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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers some considerations for the currently hotly debated question of whether the Israelis and others should continue giving aid to the Palestinians and their new Hamas government:
Many take it as axiomatic that the Israelis "owe" it to the local Arabs to supply them with jobs. But why? Most of these local Arabs, far from being some kind of since-time-immemorial peasantry, in fact arrived between 1920 and 1940. They came mostly from Iraq and Egypt. Others are descended from troops of Mehmet Ali or of Abd el-Kader; they arrived in the 19th century. Still others are Muslims who were transplanted by the Ottoman government from Europe when the Ottomans left Bulgaria in the 1880s.This whole business of a "Palestinian people" also ignores the demographic data. It is a post-1967 fabrication, but one which has become the central belief of the U.N. That august body has chosen over the past 30 years to devote more than one-quarter of its total time to the so-called "plight of the 'Palestinians." Poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, pollution, the exploitation of women, the enslavement of child workers, the changes in the earth's climate -- all of these subjects have been scanted by those within the U.N. bureaucracy, which is almost entirely now simply part of the Islamintern International. It is time to see that for what it is: a Jihad, using military means, economic boycotts and bribery, propaganda, and diplomatic pressure and maneuvering, to weaken and demoralize the Israelis and to force them to make concession after concession.
This strategy has worked. It has worked largely because the Israelis themselves have been unable to define what threatens them as a Jihad (the Lesser Jihad), because of their unwillingness to give up hope for better relations with some Muslim states. They were fooled by the temporary possibility of alliances with still-secular Turkey and with the Shah's regime in Iran into thinking that the problem was not Islam. But it was, and is -- and the only reasons that, for a while, both Turkey and Iran were not hostile to Israel was that both countries regarded the Arabs as a threat; both were still under secular regimes; and both were tied into the American system of defense.
None of that is true any longer. But Israel still is taciturn on the subject of Islam -- after all, it would like to believe that the aggression against it has some kind of end. It doesn't. And it won't. But that does not mean that the camp of jihad cannot be demoralized and divided, as Soviet Communism became demoralized and its adherents divided. It is a question of waiting it out, and doing one's damnedest to present things correctly, based on an accurate analysis of the nature of the threat. This the government of Israel is refusing to do -- though here and there individual Israelis have done it.This means that Israel's presentation of its own case must be supplemented, or re-interpreted, in a truthful manner -- for even if Israel does not dare to say it faces a Jihad (and why not, exactly?) those of us outside Israel are free to describe it as exactly what it is.
And had that description, that analysis, been widely disseminated thirty years ago, when Europe had not yet had its collective mind poisoned in the press and television against Israel, it might have helped warn the people of Western Europe about the danger of Islam and of Muslim immigration.
Now, of course, it is too late for that. But it is not too late to open our eyes and, among other things, end the Jizyah of foreign aid, which is based on a similar unwillingness to face the realities of Islamic jihad. Even Ahmadinejad of Iran seems to think that a cutoff of Western largesse to the Palestinians is possible. He has told them: “Don’t worry about economic problems, because God’s treasures are endless and if you work for Him, He will meet your needs from where you had not foreseen.”
I agree. The "Palestinians" -- the local Arabs, that is, who are to be carefully distinguished from the other local Arabs, those within Israel as temporarily defined by the 1949 armistice lines (the Arab states refused to recognize those armistice lines as permanent borders -- so why should Israel be asked to do so at this point?), who are called "Israeli Arabs" -- should put their faith in "God's treasures."
But what are "God's treasures"? For Muslims, the entire world belongs to Islam. The Infidels have no permanent claim to possession of anything -- not land, not goods, not "their women." If they happen to possess a life estate -- well, lives can be shortened. Infidels can be robbed and looted by Muslims, for what Infidels call "robbery" and "looting" is merely helping yourself, in lands that do not yet have the Shari'a, to the "jizyah" that is properly due (see, in Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept," the Norwegian imam who preaches this quite logical Gospel According to Islam). Perhaps what Ahmadinejad meant was that "God's treasures" include the money that Israel, and the Europeans, and the Americans, should all be forking over -- for the Jizyah can be seen as one of "God's treasures" to which Muslims have a right.
