Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
This Haaretz opinion piece by an Israeli Arab (who is not exactly pro-Israel) includes 2 paragraphs that should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the conflict.
Or so I thought. I had barely la nded my feet on Egyptian soil when I found myself surrounded by an angry crowd in the middle of Cairo. A local taxi driver happened upon my Israeli passport and took me for a Jewish spy. I was interrogated in public for two hours, during which I struggled to explain that there were Arabs living in Israel, too. The crowd burst into sudden collective laughter, and when an old Egyptian man wondered loudly why we were not fighting the Jews, I knew I was in trouble.Indeed, for millions of Arabs outside Israel, the idea of an Arab living in Israel, and not against it, seemed absurd on both counts: How could the "bastards" manage to survive within the Jewish State when a coalition of five Arab armies was crushed by it? And why in hell would the Jews let the bears in their backyard in the first place?
Arab societies have assigned a job to "Palestinian" (and Israeli Arabs, if they knew that Israeli Arabs existed). That job is to kill Jews. If the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are not killing Jews, then they are not doing their job. And if they are not doing their job, then in Arab opinion, they are traitors. If they live peacefully beside Jews, they are traitors. If they espouse nonviolence, they are traitors. If they negotiate with Israel, they are traitors. Those who got out of the way of the Arab armies and went to live in some other Arab country are not doing their job. They are traitors, and are treated like the scum of the earth. Those who would accept compensation are traitors; so if they sell a house to a Jew, they are murdered in cold blood.
Israeli Arabs are somewhat insulated from all of this because Israeli society DOESN'T assign them the role of Jew-killers, and most have no interest in proactively accepting that role.
But Palestinian kids are taught that role, intensively, from early childhood onward.
To most Arabs, the Palestinians are nothing but cannon fodder. They exist to kill Jews - nothing else. Any other behavior makes them traitors.
And the PA, HAMAS - all the Palestinians' dreadful leaders - are complicit in accepting and promoting that vicious delusion.
Arab "support" for the "Palestinian cause" is not support at all. It is threat and intimidation. It is the bayonet in the back that keeps the "cannon fodder" charging forward, rather than finding something more worthwhile to do with their lives.
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