Who’s to Blame for Palestinian Despair?





by Loolwa Khazzoom





Like many hothead progressives around the world, I preach antiracism, teach multiculturalism and recognize the United States to be a politically and culturally imperialistic society.

Proper revolutionary that I am, I have no problem with guerrilla warfare against oppressive regimes, and I fully recognize that “terrorism” can be a political term used to invalidate the violent behavior of one group and justify that of another.

One might say I’m an all-around, groovy radical. And yet, I’ve got a major problem with compassion for Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up Israeli citizens.

Sure, progressive folk cluck in sympathy when the leg of an Israeli girl flies clear across a pizzeria or when the spine of an Israeli boy gets sliced by shrapnel. This sound of distress, however, often is accompanied by an undertone of accusation: It is Israel’s fault, the narrative goes, that these tragedies happen; by creating Palestinian desperation, Israel has created Palestinian terrorism.

Clearly, Palestinians are suffering, and their situation must be remedied — the sooner the better. The question is, who was responsible for creating their situation and who is accountable for remedying it?

The Arab world is called just that for a reason: Beginning in the Arabian Peninsula about 1,300 years ago, Arab Muslims launched a brutal campaign of invasion and conquest, taking over lands across the Middle East and North Africa. Throughout the region, Kurds, Persians, Berbers, Copts and Jews were forced to convert to Islam under the threat of death and in the name of Allah.

Jews were one of the few indigenous Middle Eastern peoples to resist conversion to Islam, the result being they were given the status of dhimmi — legally second-class, inferior people. In the best of circumstances, Jews were spared death but forced to endure an onslaught of humiliating legal restrictions — forced into ghettos, prohibited from owning land, prevented from entering numerous professions and forbidden from doing anything to physically or symbolically demonstrate equality with Arab Muslims.

When dhimmi laws were lax and Jews were allowed to participate to a greater degree in their society, the Jewish community would flourish, both socially and economically. On numerous occasions, however, the response to that success was a wave of harassment or massacre of Jews instigated by the government or the masses.

This dynamic meant that the Jews lived in a basic state of subservience: They could participate in the society around them, they could enjoy a certain degree of wealth and status and they could befriend their Arab Muslim neighbors, but they always had to know their place.

The Arab-Israel relationship and the current crisis occur in the greater context of a history in which Arab Muslims have oppressed Jews for 1,300 years. Most recently, anti-Jewish riots erupted throughout the Arab world in the 1930s and 1940s.

Jews were assaulted, tortured, murdered and forced to flee from their homes of thousands of years. Throughout the region, Jewish property was confiscated and nationalized, collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars at the time.

Yet the world has never witnessed Middle Eastern and North African Jews blowing themselves up and taking scores of Arab innocents with them out of anger or desperation for what Arab states did to the Jewish people.

Despite the fact that there were 900,000 Jewish refugees from throughout the Middle East and North Africa, we do not even hear about a Middle Eastern/North African Jewish refugee problem today, because Israel absorbed most of the refugees. For decades, they and their children have been the majority of Israel’s Jewish population, with numbers as high as 70 percent.

To the contrary, Arab states did not absorb refugees from the war against Israel in 1948. Instead, they built squalid camps in the West Bank and Gaza — at the time controlled by Jordan and Egypt — and dumped the refugees in them, Arabs doomed to become pawns in a political war against Israel.

Countries such as Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Lebanon funded assaults against Israeli citizens instead of funding basic medical, educational and housing needs of Palestinian refugee families.

In 1967, Israel inherited the Palestinian refugee problem through a defensive war. When Israel tried to build housing for the refugees in Gaza, Arab states led votes against it in U.N. resolutions, because absorption would change the status of the refugees. But wasn’t that the moral objective?

Israel went on to give more money to the Palestinian refugees than all but three of the Arab states combined, prior to transferring responsibility of the territories to the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s. Israel built hospitals and educational institutions for Palestinians in the territories. Israel trained the Palestinian police force.

And yet, the 22 Arab states dominate both the land and the wealth of the region. So who is responsible for creating Palestinian desperation?

Tragically, the Arab propaganda war against Israel has been a brilliant success, laying on Israel all the blame for the Palestinian refugee problem. By refusing to hold Arab states accountable for their own actions, by feeling sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers instead of outrage at the Arab propaganda creating this phenomenon, the “progressive” movement continues to feed the never-ending cycle of violence in the Middle East.

Loolwa Khazzoom is the editor of “The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage” (Seal Press), and she is an Israel correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. You can find her on the web at www.loolwa.com.

...to the last Palestinian.

In other words, the Arab world has a keen interest in promoting adn fostering Palestinian desperation.

It's a weapon they intend to use to destroy Israel...until they get theri hands on nukes, that is.

