An article in yesterday’s New York Times highlights Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s fulminating anti-Semitism, and supports my claim that Egypt is on the verge of becoming Yemen. When I first predicted this based on the success of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s elections, I was assured by readers that Morsi was really a moderate and that all would be well in Egypt. That, of course, ignores the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of radical Muslims in general. They’ll never rest until they take over.
And new data don’t support Morsi’s stance as a moderate:
Nearly three years ago, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood delivered a speech urging Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists. In a television interview around that time, the same leader described Zionists as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.
That leader, Mohamed Morsi, is now president of Egypt — and his comments may be coming back to haunt him.
. . . Representatives of Mr. Morsi have declined repeated requests over more than three days for comment on his remarks. One reason may be that the re-emergence of his previous statements has now trapped him in a political bind. While his past comments may be a liability abroad, he faces a political culture at home in which such defamation of Jews is almost standard stump discourse. Any attempt to retract, or even clarify, his slurs would expose him to political attacks by opponents who already accuse him of softness toward the United States and Israel.
Note the part about the defamation of Jews being “standard stump discourse” in Egypt. That’s also true throughout the Middle East, and in Palestine. (I’m still amazed that those who defended Palestine in my recent post refused to even comment on this pervasive and often government-sponsored propaganda against the Jews. Such bigotry is apparently okay when it’s expressed by Arabs.)
Here’s a fuller account of what Morsi said:
In the video footage first broadcast Friday on Mr. Youssef’s television program [Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef], Mr. Morsi addressed a rally in his hometown in the Nile Delta to denounce the Israeli blockade of Gaza. “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews,” Mr. Morsi declared. Egyptian children “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue,” he said. “The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.”
“The land of Palestine will not be freed except through resistance,” he said, praising the militant group Hamas as an extension of the Brotherhood.
“Who is our enemy? The Zionists. Who occupies our land? The Zionists. Who hates us? The Zionists. Who destroys our lands? The Zionists,” Mr. Morsi added, lashing out at “America, France and Europe” as “Zionist” supporters.
“And the last of them is that Obama,” Mr. Morsi said. He called the American president a liar who promised the Arab world “empty meaningless words.”
The other video clip was a television interview from the same period unearthed last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute [MEMRI], based in Washington, which tracks anti-Semitic statements in the Arab world.
“These bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs,” Mr. Morsi declared, using a slur for Jews that is familiar across the Muslim world. Although he referred repeatedly to “Zionists” and never explicitly to Jews, Mr. Morsi echoed historic anti-Semitic themes: “They have been fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout their history. They are hostile by nature.”
And the video from 2010:
Those readers who dismiss everything that MEMRI puts out, including videos (again, a view I don’t comprehend), should note that the New York Times trusts this video as reliable.
I expect some will defend Morsi, arguing that he has to cater to two constituencies and didn’t really mean what he said. But if you have eyes to see, you’ll realize that not only is Arab hatred of Israel based largely on anti-Semitism, but so is, to some extent, Western intellectuals’ attacks on Israel while giving Palestinian actions a pass. At any rate, I call out Morsi as a genuine anti-Semite, not someone who’s merely dissimulating. He hates not just Judaism, but Jews themselves.
Is it any wonder that Israel is nervous?
h/t: Matt
Such bigotry is apparently okay when it’s expressed by Arabs.)
well, there are different standards. israel is an ethno-nationalist state too, but a far more milquetoast one than others in the middle east. but it is also classified as western, so different standards.
(this is a description, not my own personal view how it should be 🙂
Well said, Jerry. You may bet some heat from atheists though.
But I am sure you can handle it.
sub
I do not understand how anyone could reasonably have thought, based on the prominence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the “Arab Spring” in Egypt, that a corner had been turned in the Arab world, and that freedom would reign. This was completely unrealistic, and a failure to learn from history. So, of course Israel is nervous. One of the commitments of the Muslim Brotherhood since the beginning, has been to drive the Jews into the sea. Palestine is so-called Waqf, supposedly inalienable Muslim land. There is not going to be a compromise on this issue, and with the possibility of greater Iranian influence in the region, with the imminent fall of Assad in Syria, the position of Israel looks very perilous indeed.