There is yet another interpretation of "God's treasures." It is that of the oil money. For as soon as the OPEC revenues quadrupled, the Saudis and other Muslim beneficiaries of this accident of geology -- discovered by Infidels, produced for years by Infidels, and for which a use had been found only in the Infidel lands -- began to see that oil wealth as a direct gift from Allah to the Muslims and especially to the Arabs, "the best of people." A politico-theological interpretation was given to this manna from heaven to be found underground. So perhaps Ahmadinejad is referring to the oil wealth which, I am sure, he as a good Muslim loyal to every member of the umma in need, is quite ready to share with the "Palestinian" Arabs.
Or is he?
Posted by Robert at February 21, 2006 1:01 PM
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I wonder if it's reasonable to hope that Israel will continue to withold the $50 million per month as long as Hamas forms the government of "Palestine". Israel is its own worst enemy - going along with the myth of owing "Palestinians" jobs, giving up lands -no, forcibly evicting its own people from their homes - and constantly caving to world opinion.
As for Ahmadinejad sharing oil money with the "Palistinians", I am laughing. Clever joke, Hugh.
Posted by: libbysmom![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 21, 2006 1:24 PM
In this opinion from The Nation, all praise is given to Carter while ignoring the statments of Hamas itself and the Hamas charter. Without addressing the political platform of Hamas, the editors of The Nation and Carter would have us believe that receipt of foreign aid is an inviolate right of the recipient and not an act of charity. Would the editors of The Nation give charitable aid to causes that they are opposed to?
The yahoo crowd that runs U.S. foreign policy has been struggling to figure out how to get to the right of Israeli's Likud Party when it comes to countering the decision of the Palestinian people to give the political wing of Hamas an opportunity to form a government. But the new Bush doctrine of punishing people for casting their ballots for political parties that are not approved by the commissars in Washington does not sit well with the American president [Carter] who actually forged significant progress toward peace in the Middle East -- and who understands the region better in his sleep than a wide-awake Dick Cheney before he's had that beer with lunch.Posted by: Lisa
at February 21, 2006 1:31 PM
Lets go back to 1948. John Roy Carlson's book Cairo to Damascus will give you an interesting perspective. He traveled as an undercover reporter from Egypt with the 'holy warriors' of 1948, hopped up on hashish and worked into a blood frenzy - great for morale but not for tactics as any general could tell you. Only the Jordanian army under British influence and training put up a courageous (by any stretch of the word) stand.
Arabs are Arabs are Arabs. 'Palestinian' is an almost meaningless word now as it was back then. All the pc talk and propaganda blurs reality. Carlson for all his flaws gives a genuine feel for the people and the situation. Arab honor, Islamic hysteria and the frenzied hatred of beaten down peasants all were focused on 'the Jews' and that hatred never ever changed - it was forged into an 'out of thin air' Palestinian 'nationalism'. Monomania is a mental illness not a 'political cause'.
Posted by: poetcomic1 at February 21, 2006 1:34 PM
Hugh,
I would offer one change to your otherwise excellent analysis: you wrote "Arabs are Arabs are Arabs. 'Palestinian' is an almost meaningless word".
This would be more precise if it read "Muslim Arabs are Muslim Arabs are simply Muslims. 'Palestinian' is an almost meaningless word when it relates to Muslims who see themselves as part of a larger Umma."
Most of the Muslim "Palestinians" are the descendants (often children in the first or second generation) of invaders and settlers from the larger Arab speaking lands. The only true Palestinians are the Christians, Samaritans, and Jews whose ancestors have been in the land since before the Islamic conquest.
In 1967, Ramallah was an almost completely Christian city and the only Muslims in Ramallah, were guest workers from Jordan. Today, the children of these guest workers and other Muslim settlers are almost the total population, while the original population of Ramallah lives mostly in the Americas. Very few of the Hamas voters of the "West Bank" can trace more than three generations in Judea and Samaria, yet they now treat the land like it is their own, to the destruction of its original Christian population.
While many Israelis are now speaking out for the rights of their Christian cousins, it has not yet become official Israeli policy. This is unfortunate to say the least. Israel, for its own security, should adopt a policy that declares the only persons recognized as Palestinian are those who can prove ancestry going back at least to the time of the Ottomans. This would include almost all the Christians, even in exile.
