THESE CRITICS ARE ACCESSORIES TO MURDER!

[david barrett]

MEIR ABELSON
Bet Shemesh,
ISRAEL


Israel is in the dock. The basis of the conflict is – we are told -“Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.” Her attempts to defend herself are “disproportionate and excessive.” Her response to the rain of missiles and suicide bombers is branded “a heavy-handed campaign of violence destroying all hopes of peace.” Putting up checkpoints and building an “apartheid wall” has made Gaza “the biggest open prison in the world.” She has created a ‘humanitarian crisis in Gaza.’ She ignores obligations she has undertaken, and acts contrary to “international law.” Hardly a week passes without someone proposing a boycott. And- the most preposterous accusation of all – that she is a “racist” state. This is a small sample of daily bludgeoning that Israel – the only democracy in the Middle East – endures. However, they all have one thing in common – they are all irrelevant, not only to peace in the Middle East, but to the peace of the whole world.

I open my case with the words of two Muslims: the first is Walid Shoebat, a reformed terrorist, who wrote in his book “Why I Left Jihad:”

“I choose to speak out because I know what is wrong. And what is wrong has nothing to do with Israel’s ‘occupation of the land;’ it is Islam’s occupation of the mind. There are other victims, just like me, millions of them, and like Hitler’s Jugend – they are all kids. They are taught the same songs about killing Jews as I was. When will we get rid of the education propaganda promoting both destruction and self-destruction? Will it take a generation? Ten? Until then there will be no peace, no matter what kind of land settlement the world tries to enforce. Not when Muslim children undergo this occupation of the mind. There is no solution unless we liberate the children from an evil and growing menace and stop the cycle.”

My next witness is Ibn Warraq, author of several books, including “Why I am not a Muslim” and “What the Koran Really Says.” In the former work, he asks:

“Is the Sharia (Islamic law) still valid? We may ask how a law whose elements were first laid down over a thousand years ago, and whose substance has not evolved with the times can possibly be relevant in the twentieth century. The sharia only reflects the social and economic conditions of the time of the early Abbasids and has simply grown out of touch with all the later developments – social, economic and moral. It seems improbable but we have progressed morally: we no longer regard women as chattels that we can dispose of as we will: we no longer believe that those who do not share our religious beliefs are not worthy of equal respect; we even accord animals and children rights, But as long as we regard the Koran as eternally true, with an answer to all the problems of the modern world, we will have no progress. The principles enshrined in the Koran are inimical to moral progress.”

Ibn Warraq expands on the character of Mohammed, and quotes from Dr. Margoliouth’s summary of the picture that emerges in the prophet’s biography by Ibn Ishaq:

“The character attributed to Mohammed in the biography of Ibn Ishaq is exceedingly unfavorable. In order to gain his ends he recoils to no expedient, and he approves of similar unscrupulousness on the part of his adherents, when exercised in his interests. He profits to the utmost from the chivalry of the Meccans, but rarely requites it with the like. He organizes assassinations and wholesale massacres. His career as a tyrant in Medina is that of a robber chief, whose political economy consists of securing and dividing plunder, the distribution of the latter being at times carried out on principles which fail to satisfy his followers’ ideas of justice. He is himself an unbridled libertine and encourages the same passion in his followers. For whatever he does he is prepared to plead the express authorization of the deity. It is, however, impossible to find any doctrine which he is not prepared to abandon in order to secure a political end. At different points in his career he abandons the unity of God and his claim to the title of Prophet. This is a disagreeable picture for the founder of a religion, and it cannot be pleaded that it is a picture drawn by an enemy, and even though Ibn Ishaq’s name was for some reason held in low esteem by the traditionalists of the third Islamic century, they make no attempt to discredit those portions of the biography which bear hardest on the character of their Prophet.”

There are resonances of Mohammed’s character in the assessment of Arab society today, in the book “Temperament and Character of the Arabs,” (1960) by the Arab psychologist Dr. Sania Hamady, Professor of Social Relations at Miami University:

“The Arab has no scruples about lying if by it he achieves his objective. His conscience has an interesting elasticity….To be clever, one has to see through all the admirable manners, engaging words, and the feigned humility of the Arab….Arab society is ruthless, stern and pitiless. It worships strength and has no compassion for weakness.” Prof. Hamady points to the “vindictive race-feeling of the Arabs aided, in some degree, by the glory accruing to them from having given the world its last and greatest prophet.” Her conclusion is that they need liberation from the self [that] necessitates a cleansing from within, giving up stale ideals, obsolete ideas, illusions about reality (themselves, their milieu and the universe), certain disagreeable patterns of behavior, and some unjust modes of social relations.”

My third witness is Irshad Manji, who describes herself as a ‘Muslim refusenik.’ Like Walid Shoebat, she declares: “…I’m asking questions from which we can no longer hide. Why are we all being held hostage by what’s been happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis? What’s with the stubborn streak of anti-Semitism in Islam? Who is the real coloniser of Muslims – America or Arabia? Why are we squandering the talents of women, fully half of God’s creation? How can we be so sure that homosexuals deserve ostracism – or death – when the Koran states that everything God made is ‘excellent’? …..if we don’t speak out against the imperialists within Islam, these guys will walk away with the show. And their path leads to a dead end of more vitriol, more violence, more poverty, more exclusion. Is this the justice we seek for the world that God has leased to us? If it’s not, then why don’t more of us say so?” And as a final thrust, she asks: “Why [do] I bother associating with a faith that beats at the centre of so much international turmoil and individual torment?”