I have said before, and I will say again, the fact that there are still Palestinian “refugees” is a clear indication of the general Muslim intention in the region. Instead of absorbing the relatively small number of those who were “dispossessed” (most were encouraged to leave, because it was thought an easy matter to get rid of Israel) when Israel came into existence, they have been retained as a running sore, because Israel is simply anathema to most Muslims, just as Jews are. It is hopeless to suggest otherwise, given how Jews are regarded in the Qur’an, and how they were actually treated by Muhammad, if the traditions are anywhere near historical, though even as myth they make the same point. At the same time that Israel has absorbed most of the Jews from Muslim majority nations, the Arab nations have kept Palestinian refugees as a standing non placet regarding the existence of Israel. This must change, but in order for it to change Islam must change. Can it? I doubt it.
When the Greeks were thrown out of Ionian Greece by the Turks after WW1, for how long were they regarded as refugees?
Is this comparable to Palestine post 1948?
Does anyone here have any expert knowledge on comparable cases, and whether this still-refugees-after-60-years has happened elsewhere?
Well at roughly the same time ethnic Germans were being expelled from most of the countries of Eastern Europe back to Germany. Some of these communities had been established for hundreds of years. I am unaware of any “refugee” status being claimed by their descendents.
Tibetans who fled to India in the late 50s and afterward are largely still considered refugees and have not become Indian citizens. So are several hundreds of thousands of others worldwide, many still living in refugee camps: in the Western Sahara (from the 1970s), in India and neighboring countries (from wars in the 1970s and earlier), in several countries in SE Asia. Wikipedia’s pages on refugees have lists and more.
Tricky business that of deciding when people removed or displaced from their homes lose any right to their former properties and lives. Can someone be forced to be absorbed in a host country and acquire another national identity against their will? And if so, who decides? And when does a right to return expire, if there is such thing? After 5 years? Ten? Fifty? Different groups of course enjoy different degrees of international sympathy. For one, I have not heard many people in the West argue that Tibetans should stop complaining and give up on Tibet.
Looking at the wikipedia stats on Palestinian refugee camps, its not entirely true that they’re just sitting around in camps all day, at least in some places. They’re located in Lebanon, Jordon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria.
In Jordan at least, only 300k of the almost 2 million Palestinian refugees live in camps, and only 167k lack Jordanian citizenship. So there at least, there is some ongoing absorption, or at least commingling. Of course, it seems like there is the problem of their now being too many Palestinians there, and the Jordanians might be trying to put curbs on it so the Palestinians don’t become a majority.
Now, Lebanon is the places where it is really crazy hard to be a Palestinian. Though you have to wonder how much of it is because they want them to be a pox on Israel, and how much it is because Lebanon is already very precariously balanced between Muslim, Christian, and Druze ethnic groups, and absorbing a huge number of Muslims would wreck that balance (not to mention Hezbollah’s scariness).
I see the main problem with people’s expectations that they don’t understand the nature of democracy. It’s nothing more than mob rule – you replace the tyranny of a few individuals, or just one, with the tyranny of the majority.
It’s a delineation of rights which makes a nation like the United States free to the extent that it is. If you were to install a hereditary king bound by the Bill of Rights, we’d still be better off than a democracy without explicit rights.
Even weakened rights, like those of India, allow for aspects of mob rule, such as their rampant censorship (in the name of “decency” and “morality”).
So deposing dictators in an Islamic nation then holding elections without a constitution guaranteeing certain fundamental rights is a recipe for destructive mob rule.
Its worth remembering too that Israel has no written constitution and no guarantee of rights either. Which is not to say that they’re necessarily illiberal, its just that I think a lot of people make assumptions about the nature of Israel’s democracy when it isn’t necessarily the same as ours.
Great Britain doesn’t have a written constitution either.
Great Britain isn’t a country. The United Kingdom is and it doesn’t have a constitution.
Is “Great Britain” the same as “England”?
No. England is the southern half (approximate) of the island of Britain. And doesn’t include Wales.
So, is it that there is just a “Britain,” and not a “Great Britain”?