Those who came later (the Muslims) should be considered illegal aliens and expelled across the Jordan. At the same time, any Christian, Jewish or other non-Muslim refugee from an Arab country should be offered refuge in Judea and Samaria. This proposal may seem extreme to some, but justice sometimes demands exteme measures.
Posted by: Provoslavni at February 21, 2006 2:18 PM
I do not understand why the Israelis are not far more aggressive and assertive in all their media appearances, about the long history of the jews in their holy land, and the fact that the Arabs never had a legitimate ownership claim.
Posted by: moderationist at February 21, 2006 3:42 PM
They haven't a clue about how to present their own case. They think sweet reasonableness and a demonstrated willingness to compromise, and not to press their own case at every opportunity, is the way to do things. The Arabs never make such a mistake; they formulaically introduce into every conceivable setting their eyes-rolling-skywards grievances, all of them phony, all of them uttered with the deep conviction that only practiced liars can produce on cue.
And the Israelis tend to be taciturn. The Israeli accent in English does not go over well (at least the male accent does not -- from women it sounds better. A good deal of hmming-and-hawing). Then there is the Israeli who speaks English in a kind of stage-Yiddish, with a speed, and in a timbre, of the most unappealing kind. A good example of this is that Ran Gissin, the official Israeli spokesman whose voice is so excruciating to listen to. Can no one who wishes Israel well explain that he is the last man in the world to be serving as an official spokesman for anything? There are plenty of educated, highly intelligent, fast-on-their-feet Israelis. They should be doing the presentation to the world media.
Find them. Train them. Arm them with the facts and tell them never to give an inch. Then let them loose.
Posted by: Hugh at February 21, 2006 5:03 PM
"Arabs never had a legitimate ownership claim"
B I N G O!
Just like they don't have a legitimate claim to GOD! The "Arab" is a result of a Sarah, allowing
Hager, to give Abraham a son! God then told Abraham to cast them out.
Sarah, was then blessed by GOD, with Isaac.
at February 21, 2006 5:17 PM
Good point, at least stop the jizyah. There are those who argue that if we stop supporting the PA then support for Hammas will just be picked up by Iran or other Muslim states and that will buy them ifluence. I would say, "let them have the influence." It hasn't done us much good. Let them pay and recycle some petrodollars instead of us paying for both sides of the war.
Posted by: Papa Bear at February 21, 2006 5:38 PM
Provoslavni
Those who came later (the Muslims) should be considered illegal aliens and expelled across the Jordan. At the same time, any Christian, Jewish or other non-Muslim refugee from an Arab country should be offered refuge in Judea and Samaria. This proposal may seem extreme to some, but justice sometimes demands exteme measures.
I dont think it is extreme. Justice is justice and in this case it is eminently fair as well.
at February 21, 2006 8:07 PM
Hugh
I hope you sent the letter to PM John Howard.
As for Israeli spokesmen - a pantomime horse would do a better job. Even I, completely pro-israeli, wince at the way these spokesmen keep losing the plot.
Are they place men - placed in that capacity because of some work they did for the party?
at February 21, 2006 8:11 PM
Israeli politics seems to be as nasty a business as American politics. But if the Israelis ever come to grips with reality, they will elect people like Uzi Landau to lead them in a purposefull, sensible way.
Posted by: Infidel33 at February 21, 2006 10:52 PM
In one way, the Hamas landslide may be a blessing. Perhaps, now that the Muslim occupiers of Judea and Samaria are showing their true colours, the sad phenomenon of islamo-Christians and islamo-Jews will be slapped awake to what the Muslims really intend.
This has already happened with the majority of Christian Palestinians, who now see clearly that they share the same fate under Islam as the Copts, Assyrians, and Lebanese Maronites, Melkites, and Orthodox.
Now it is time for Israel to wake up as well. This is a bigger issue than simply hasbara (public relations). For too long Israel was confident of its overwhelming military superiority, while being blind to the fact that the real threat is not Arab armies but Muslim demographics.
