 2 million refugees. Since the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948, the number of refugees has grown from 750,000 to about 5 million mostly through birth rate. But what does this suffering mean?

 

Charles Krauthammer recently stated that most Americans who side with Palestinians do so out of ignorance. Maybe. More likely is that there are a large number of people who instinctively, with much passion but without much thought, equate suffering with righteousness, poverty with nobility, inequality with oppression. It is the kind of thinking that can make one side with somebody who commits murder, rape, or robbery. Somehow they find a way to pity him because he probably was never pitied or loved. It’s a good instinct, in a way, to automatically care for the downtrodden. But when this kind of thing is devoid of context, when it is applied rigidly and firmly, it can be destructive. And stupid. Yes, the Palestinians suffer. Here’s a thought: Sometimes people get what they deserve.