Do I correctly understand that the “United Kingdom” is composed of “Britain,” “Scotland,” “Wales,” the “Irish Republic” and “Northern Ireland”?
Wikipedia reveals all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
The UK does not include the Irish Republic.
@Filippo
The Republic of Ireland doesn’t come into it
Great Britain = England, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides & the island groups of Orkney and Shetland
United Kingdom = Great Britain [see above] + Northern Ireland
British Islands [used in law] = United Kingdom [see above] + Channel Islands + Isle of Man
Yawn.
“with the possibility of greater Iranian influence in the region, with the imminent fall of Assad in Syria, the position of Israel looks very perilous indeed.”
Did you know Syria is a major ally of Iran? And if Assad falls, what follows will be Arab Sunni extremism, including standard hatred of Persian Shi’as? And that Israel and Assad have a working relationship that will only get worse if he falls?
“Instead of absorbing the relatively small number of those who were ‘dispossessed’ (most were encouraged to leave, because it was thought an easy matter to get rid of Israel) when Israel came into existence”
Wow. I’ve never seen over 700,000 people ever called relatively small. Compared to what? A UN report in 1951 says that there were 1.3 million Arabs in Palestine before the 1948 war. Perhaps you are comparing them to everyone who lived on the planet at that time, 2.5 billion.
And “encouraged”. No multiple punctuation marks needed for that one. Amazing. I have to ask however, who did the encouraging? You seem to imply it was Arabs.
amazing. I’m reading a modern political thriller and it certainly has the radical Islam nonsense down pat comparing it with Morsi. I do love how religions hate each other but claim to come from the same god.
One of the worst arguments I’ve seen lately on here was when the atheists were discussing what to be called and which words are ok to describe atheists, over 150 comments, yet they all claim to be from the same common ancestor that lived 3.5 billion years ago (approx). People, believers or not, will always be able to disagree and hate each other, regardless of the subject at hand.
that’s hilarious. Common descent means that all humans should agree. Oh my, oh my.
did they hate each other at the end of the 150 comments? just curious
+1 Thanks!
Are you in a position to hold forth on the sublime unanimity of Christendom, what with its Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and numerous Protestant sects?
The common ancestor of all extant humans (members of the subspecies “Homo sapiens sapiens“) lived about 200,000 years ago.
Your “3.5 billions years ago (approx.)” seems to be reaching for the date of the common ancestor of all living organisms. That date would make some sense if the Archaea and Bacteria were to turn to us and our fellow Eukaryota and ask the Rodney King question: “Why can’t we all just get along?”
Family feuds are the worst.
(Family, above, is a hot link, but it sure doesn’t look like one on my screen.)
It’s not [Justice Thomas ;-]
It’s important to distinguish here between Islamic anti-Jewish sentiments and Arabic anti-Jewish sentiments.
While Islam doesn’t exactly inspire love towards Jews, the general antipathy towards Jews that now characterises the Middle East is the direct result of the Israelis’ conquest of Palestine. Prior to the advent of Zionism in Palestine, there were Jews living throughout the Middle East, with large, integrated populations in countries such as Egypt and Iraq; all this in spite of the devotion of Arabs to Islam. It was the growth of Zionism in Palestine from the 1930s onwards that began to cause problems for Jews in these countries and the violent birth (and growth) of Israel that turned large numbers of Arabs against Jews in general.
My point is that it probably makes no difference whether the President of Egypt (or any other Arab country) is a hard-line Islamist, a liberal Muslim or a atheist Marxist: Arabs in the Middle East share a deep-rooted antipathy towards Israel. And, like most people who view themselves as participants in a struggle against an enemy, Arabs tend to extend their antipathy from the State of Israel to all Jews, much the same way people from the Allied nations during WWII spoke of being at war with “the Japanese” and “the Germans” rather than with Tojo’s regime or the National Socialist Party.
I’m not sure about this distinction. Jews lived in Arab countries because they had nowhere to go; as they lived in Europe because they had nowhere to go.
Maimonides wrote 1172: “The nation of Ishmael… persecute us severely and devise ways to harm us and debase us”.
