|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
Israfax
This campaign is not new; it predates Israel's creation in 1948, and was reinforced after the Six Days War in 1967. Bernard Lewis, the great Princeton historian of the Islamic world, well described in his Semites and Anti-Semites (1986) the tendency after 1967 for the Arab world to appropriate the modern antisemitic "anti-Zionist" propaganda of its then Soviet patron. This was expressed in the Arab-led, and Third-World/Soviet backed, campaign resulting in the UN General Assembly's infamous "Zionism equals racism" resolution. This author wrote an article in 1989, following the beginning of the first "intifada", describing the then-new "Israel-Nazi inversion", in which Arab propagandists turned reality upside-down by picturing themselves as innocent "Jewish" victims suffering at the hands of aggressive Israeli [Jewish] Nazis. Indeed, media at that time--in what has since become standard propaganda fare--energized antisemitic archetypes by picturing the Muslim Yasser Arafat (and by extension the Palestinians) as Jesus Christ, persecuted and crucified by the [Israeli] Jews. (This inversion has again made its appearance in Arafat's "new" intifada, and not only with the Palestinians: Syria's Bashar Assad used it in his now-infamous welcoming remarks at Pope John Paul II's arrival on his recent visit to Damascus.) We in the West have become familiar with what is termed the psychology of victimhood, with the claim that crimes committed by the self-proclaimed "oppressed" or the "disadvantaged" are somehow understandable, or excusable. Arab propaganda takes such claims to a new level: Arafat, who by the admission of his own lieutenants clearly started the war in September, 2001, and who has yet publicly to call for an end to violence, baldfacedly blames Israel for it. The Arab regimes--all dictatorships and absolute monarchies--are among the world's most flagrant violators of human rights. Here Arafat's Palestinian Authority (as attested to by courageous Palestinian human-rights activists) is in a leadership position, imprisoning critics without trial (two dozen have died in prison) and censoring its colleges, press and television. Yet this corrupt dictatorship, and its well-organized and orchestrated supporters in the Western countries, blame Israel for trampling on the Palestinians' so-called human rights. This twisted logic (reproduced in much of the media coverage of the conflict--CNN and BBC and NPR represent extremes, not exceptions) was seen most clearly recently here, in Canada. Stockwell Day, leader of the Alliance party Opposition in Parliament, criticized the dominant Liberal Party's support for UN Resolution 1322, which blamed only Israel for the recent violence, Day had the nerve to speak some truth about the situation. "There is a difference", he said, "between accidental death or injury" attendant upon being caught in a crossfire, and "the deliberate murder of innocent people in a premeditated act of terrorism". Organized Islamic groups lit out after the conservative leader. The National Council of Canada-Arab Relations announced they were going to sue Day for his "sinister statement...inciting hatred", and the Canadian Arab Federation attacked him for his "ill-informed and biased speech". For these paragons of human rights and political rectitude, free speech is a category covering only what they say, not what those who disagree with them say. This attempt to "chill" the free speech of opponents is an old story in the Middle East; it is disheartening to witness its naturalization in one of the West's premier democracies. We should all remember this, as we celebrate with democratic Israel the unity of our new-old Yerushalayim, and remember too--hard as it may be these days--that one root of the Biblical name, shalem, reflects shalom, the Hebrew for "peace"--now Jerusalem, "city of peace". (Prof. Krantz, Editor of ISRAFAX, is also Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research) FOCUS: ISRAEL, THE U.S. AND THE INTERNATIONAL
COMMUNITY It did...A decade later, Powell seems to have carved out an exception to his rule. In the past few weeks, the Palestinians have ominously escalated their six-month guerrilla war...Their new tactic is launching mortar rounds from Palestinian territory into...Israel proper, such as the peaceful desert town of Sederot... Israel responded to this alarming escalation
not with a proportional tit for tat, which would only regularize and institutionalize--and
legitimize--such cross-border Palestinian aggression. Instead Israel delivered
a sharper deterrent blow: occupying a piece of Gaza from which the attacks
were launched. In other words, Israel applied the Powell Doctrine. And
what did it get? The sharpest rebuke from an American secretary of state
in years...who denounced the attack as "excessive and disproportionate"
and demanded Israel's retreat.... Following Powell's
Doctrine The time is long overdue to declare war on Arafat and his cohorts. They should be cut off and...destroyed. At the end we are talking about the survival of a sovereign state, a member-nation of the UN, which has all of the rights to self-defense according to Article 51 of the UN Charter. When, on December 20, 1989, a 25,000-strong American offensive force unleashed all of its might in Panama City in an operation to eliminate narcotics dealers, the Americans were not concerned that the Israeli government might condemn them for their use of the excessive and disproportionate force... (Boris Shusteff is a research associate with the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies in Houston, Texas.) Sharon Should
Have Said No to U.S. In any case, his slap had its effect: Within hours, Israel's forces withdrew. Jerusalem claimed the decision to retreat had been made before the U.S. reprimand, but no one was fooled. Least of all Arafat, who understood that Washington had just given him a green light to keep trying to kill Jews... Israelis overwhelmingly elected Ariel Sharon
prime minister because he vowed to be tough...His failure to insist on
Israel's right to protect its population from acts of war came across
as a dismaying lack of backbone...In 1948, David Ben Gurion resisted U.S.
pressure not to proclaim Israeli statehood. In 1967, Levi Eshkol, defying
U.S. wishes, launched a preemptive strike against Egypt. In 1981, Menachem
Begin braved American fury to bomb the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak.
In each case, saying no to Washington led to short-term tension in U.S.-Israeli
relations. But today even Washington would agree that in each case, Israel
was right... THE JEWISH WORLD Jan T. Gross,
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
(Princeton University Press) Since that time, much has changed in Poland's
approach to its Jewish past...And yet...facts are...simply repressed.
The achievement of this powerful new book by Jan T. Gross...is that it
makes it impossible any longer to avoid looking into the forbidden zone... During the round-up Jews were beaten and humiliated...tortured, and finally killed with knives, stakes, iron pipes, and stones...Some victims were mutilated and dismembered, or buried alive. There was at least one reported rape...Finally those who were still able to walk were marched through the town, packed into a barn, and burned alive... [T]he memory of the horrible incident persisted
in Jedwabne...And yet for all those years...an event of this magnitude...remained
buried deep within the "silent zone" of the Polish mind...With
the appearance of this extraordinary book, the telling has finally begun. |
     
|
ISRAFAX
EDITORIAL