As long as the Muslim population continues to grow unchecked west of the Jordan river, Israel will never have security. The only way to achieve long term security is by a humane population transfer that will insure a Jewish and/or Christian majority in Israel, Palestine (i.e. Judea and Samaria) and Lebanon, while holding the Hagarene hordes back in Jordan, eastern Syria, and Arabia.
Posted by: Provoslavni at February 21, 2006 11:31 PM
Infidel33,
I don't know that much about Uzi Landau's policies, but anyone who shares a name with perhaps the greatest assault weapon ever made, has to have something going for him.
Posted by: Provoslavni at February 21, 2006 11:34 PM
Provoslavni,
I believe the weapon you refer to was named for its inventor, Usiel Gal. But Mr. Landau is one of the few Israeli politicians who has a realistic understanding of the nature of the relentless jihad being waged by the entire arab world against his country, and has always opposed any and all attempts to appease Israel's enemies. He even opposed land concessions that Netenyahu was willing to make.
Posted by: Infidel33 at February 21, 2006 11:55 PM
What Israel and the world owe the "Palestinians"?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
at February 22, 2006 3:45 AM
Frankly, I expect that Ahmadinejad will make a huge and very public show of lending financial support to the "Palestinians" (as opposed to the somewhat covert support for Hezbullah), just as other Muslim despots with oil revenues have happily done while the folks at home live lives of far greater desparation than the "Palestinians" do.
I know Hugh is no fan of Bernard Lewis, but Lewis is so right about the usefullness of Israel as the "certified acceptable grievance" that the teaming Muslim masses can take to the streets over, instead of over their own sorry lot.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at February 22, 2006 8:41 AM
Bernard Lewis is useful, but a must read book on the creation of 'the Palestinians' and the 20th century jihad against the Jewish state, is Jillian Becker's 'The PLO - the rise and fall of the PLO'. Sadly she wrote that title a bit prematurely (the book came out in 1984)before the dismal Oslo accords bailed out Yasser and his thugs. It's a superbly researched book from an expert on terrorism. Becker also wrote the famed 'Hitler's Children'about the Baader Meinhof gang, which is excellent on how spoilt rich kids in the West allied themselves to the 'Palestinian cause' in the late 60s/early 70s. I'm a latecomer to Becker's work - but it is all the more chillingly relevant now than ever.
Posted by: Jinnee at February 22, 2006 10:01 AM
"Lewis is so right about the usefullness of Israel as the "certified acceptable grievance" that the teaming Muslim masses can take to the streets over, instead of over their own sorry lot."
-- from a posting above
But Lewis is not alone -- hundreds of other commentators have made the same obvious point. What Lewis has never done, that great enthusiast for the Oslo Accords, is to describe the opposition to Israel as a Jihad, to note its deep roots in Islam, for that would never do, that would imply that there is no "solution" to the conflict based on the kind of repeated Israeli territorial concesssions that Lewis himself has, in the past, been so eager to promote.
He is a student not so much of Islam but of the Ottomans and modern Turkey. He was the first Westerner to have the run of the Ottoman archives. He was made much of by fellow Ottomanists and by the many secular Turks, and then later on by certain well-placed people (when Lewis visits the Muslim world, he always has kind and affable hosts, eager to please -- and not merely eager to please, but eager to laugh at his bon mots, and able to appreciate, as Westerners cannot, his linguistic gifts. One always likes one's intellectual abilities to find an appreciative audience -- doesn't one?)
Lewis needs to explain publicly why he was so wrong about the Oslo Accords. He needs to explain publicly why, pretending to be au-dessus de la melee (I'm just a disinterested scholar in the stacks, I have nothing to do with policy) he believed that this Iraq-the-Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations stuff made sense, why he did not foresee (as J. B. Kelly foresaw, and in a conference call with Lewis and a certain important official in the Pentagon, firmly stated that the Iraq venture "would all end in tears" while Lewis said, in his usual manner "you could be right" but continued to make absurd policy suggestions -- proposing a Hashemite monarch for Iraq being the most far-fetched, and the one that displayed a failure to understand the Sunni-Shi'a split in Iraq that was not about to be papered over by plummy-voiced Lewis friend and host Prince Hassan).