Some facts: 1033 – six thousand Jews massacred in Fez (Morocco); 1016 Jews expelled from Tunisia; 1066 four thousand Jews massacred in Granada in Muslim riots
12th century – leader if Yemen decreed compulsory conversion of Jews. And so it goes until our days with blood libel borrowed from Christians latest 1832 in Syria.
Somebody once said: “Jews in Arab countyries never had it so bad as Jews in Europe at its worst, but never so good as Jews in Europe at its best”.
As we see from the ongoing events in Syria, the Arabs hate each other almost as much as they hate the Jews. IMHO, we may not have seen the worst in Syria, bad as it is. If and when the Assad kleptocracy goes, the settling of old scores may make the current situation look almost benign.
By the way, the number of Palestinians killed so far in Syria far exceeds the number killed in both Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip put together.
Jews didn’t “live in Arab countries because they had nowhere to go”. You’ve bought into a modern Zionist myth about Jews being desperate to “return” but being unable to do so.
To take only the examples I mentioned above, of Egypt and Iraq, there had been Jews living both territories since at least the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. (and possibly before in the case of Egypt). During the Achaemenid period, when Jews in Judah were granted autonomy, the Jewish population of Egypt, of which we have papyrological and epigraphic evidence, displayed no inclination to return to their ancestral homeland, and even established their own Jewish Temple at Elephantine. Similarly, the population of Jews living in Babylonia during the first centuries B.C. and A.D. were large enough to exercise political influence over their rulers, if Josephus is to be believed.
Jews in Egypt had every opportunity to migrate to Judaea between 301 and 200 B.C., when both territories were under Ptolemaic rule, and again after the Hasmonaeans achieved the independence of Judaea, and again after both territories were annexed by the Roman Empire. And yet during this period the vast majority of Jewish migrants were moving not towards but away from Palestine, and spreading out across the Mediterranean basin.
All of this was long time before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, by the way. And even after the Jewish revolts, the majority of Palestinian Jews did not unwillingly move away from their homeland; Romans had no use for transplanting populations (beyond the prisoners they sold into slavery). The available evidence suggests that the Jewish population of Palestine remain in Palestine, with many converting first to Christianity under the later Roman Empire, then to Islam under the Arabs. Genetic analyses of modern Palestinians supports this view.
Most of the Jewish population living outside of Palestine before the twentieth century had been living outside of Palestine since the Hellenistic Period. And, again, under the various empires that dominated the region, from the Byzantines to the Ottomans, Middle Eastern Jews had every opportunity to migrate to Palestine had they the inclination to do so. The myth of the sad Jew waiting in patient exile to return to Zion is a modern fabrication with a political, not an historical, basis.
There was no Islam in Egypt and Mesopotamia in times you describe. Of course many Jews stayed where their families lived for centuries. Why should they move when they could live in peace in a familiar surroundings? Things changed with the advent of Islam and Jews started to flee. Jews were treated so beningly by neither of the monoteistic religions which hijacked Judaism for their own purposes and tried to get rid of this “parent”. Theodosius II declared Judaism a superstition of Satan. The building or repairing of synagogues was outlawed. No Jew could enter Jerusalem without permission. They were treated as seconda class citizens (if as citizens at all) and this glorious tradition continued under Ottomans. BTW I’m quite sure that a lot of Russian and Polish Jews wouldn’t come to Israel if not pogroms and everyday antisemitism there. You do not have to “buy any Zionist myths” to know that Israel is one huge refugee camp for Jews from all over the world. Most came there out of necessity, not because of any myths.
+1
As one of the people who were revolted by Pat Condel’s video and defended(*) the Palestinians, let me say that I’m offended that you’d imply that we accept or tolerate bigotry.
I am especially upset that you’d classify us this way when I think many of us were reacting to such overt bigotry from Condell. One pro-Israeli commenter went so far as to say that Palestinians were some sub-human monster – the very dehumanizing thing we should all be fighting against.
For the record, I think the loud and frequent attacks on Jews and their grotesque caricatures are offensive and totally inexcusable. Even (perhaps especially) in times of war when the temptation to demonize the enemy, I think we need to find ways to understand all people. As people.