My fourth witness is not a Muslim; she is Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian, who from the age of ten, lived in an underground bomb shelter for seven years while Muslims throughout the Middle East poured into her country and declared jihad against the Lebanese Christians. One horrific extract from her book “Because They Hate” is enough:

“They started massacring the Christians in city after city... The Western media seldom reported these horrific events. Most of the Press was located in West Beirut, controlled by the PLO and the Muslims. One of the most ghastly acts was the massacre in the Christian city of Damour, where thousands of Christians were slaughtered like sheep. The combined forces of the PLO and the Muslims would enter a bomb shelter and see a mother and a father hiding with a little baby. They would tie one leg of the baby to the mother and one leg to the father and pull the parents apart, splitting the child in half. A close friend of mine became mentally disturbed after they made her slaughter her own son in a chair. They tied her to a chair, tied a knife to her hand, and holding her hand, forced her to cut her own sixteen-year-old son’s throat. After killing him they raped her two daughters in front of her….People have been so sheltered in this country that they have not paid attention to what has been going on for the last twenty-some years. And today, even after the attack on September 11, people still cannot fathom that this type of barbarity can happen here.”

Well, I live in Israel; and it has happened here - even before Israel became a state, and even before there was any so-called “occupation.” It happened in 1929 in Hebron, Motza, Jerusalem, Safed, and Jaffa. One British eye-witness exclaimed: “They did not mutilate their victims – they merely hacked them to pieces.” In Safed, they hung the Chief Rabbi upside-town by his legs and put a Primus stove under his head. I have an album of photographs from the Hebron massacre, showing hacked arms and fingers laid out on the hospital table, and some of the victims in bed with hands and arms lopped off.

We are constantly urged to make concessions to the “moderates.” Who and where are they? They are certainly not the PLO under Mohammed Abbas, whose covenant still calls for the elimination of Israel. The answer is given in the research carried out recently by Hillel Cohen of the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace under the title “Army of Shadows.” The author documents what happened to the moderates - they are all dead; hacked up with axes, riddled with bullets, slaughtered with knives and exploded by bombs – from the start of the British Mandate until 1948. As Cohen reports, there were two factions in Palestinian Arab society; the fanatics led by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and the moderates, who included such notable families as the Nashashibis. The latter believed that the Zionists had come to stay and that the common good of Palestinian Arabs demanded coexistence with the Jews. There was wide and friendly cooperation between Jews and Arabs, until the rejectionists spearheaded a continuum of murderous riots. In the period covered by the book, hundreds of Palestinian Arab moderates - maybe 1,000 – were murdered. Countless others got the message: moderation is treason punishable by death.

Now let us examine the major accusations made against Israel.

Her “occupation of Palestinian land.” First – there is not and never was a nation called Palestine. Two thousand ago The Romans, in order to wipe out any memory of the countries known as Judea and Samaria, changed the name to Palestine, after the Philistines, who occupied a small strip of land along the cost. In 1937 the distinguished Arab historian Professor Philip Hitti, testifying before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, declared: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history; absolutely not.” The Palestinian Arabs always regarded themselves as southern Syrians, or alternatively as “part of the great Arab nation;” except during the years 1948-1967, when King Hussein illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, and renamed them his “West Bank.” Then the Arabs were Jordanians and lived under Jordanian rule, acknowledging Kind Abdullah, and then King Hussein, as their country’s leader. Until 1967, when – as Walid Shoebat testified, “We were suddenly Palestinians! The Arab leaders removed the star from the Jordanian flag, and instantly, we had a Palestinian flag!”

The correct legal description of Judea, Samaria, the Golan and Gaza today is “undistributed parts of the British Mandate.” The Arabs, however, regard the entire area as “holy Arab land,” and for Israel to exist therein is sacrilege. Why, then, should Israel have any “good faith” – to quote the “Road Map” – when the Palestine Liberation Organization still adheres to its Charter calling for her destruction, publishes maps that omit showing Israel, and continues incitement and hatred unabated? By all canons of logic and decency, there is no reason why Israel should be barred from building in Judea and Samaria, which are included in the area that is designated in the legal document known as the “League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine” for “close settlement by Jews.”

2. Israel ignores her obligations and acts contrary to international law. I doubt whether most of those who bleat about international law know anything about it. One thing is clear: resolutions of the United Nations are NOT international law. These are more often than not politically motivated and redolent with double standards; the use of resolutions to champion positions in political quarrels are liable to undermine the credibility of the organization, even in areas of relative agreement. The General Assembly’s moral authority is suspect in that the coercive powers wielded by a few states that may be diminutive in population but formidable in importance because of the resources they control. This frequently inhibits members who might wish to vote no, or even to abstain, on a range of matters, notably, but not exclusively affecting the Middle East; witness the most outrageous manipulations of voting such as the equivalence of Zionism with racism, or categorizing the United States or Britain as “racist states.”

