McGentrix wrote:Will Jimmy Carter please just go away?
By Burt Prelutsky
Friday, December 22, 2006
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Forgetting Jews in congress and the senate, why would any American, aside from Steven ("Munich") Spielberg, find a moral equivalency between Palestinians and Israelis? Israel keeps trying to trade land for peace, and they keep getting their school buses and pizza parlors blown up in exchange. For people who are traditionally known to be pretty sharp when it comes to horse-trading, this doesn't seem like a very smart way to conduct business. But, God knows, they keep trying.
Something that Carter, who has often boasted of his close friendship with Yasser Arafat, insists on overlooking is that prior to 1948, the "Palestinians" were in fact the Jews living on the land that was the basis for the modern state of Israel. It was land, mainly sand, they had bought at inflated prices from Arabs for over 50 years. The fact that it is now the Arabs who are known as Palestinians is the result of a clever P.R. firm that suggested that if they wanted to picture themselves as underdogs in order to garner sympathy, they should stop calling themselves Arabs. After all, there were only about five million Jews in Israel and about 125 million Arabs surrounding them, and calling for their extinction.
Now why on earth would Carter call for a balanced approach? After all, Israel, in spite of occasional differences with the U.S., is a staunch ally, one of the few nations that sides us with us at the U.N., and is the only western democracy in a part of the world where Islamic Nazis run wild.
Whenever I hear an American claim that he favors Arabs in this ongoing conflict, a conflict perpetuated by a people who think Hitler left the job only half-done, I wonder why. Whenever I hear an American claim that people who treat their women like chattel; who live under theocratic rule; who oppose freedom of speech and certainly religion; who cheered and danced on 9/11 and then, for good measure, insisted that Israel was behind the attack; and who pay homage to suicide bombers; are preferable to Israelis, a people who share our values and who are exactly like us, except that they're Jewish, I know that I'm in the presence of an anti-Semite.
Even if he happens to be a former president of the United States.
McGentrix, I am surprised at your willingness to post here such obviously distorted propaganda. The misstatements of fact and tortured sophistry of this piece should be offensive to an independent thinking and objective reader.
Word games about just who are Palestinians and who Arabs are mere distortions. The fact is that European Zionists did indeed finance the purchases of Arab/Palestinian land in the years prior to WWII, but that amounts to a very tiny portion of what was seized by force in 1947-1948 and in the 1967 War.
The 'moral equivalency' of Jews and Arabs is simply that they are all human beings with the same natural rights. Extremists on both sides (sadly a majority after 50 years of conflict) want unequal treatment for the other side. Whether this unequal treatment is the pervasive discrimination against non Jew residents of Israel; the horrible oppression visited on the Palestinian residents of the West bank by the Israeli military occupation and systematic seizure of land and property; or the fanatic desire of many Moslems to wipe out the "Zionist Entity" is beside the point. All of these things are the causes for the continuing conflict and together they give the United States no reason to prefer one side to the other in this tragic conflict.
That we do otherwise is clearly a result of the quite understandable political activity of American Jews. I have no quarrel with their motives or actions to date. Following the horrors of WWII the need for a homeland for Jews was compelling, and their historical affinity for Palestine was understandable. However neither of these factors required that the new state must be built on a foundation of injustice to and oppression for the previous (and innocent) inhabitants of that land. Given the present situation, I see no way for Israel's continued survival and prosperity other than the abandonment of the concept of an exclusively Jewish state of Israel. This tribal and theocratic exclusivity is a retrograde idea, a relic of an earlier age, and it is simply a lie to call Israel a "Modern Western Democracy" as long as she clings to that idea and the injustice it creates.
The intolerance of Moslems and their unequal treatment of women are not sufficient cause for Israel to further oppress these people or for our country to aid them in doing so. The remedy for intolerance and oppression is never more intolerance and more oppression. Our unilateral aid to Israel has sadly done them little good. It has emboldened their most aggressive and acquisitive political elements and insulated them from the realities of their situation. Continued expropriation of Palestinian land and injustice towards the people will only require more and worse actions by Israel to perpetuate this tyranny and more one-sided actions on our part.
This support is hardly in our strategic interest and the votes of Israel in the UN General Assembly are hardly compensation for all the trouble this has caused us. High Seas has outlined an essential part of our strategic interest that is seriously jeapordized by our uncritical support of Israeli policies that are neither in their long-term interest or ours. We have become dupes for the most retrograde and exploitive elements in Israeli politics and silencers of wiser voices both there and here.
The suggestion that those who oppose certain policies of the Israeli government are necessarioly anti Semites is a worn out and offensive canard, insulting to people who read it. You should apologize for posting this crap.