In many countries, these sort of attacks would be criminal and as much as I would defend free speech, I think this crosses the line.
I didn’t see any acceptance of bigotry when “defending” Palestinians and I’m more than a little offended that you would describe us this way.
* I would not like to defend their actions or speech, rather I tried to argue that their horrible actions are explained by being placed in an untenable situation and having all other avenues systematically squashed. It isn’t right what they do, but I argue it’s perverse – even blind – to ignore the circumstances.
I agree. Morsi is pretty terrible, and the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish propaganda going around the Arab world is pretty terrible too.
But at the same time, the more reading that I’ve done about Israel, the more I don’t think that the adversity they face justifies the abuse they heap on Palestinians, and on their own Arab citizens. It is quite possible to be sympathetic to both sides while still condemning their zealous excesses.
The Palestinians living on the West Bank and even the Gaza Strip could be a lot worse off. They could be living in Syria!
You “think” this crosses the line? Give me a break. This is not a free speech issue. This man is the president of Egypt!
I generally feel that the best reply to hate speech is more speech not less but I was saying that even for private individuals this crosses the line.
So if I didn’t say it before, I’ll say it now: there’s a big difference between some hateful bigot in a basement, a pulpit or a soap box, and some hateful bigot in political office. Especially if that bigot is the president. It’s a genuine threat.
I’m not advocating war with Egypt, mind you.
As much as I hate to defend the vile Morsi, it should be noted that he was not the President of Egypt when he made those comments.
It might be fact that such statements justifying antisemitism(antizionism) helped his selection by mainstream Arab Muslim bigots.
The whole structure of Islam is based on supremacist,totalitarian,fascist,discriminatory dogma.
Just read Mein Koranmf to understand that.
I think that culture is something we find in a petri dish. There’s just no separating the culture and religion on either side. It’s almost as if these meme infections really are hardwired in someway, one generation to the next. Maybe the behavior is related to a real parasite that has taken over their brains. I think the manifestation of such hatred on both sides must result from or be accompanied by real changes in their neurochemistry.
Their all nutty as fruitcakes but the Israeli’s have nuclear weapons. Disturbing
I feel that way sometimes (“Why can’t they both just…”) But think about a time that someone made you really angry, when you felt really wronged – over something like an insulting insinuation, an online comment, a neighborly feud, a coworker stealing your idea or passively aggressively putting you down in a meeting. We are quite capable of getting really bent out of shape over slights this minor – and if someone does something really out of line, like throw an unfair lawsuit in our direction, we’ll probably talk about them with disdain for the rest of our lives.
So imagine how you would feel if more than one person you loved was killed by a terrorist, or if your entire family was displaced and humiliated with inferior treatment. And it’s not just the “big things”, in situations like that – there’s ill will built every day in smaller ways, no doubt. You can go on Youtube and see videos of cute little Palestinian kids being assaulted with rocks by grown Israeli men, for example, for simply trying to go to school. Those crimes are committed by isolated groups of stupid thugs, no doubt, but little children aren’t going to think “Ah well, let me consider the larger sociopolitical scheme in which all of this is taking place and remember that those men with rocks were probably outliers not representative of the larger community.” What about the parents, aunts, and uncles of those children, how do you think they’re going to feel? And back to the “major” things – what if you were living in Israel and a rocket killed your newborn, or your bright-eyed two-year-old, or your handsome son about to go to college? How many years of ill will would that cause in you?
I said this in the thread on the New Testament and, although I doubt it will be popular, I’ll say it again. I am no longer a Christian – but turn the other cheek and love your enemy still don’t strike me as particularly bad advice. Otherwise you wind up with “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”, and hate builds upon hate.
Yes, there’s a huge anti-jew problem in the middle east. It’s horrendous and not likely to disappear anytime soon.
I’m also curious about historical precedents for rapid immigration. I know that zionism brought extreme, rapid change to the middle east in a relatively short span of time. It comes as no surprise to me that these newcomers were maligned by the locals. Has there been any comparable immigration wave that hasn’t bred resentment? combine that with prevalent anti-semitism, and voila- you get the middle east of today. a cess-pool of anti-semitism, pared against the ethnic chauvinists on the other side. Not all on each side exhibit these, but no one can deny their existence.
