Israel & the Palestinians: What is the truth?

In the Sunday September 20, 2011 NY Times Review section, Tom Friedman's column describes Israel and its leaders, especially PM Netanyahu, as self serving obstacles to Middle East peace and purveyors of occupation.

I asked a qualified friend who is a student of not only history but current events and whom I know to be fair and balanced to comment. Please read what he has to say. When the Times and Friedman gang up on you, can the boots be far behind?

Comment:

I am intensely depressed about the hostility of the world to the existence of Israel. I like Tom Friedman and agree with him on most of his observations except for his position on Israel. Here he joins with other liberals who blame the Netanyanhu government for the failure of the peace process which was was also a failure during the extremely liberal past administrations of Rabin and Ehud Barak and others. The reason this conflict will never end is because the Palestinians and their Arab brothers are dedicated to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. The more extremist muslim entities, like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, have made known they are dedicated to the eradication of the entire Jewish population which they have declared publicly and which the liberal community chooses to ignore.

So the Palestinians claim, which has been supported by the liberal, anti-semitic Europeans (and don't tell me the Brits, French and Scandinavians are not) have distilled the cause of the ongoing conflict down to the construction of settlements in "occupied" territory belonging to the Palestinians. They choose to forget that Israel pulled out of Lebanon and pulled their settlements out of Gaza and probably would pull out of most areas of the West Bank and has agreed to trade territory in Israel occupied by Arabs for territory around Jerusalem occupied by Jews. They take no notice that Abbas refused to negotiate even when Netanyanhu agreed to a 10 month freeze on new projects (which were erroneously labeled as settlements), The area around Jerusalem where these projects are being built had been designated by Israel for development 30 or more years ago and is presently the home of perhaps 400,000 or more Jews. Israel never agreed to return to the 1967 borders, nor did the the UN agreement state that it had to. The borders were supposed be negotiated. After all, the wars fought against overwhelming Arab states from 1948 until now, they are entitled to this.

Nor does the world, or Tom Friedman note that Abbas has made peace with Hamas which is an internationally recognized terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish state. How indeed could Israel live in peace with a Palestinian state comprised of a large population who seek its destruction. Nor does the world note that the peace made with Egypt is now at risk of fallling apart because the Arab dictators who made the peace (for which they were handsomely rewarded by the U.S. and the opening of the Suez Canal) are now dead and the Arab masses are calling for the blood of Jews. Nor does the world take note of the immense threat to Israel posed by Iran who is intent on building nuclear weapons and rockets with the intent of realizing its declared objective of wiping the Jewish state off the map or of their proxies Hezbollah now armed with 40,000 rockets supplied by Iran and Hamas which is continuing to launch thousands of rockets on Israel each year.

Now let's clarify this Muslim hatred of Israel. It is based on anti-semitism, not just anti Zionism. It is ingrained in the Koran and the teachings of Mohammed who massacred entire Jewish tribes because they refused to accept his Islamic invention. Nor does the world take notice that 20% of Israel's population is Arab who much prefer to live in Israel than in Palestinian territory even though they continue to hate the Jews who who provide them with the freedom of a democracy, the right to vote, welfare payments, access to universities and employment even though they contribue very little to the state. Israelis and involved Jews, like me, know that the Arabs (and other Muslims) promote the most vicious anti-semitism including wide spread use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the use of Nazi cartoons and literature through their mass media sources of TV, news and the relentless anti-semitic diatribes of their mullahs and sheiks every week in their mosques. How the hell are the Israelis supposed to believe the Palestinians are serious about making peace when they are teaching their children to hate Jews and venerating suicide bomber martyrs who were successful in killing innocent Israeli civilians.

I do not understand why Israel would agree to participate in any peace conferences before the Palestinians agree to accept the existence of two states, one Arab Palestinian and one Jewish Israeli. I do not believe any Arab would agree to this. The Palestinians believe they will return to their land in Israel and they are willing to fight and wait and live like rats and teach their children to hate and to commit suicide for as long as it takes to achieve the expulsion of the Jews from the land of Islam. Read the Koran. Read the history of Mohammed. It is no coincidence that the violence of the entire world is mostly caused by Muslims. It is no coincidence that they are the most backward of populations except for Africans and aboriginal tribal peoples. The world takes little note of this in its view of the Israel-Palestinian conflct. Are we really supposed to believe that the Egyptians who are killing their Copts and the Syrians who are killing their Sunnis and the Bahrainis who are killing their Shiites and the Iragis who are killing each other and the Pakistanis who are killing all Muslims who are not Pashtun and on and on, are really distressed about the Palestinians. Over 1,000,000 Arabs live in Israel. How many Jews live in Arab lands? How many Christians live in Arab lands? How many Christians are being persecuted in Muslim lands? The liberal western world which truly believes in Tolerance, has no problem accepting the massive Intolerance of the Muslim nations who refuse to tolerate any religion other than Islam.

You cannot imagine how I, as a Jew, who lived during the rabid anti-semitism of the pre-WWll diatribes of Father Coughlin, Henry Ford and Lindbergh and who has relatives who died in the worst crime in history committed by Germans assisted by France, Holland, Scandinavia, Romania, Switzerland (who bought the gold from the teeth of Jewish victims) and almost all of the other nations of Europe, who has read of the 2000 year history of persecution of Jews by the Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox Christian churches feels now that the world seems to, once again, be aligning against the 6 million Jews living in the tiny state of Israel and ignoring that they live in such grave danger posed by the relentless hatred of 450 million Muslim neighbors, who agree on only one thing, the annihilation of the Jewish state in their midst.