However, the Charter of the United Nations IS international law. Article 51 states that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations…..” This is in fact precisely what Israel has been doing ever since the State was founded; yet I cannot recall any Resolution being passed condemning the various attacks by Syria, Egypt, Iraq or Jordan.

And what about “armed bands?” There is a long series of proposals and international instruments, including the Draft Declaration on Right and Duties of States (Article 4), and the Draft Code of Offences against the Peace and Security of Mankind (Article 2(4), (5), and 6. Article 2(4), as revised in 1954, stigmatized as such an offence:

“The organization, or the encouragement of the organization, by the authorities of a State, of armed bands within its territories or any other territory for incursions into the territory of another State, or the toleration of the use by such armed bands of its territory as a base of operations or as a point of departure of incursions into the territory of another State, as well as direct participation in or in support of such excursions.” There is hardly an Arab state that has not committed such an offence against Israel over the past 60 years; is this “international justice?”

3. Israel is belaboured for putting up “checkpoints,” an “apartheid wall,” creating a “humanitarian crisis” and an “open prison.” Let’s get a few things straight. Where did these unfortunates come from? They are refugees; and there are nearly seventy Arab, refugee officials and other reliable eye-witnesses who have testified that in 1948 the Arab leaders, and the Palestinian Arabs themselves, were responsible for their own flight. The Palestinian Arabs are neither the first nor the last population to become refugees. This condition is the inevitable outcome of tragic conflict – and the 20th century saw approximately 135,000,000 refugees due to numerous conflicts. However, the Palestinian Arabs are the only refugees who have not been resettled within a generation, and for whom a special organization – UNRWA – was set up. Furthermore, a Palestinian refugee is someone who lived in Palestine for only two years preceding the conflict in 1948, and who, as a result of this conflict, lost both his home and his means of livelihood and took refuge in one of the countries where UNRWA provides relief. No other refugees have been granted such a wide definition. In the 1951-1967 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, nothing is said about their descendants; yet the tally of Palestinian refugees has always been multiplied many times by the addition of their descendants.

And who created this “open prison,” with the attendant restrictions on movement? One of the many witnesses is Richard Galloway, former director of UNWRA, declared angrily in 1958: “The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die.” At a refugee conference in Homs, Syria, the Arabs declared that “…any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees’ right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and as an act of treason.” It is clear that the finger of blame for the refugee problem should be pointed at the Arabs themselves.

Those who live in Gaza today are no less extreme. They voted into power the Hamas organization, an Islamic terrorist group, which continues to receive overwhelming support. In fact, as I write these lines, these “pitiful” refugees on whose behalf the world pours out untold wealth and sheds so many tears, are taking to the streets in thousands, distributing sweets, shooting in the air, and cheering the successful terrorist attack on the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

5. “Israel is an apartheid state.” This falsehood is clear to anyone who simply visits our hospitals and universities. The fact is that in Israel, Arabs are freer than in any Arab state. They have full civil rights; they have Arab-Israeli political parties and their representatives sit in the Knesset. Arabic is an officially recognized language in Israel. Altogether, Israel has 15 officially recognized religions. As is known, Israel was the first to take in the Vietnamese boat people in 1970 when the world ignored them; and today, we have hundreds of Darfur Muslims rebuilding their lives in Israel.

Israel has been under more or less constant attack for sixty years. She has been attacked by Arab States, armed bands, terrorist attacks on her civilian population characterized by the most bestial and inhuman atrocities. Her defensive actions are in accordance with international law; yet they are automatically condemned as “disproportionate and excessive,” without anyone defining what these terms mean – or even suggesting alternative methods of coping with the situation.

The record of lies that are spread – and believed – about Israel without proof is inexhaustible. Yet the same tactic has been adopted by the Arabs since Haj el Husseini, the convicted criminal who Sir Herbert Samuel appointed to be Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, learned during his stay in Berlin as Hitler’s guest. His first essay in the art of propaganda was to circulate photographs of the Jews slaughtered at Hebron in 1929, and describe them as Arabs killed by Jews. The same technique has been used ever since, but with far greater sophistication; and the world accepts all the lies as truth. It is no wonder that the distinguished French philosopher Jacques Ellul warned that “propaganda is today a greater danger to mankind than any other of the more grandly advertised threats hanging over the human race.”

Consider this: If a private individual were known to be a serial killer: if he were known to have never honoured a single commitment he had undertaken; if he were known to be an inveterate liar – would anyone trust him as a serious negotiating partner?

I believe there will never be peace in the world until we treat groups as we would treat individuals. And I believe there will never be peace in the Middle East until the Arabs cease (1) their indoctrination of Jihad; (2) their constant calls for Israel’s destruction; (3) their attacks on Israel with missiles, bombs and suicide mayhem: and (4) their abominable and outrageous propaganda, of which the latest is that Israel burns Palestinian children in ovens.

Those who blame Israel are not only rewarding and encouraging the real culprits and their terrorist minions; they are acting as accomplices to murder, as surely as if they fired the weapons.