Sorry, I meant “they’re” all nutty…
I wonder how Obama will respond to this. Morsi cannot broker peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Obama had better demand that Morsi renounce his words. We cannot give our treasure to a country run by a man who openly and vilely spews hatred.
Morsi’s comments are reprehensible. But one thing I’ve observed about countries in the (cursed) Mid-East is that the vehemence of the rhetoric does not always reflect the depth of hatred in the people. In Egypt it might–I think there is a lot of hatred toward Israel there. In Iran, I’m not so sure. The rhetoric of the leadership is vile, but I don’t think the people are particularly hateful toward Israel and the west. Just saying.
I’m not sure that you are correct. I have long held the idea (not sure where I learned it) that Christians and Jews were treated better than other non-Muslims in Muslim-ruled nations, because of their status as “people of the book.” But, I’ve just read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book “Infidel,” and she makes it painfully clear that Muslims–the rank and file, not just some politicians pandering to the masses–blame the Jews for everything that is wrong in the world, and are constantly spewing vitriol directed at them. Here’s one example; there are *many* others in the book, in different Muslim nations, and from the lips of many different Muslims:
“Sister Aziza (her religion teacher at school) told us about the Jews. She described them in such a way that I imagined them as physically monstrous: they had horns on their heads, and noses so large they struck right out of their faces like great beaks. Devils and djinns literally flew out of their heads to mislead Muslims and spread evil. Everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews. The Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, who had attacked the Islamic Revolution in Iran, was a Jew. The Americans, who were giving money to Saddam, were controlled by the Jews. The Jews controlled the world, and that was why we had to be pure: to resist this evil influence. Islam was under attack, and we should step forward and fight the Jews, for only if all Jews were destroyed would peace come for Muslims.”
I then told my Muslim-but-rapidly-becoming-an-atheist Pakistani best friend this, and he was flabbergasted that I *didn’t* know that Muslims had it in for the Jews, and blamed them for all the world’s problems.
So, I’m not convinced that Morsi is just a grandstanding politician spewing vile rhetoric.
Morsi should act like a leader instead of a street thug. Has any Israeli leader used such defamatory language towards Arabs?
In fairness, Israeli politicians like Moshe Feiglin have come pretty close. And Naftali Bennett, who has formed the new Israel Home Party, is an out of the closet racist.
This is not to forget the late and unlamented Rabbi Kahane, who advocated expelling all non-Jews from Palestine and imposing what would amount to an Eichmann solution on any who refused to leave.
Well, you have to admit that Morsi is right about one thing: Jews are descended from apes. Oddly enough, I suspect Morsi doesn’t actually believe that.
+1
Of course, so is he.
We also share a common ancestor with pigs, and a relatively recent one I understand. Morsi almost certainly doesn’t accept that as fact either……
Relatively recent compared to the one we share with kangaroos, not so much compared to the one we share with other apes. Your common ancestor with the pig is at least 60 million years ago, probably considerably older, whereas your common ancestor with the closest other living ape, a chimpanzee, is somewhere around 5-10 million years ago. Notice that while we are descended from apes, we most definitely aren’t descended from pigs.
I have to suppose that Morsi isn’t down with the whole evolution thing, regardless of who’s involved.
I wish all these a-holes in the middle east, Jew & Arab alike, would STFU & learn to get along. Really, all this haggling & gaggling over a few acres of desert sand? Totally ridiculous.
I think you’re forgetting that each group had its (nearly identical) god tell it that the land belonged to them, and that they (surprise!) were better than those inferior hell-bound heathens. Therefore, they are fully justified in killing the infidel dogs. Just another example of how religion poisons everything.
Morsi is a despicable nationalist demagogue, but then so are many Zionist leaders. Israel’s tactics are different, hewing to the polite western vicissitudes of merely displacing natives to quietly build illegal settlements.
Muslim nations are required to accept Palestinians without question when they have (had) a perfectly good homeland? Why?