Then Tel Aviv will be vaporized, and never mind the Arab casualties that will result from the backlash. Israel will be destroyed, and that's all that's important.

nonanarchist

Sound familiar?

"You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America."

WEXNER ANALYSIS:

ISRAELI COMMUNICATION PRIORITIES 2003

OVERVIEW (excerpts)

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk021108/us14.shtml

Perceptions of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are being almost entirely colored and often overshadowed by the continuing action in Iraq. Partisan differences still exist (the political Left remains your problem) and complaints about Israeli heavy-handedness still exist. Advocates of Israel have about two weeks to get their message in order before world attention turns to the so-called "road map" and how best to "solve" the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Developing that message is the purpose of this memo.

Iraq colors all. Saddam is your best defense, even if he is dead. The worldview Americans is entirely dominated by developments in Iraq. This is a unique opportunity for Israelis to deliver a message of support and unity at a time of great international anxiety and opposition from some of our European "allies." For a year - a SOLID YEAR - you should be invoking the name of Saddam Hussein and how Israel was always behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless dictator and liberate their people. Saddam will remain a powerful symbol of terror to Americans for a long time to come. A pro-Israeli expression of solidarity with the American people in their successful effort to remove Saddam will be appreciated.

Conveying sensitivity and a sense of values is a must. Most of the best-performing sound bites mention children, families, and democratic values. Don't just say that Israel is morally aligned with the U.S. Show it in your language. The children component is particularly important. It is essential that you talk about "the day, not long from now, when Palestinian children and Israeli children will play side-by-side as their parents watch approvingly.

"SECURITY" sells. Security has become the key fundamental principle for all Americans. Security is the context by which you should explain Israeli need for loan guarantees and military aid, as well as why Israel can't just give up land. The settlements are our Achilles heel, and the best response (which is still quite weak) is the need for security that this buffer creates.

Link Iraqi liberation with the plight of the Palestinian people. It is likely that the most effective argument(s) you have right now are those that link the right of the Iraqi people to live in freedom with the right of the Palestinian people to be governed by those who truly represent them. If you express your concern for the plight of the Palestinian people and how it is unfair, unjust and immoral that they should be forced to accept leaders who steal and kill in their name, you will be building credibility for your support of the average Palestinian while undermining the credibility of their leadership.

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT WORDS: SADDAM HUSSEIN (STILL)

This document is about language, so let me be blunt. "Saddam Hussein" are the two words that tie Israel to America and are most likely to deliver support in Congress. They also just happen to be two of the most hated words in the English language right now.

Without being repetitive, Americans fundamentally believe that a democracy has a right to protect its people and its boarders. Unfortunately, as a democracy, we tend to dwell on our failures (Vietnam, Watergate, etc.) more than our successes. It is essential for the long-term support of a strong military and a commitment to national security that we remind people again and again...and again that there are times when it is necessary to take preventative action and that military intervention is better than appeasement.

A WARNING

There are some who would say that Saddam Hussein is already old news. They don't understand history. They don't understand communication. They don't understand how to integrate and leverage history and communication for the benefit of Israel. The day we allow Saddam to take his eventual place in the trash heap of history is the day we loose our strongest weapon in the linguistic defense of Israel.

References to the successful outcome of the war with Iraq benefit Israel. While Americans don't want to increase foreign aid in a time of significant budgetary deficits and painful spending cuts, there is one and only one argument that will work for continuing Israeli aid (in four easy steps):

THE ISRAELI AID MESSAGE TREE

(1) As a democracy, Israel has the right and the responsibility to defend its borders and protect its people.

(2) Prevention works. Even with the collapse of Saddam's regime, terrorist threats remain throughout our region.

(3) Israel is America's one and only true ally in the region. In these particularly unstable and dangerous times, Israel should not be forced to go it alone.

(4) With America's financial assistance, Israel can defend its borders, protect its people, and provide invaluable assistance to the American effort in the war against terrorism.

This is important. All the arguments about Israel being a democracy, letting Arabs vote and serve in government, protecting religious freedom, etc., won't deliver the public support you need to secure the loan guarantees and the military aid Israel needs. All the language we have written in past memos will not work when it comes to U.S. tax dollars. You need a national security angle - one that clearly links the interests of both Israel and America.

THE VALUE OF RHETORICAL QUESTIONS

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS TO ASK OPPONENTS OF ISRAEL

An effective communication technique to continue to apply pressure to the Palestinian leadership without looking like you are ignoring Israel's responsibilities is to pose rhetorical questions. These questions will lead to only one answer, of course: peace cannot be achieved until real reforms are in place, and that the terror must stop first.

WORDS THAT WORK:

SELLING ISRAEL AID

SOUND-BITES THAT WORK

The Luntz Research Companies & The Israel Project - April 2003

Pizza for Pricks

http://www.pizzaidf.org/