I don’t think it’s odd that Jews would want a homeland, and I don’t think it’s necessarily odd that many would choose present-day Israel, but I do find it odd that professed atheists cannot see that the choice of Israel is based on superficial religious grounds and the implications of displacing millions of Palestinians would have real-world sequelae.
At least the Mormons had the sense to pick a relatively sparsely populated parcel to initiate their domain.
This will be a repetition but obviously needed: Founders of Zionist movement were secular Jews. They thought that there should be a national home for the dispersed Jews who were persecuted. Because the historical home of Jews was on the territory of Palestine and because of deeply ingrained attachment to this part of the world among Jewish masses (“Next year in Jerusalem”) and because there already existed Jewish communities there, they started action of convincing powers (Turkish Sultan, British Government etc.) to let the Jews build their homeland there.When Jews from Europe and Arab territories started to arrive into Palestine (buying the land – not expropriating it by force) the country was sparsely populated. Economy picked up with arrival of Zionists and Arabs from surrounding countries started to immigrate as well. When Arab armies attacked Israel 1948 and lost that war, there were 650,000 – 800,000 Arab refugees (not millions). Jewish refugees from Arab countries: 800,000 – 900,000. Israel was build by refugees: refugees from Europe and from Islamic world. But this huge refugee camp is the only successful refugee camp in the world.
Created by secular jews, yes. But now unduly swayed by religious zealots. The secular jews account for Israel’s success, then and now, and the zealots will account for its failure unless they are put in their place.
You summarize the history I learned in college, when I took a course that began around the year 1800 and continued through 1975. The world and its leaders and media, today, speak and write as though suddenly, in a magical poof of smoke, in May of 1948, a gazillion Jews invaded all of Palestine, represented by the tiny sliver of that land-grant which is now Israel, and forced all the Arabs to react. Magical thinking, studded with anti-semitism invented by Christianity around 600 CE and adopted by the Muslims, when they usurped all they could to generate a sense of historical roots for what was, at the same time, seen to be a new and therefore better religion.
Thank you. You put it in much better, much truer perspective.
I would add that anyone researching mainstream media will find no “Palestinian” label for local Arabs until Arafat usurped the title, around the 1980s, if I recall the era correctly. Before then, Arabs were Arabs, and Jews were Palestinians. One can, for example, read of the travels, there, of Samuel Clemens, and realize how unpopulated the land was and who was labeled what, back in his time. Change came with Arafat, Egyptian born nephew of the WW II era Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, close partner with Hitler in antisemitism and plans for The Final Solution.
Thank you. One can even put exact date on the appearance of “Palestinian Nation”. It was 1964 when PLO was founded. When well meaning people in the West are talking today on establishing the State of Palestine on West Bank and Gaza, they do not ask what “Palestine” was supposed to be liberated 1964, when West Bank was in the hands of Jordan and Gaza in the hands of Egypt. PLO definitely didn’t demand a state on those territories.
Excellent point!
desertviews asks why Palestinians must be accepted by other countries “when they have (had) a perfectly good homeland”. Refugees after WW II (about 11 million) lived in refugee camps sometimes into the 1950s. Even after that there were stateless Displaced Persons who didn’t yet have citizenship of the country where they had settled. If you were a Dutch or French refugee you could safely go back home because your government had been reinstated. If you were a Polish or Czech citizen you might want to think twice about going back home because the government had changed radically. In the Middle East after the war in 1948 the Arabs who had fled the fighting at the instigation of the 5 Arab countries who were confident of wiping out the new state of Israel were declared enemy aliens and could not return. There is never a “right of return” in such a case. The Arabs who had stayed put were welcomed as Israeli citizens. The Arab refugees (and their descendants to the nth generation) are supported by a UN agency devoted entirely to their welfare, unlike any previous refugee agency, which finished the job and disbanded. This one, the UNWRA, is self-perpetuating and is a main reason that there are 4th generation “refugees”. “Refugee” loses its meaning when it becomes a permanent caste.
This is also in sharp contrast to the nearly simultaneous splitting up of Hindustan by the world powers of the time. Suddenly, there were India, Pakistan, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Bangladesh… because Muslims had moved into Hindustan, and world powers though slicing and dicing into mainly Muslim vs mainly Hindu or other non-Muslim would make for peace in the region. While there’s still no peace, refugees in the former Hindustan sure don’t get the attention of those in area of the former Palestinian Mandate.
If you frequently watch MEMRI, then I advice you to view MEMRI WATCH as well
http://memriwatch.wordpress.com/
Dear Jerry
I would think twice about promoting the news reporting of the Guardian Newspaper from the UK; as you did with the cat swallows arial story.
I don’t know if you are aware, but it is the UK rag of choice for anti-semitic pseudo-intellectual toss pots who hate Israel.
These wankers commonly posess or wear a keffeyeh or shemagh and express support for terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah . If they wish to demonstrate their political affiliations, They could save a lot of trouble, by just having Jew Hater tatooed on their foreheads.
Note:these are also the readers who complain about MEMRI;You’re definitely better off without them.
The paper has been criticised(and caught out) on numerous occasions for publishing anti-semitic writings. Texts by journalists it continues to employ, despite the complaints.
Regards
AMG
“Cat swallows arial” story is anti-semitic?
gbjames
Do you have problems with English Comprehension?
I was recommending to jerry that he not promote news reports by the Guardian Newspaper.
Read the first sentence of my post again.
0/10
It’s true, unfortunately. The Guardian used to be a very respectable paper, but it has become an embarrassment to people like me who used to read it.
I had no problem at all comprehending your comment. I simply find it odd that one would use a posting about an arial-eating cat in a complaint about journalistic anti-semitism. You picked the example, not me.
That’s good, if disappointing, to know. Thanks for the heads-up.
I’ve had a full read through the comments on this post and just realised that you could hold a spot the Guardian reader contest.
Great Fun.
How about it?
This is pretty feeble criticism. MEMRI is not a propaganda organ. It reports verbatim interviews and media items that people outside the Middle East would never know about otherwise. We need to know what Arabs are saying to each other, because it is not always the same thing they are saying to the outside world. MEMRI provides an invaluable service and for that very reason attracts criticism, but don’t shoot the messenger!
Last time you said Egypt was the next theocracy, like Iran or Saudi Arabia. Now at least you’ve softened and gone with Yemen, which is certainly not a theocracy. Could you be more explicit with what facets of Yemen that Egypt is going to resemble?
I didn’t say Morsi was a moderate, if anybody did, they were wrong. But did they? I searched comments for “Morsi” and the most supportive thing I could find was “Morsi has a degree in Material Science from USC, so at least on the surface he’s not exactly another Ayatollah”
“Morsi has a degree in Material Science from USC, so at least on the surface he’s not exactly another Ayatollah”
FWIW, as regards the “surface” of things, at least one of the 9/11 hijackers had a degree in engineering.
Instead of concentrating on words and feelings, Morsi’s anti-Semitism and Israel’s nervousness, how about actions? The US gives Egypt over $1B in military aid per year to keep the Camp David peace (about half of aid to Israel). If you think the US and the Egyptian military would ever allow even a threat towards Israel you are crazy. If some crazy anti-Semite went off the handle, the aid would immediately stop and the entire regime would be gone pretty quickly.
If Morsi, or anyone else in Egypt, just wanted to mess with Israel, they would open the border to Gaza. That ain’t happening. What is Israel worried about?
I think they don’t open the Egyptian border to Gaza because they don’t want the Palestinians. If the Palestinians found work, security, and comfort in Egypt, they’d no longer be the political thorn in Israel’s side and the political leverage for terrorist attacks against Israel to which the world turns a blind eye.
Incidently, decades ago, I realized that the middle east, Arab-Israeli Conflict in particular, was an experiment. Using Jews, particularly Israeli Jews, as lab rats, terrorism was studied, and the results showed that, while deaths brought brief, brilliant media headlines, numerous injured survivors brought daily reminders of the attack while financially draining the local society through loss of tax base and high costs of medical and other care for the injured and permanently disabled.
Once that was sorted out, it was only a matter of time before targets outside of Israel were placed in the bull’s eye.
Had the world not turned a blind eye to the Jews, often compared with the canary in the mineshaft, perhaps the extremists could have been quelled before taking the upper hand they’ve now got.