He recognizes that Europe is being islamized. He notes it, in an interview in Die Welt, and then says nothing further about it. Surely he has some other comment he might like to make? Something about Islam that he has learned, if not in the past, then in recent years? Possibly, like S. D. Goitein, who in the introduction to his "A Mediterranean Society" confessed that "about nothing" in his entirely scholarly career had he been so wrong than about the effect of the Jizyah, the burden of which he fully appreciated only after studying the treasure-trove of the Cairo Geniza.
Lewis should do the same -- he should forget about Hilal Inalcik, Prince Hassan, and everyone else in his life who has unrepresentratively represented the best of "Islamic civilization"; he should stop belittling Bat Ye'or and her important work (would that he had studied the dhimmi, as he might have, had he taken a different direction); he should realize his own mesmerizing affect on grateful former students, including one who remains in the Pentagon, and othres outside, some of whom are unable merely to be grateful for his many kindnesses and his obvious superiority to the members of MESA Nostra, but as his acolytes have remained entirely too uncritical of him.
Will he?
His posthumous reputation depends on it. And surely he cares more for that Western civilization, in the end, with his epigraphs from Quevedo, his musical tastes, his cultivation, then he does for the thin gruel of "Islamic civilization" the artifacts of which -- Kufic calligraphy, Mughal miniatures, Padishahin in their turbans, tulips on Iznik tiles -- he now doubt has surrounding him in a setting of perfect taste.
But what are all the roses and nightingales of Gulistan, even if transplanted to the Persian Garden of his house in Princeton, to the survival of the Western world?
Once to every man and nation.
His turn.
Posted by: Hugh at February 22, 2006 11:07 AM
Hugh: Whether the Israeli accent in English is grating or not is a non issue. I'd also suspect that more Israelis speak with a somewhat Arab accent than Yiddish, since a slight majority of Israelis are of Oriental descent. Many other accents in English have harsh or comical connotations, too. Perhaps a bigger problem, which I noticed in the hallowed halls of State when I was there, is that Israelis are a democratic (small d) people. John Q. Diplomat has served in Thailand (where people still have a feudal mindset that never underwent a social revolution), then in England with its aristocratic ghosts, then in China where the imperial ethos has had modern totalitarian slavishness superimposed on it, then in some subsaharan country where colonialism has created a deference to whites and even New World blacks. He's then sent to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and must deal with a people who have always been democratic in their instincts, and about as refined and genteel as the Ulster Scots (a people in a similar bind) or the Ulster Scots' Appalachian Hillbilly cousins. Here, friends, is Israel's big diplomatic problem. Dips and democrats do not mix easily.
Posted by: Kepha at February 22, 2006 11:11 AM
If one is discussing the presentation of a country's case before the world, the use of a language does matter. Look at all those American schoolgirls whose ill-modulated voices make one wince. It doesn't have to be that way.
Abba Eban, though a political naif about so many things, was a brilliant orator. (For that matter, the Russian ambassador to England, the uncle of the writer Nabokov, testified that the best Russian orator he ever heard was Vladimir Zhabotinsky.)
Golda Meir had the touch. Anyone who can cut short someone who was pretending he was unworthy of some praise by telling him "Don't be so humble, you're not that great" can deal with, and she did deal with, any nonsense directed at her by an interviewer.
The nonsense and lies of the various Erekats and Ashrawis and others from outside the "Palestinian" movement proper -- think Rami Khouri, for example -- could so easily be taken apart, by those who had their wits about them, and possessed a good command of English. And that command means more than syntax and grammar. It means a well-modulated voice. It means the abilty to compose quickly, on the spot, complicated periodic sentences, and then to punctuate them with short and snappy lines that you know will be remembered.
Not a minor problem at all.
Erving Goffman -- that's Lord Erving of Goffman, never lived to write, but should have:
"Presentation of Self, and Representation of Country, in Everyday Life"
Posted by: Hugh at February 22, 2006 12:43 PM
Israel must stop their tolerance and respect for islam, as for any other religion. The Israeli media must deluge the the public with teaching Jusaism as an antidote to islam. It would also be helpful to post anti-islam signs at all border crossings, as well as distribute educational literature at the same. Not only does israel not owe the "Palestinians" anything, she should also sever all supply of electricity and water to all enemy encampments in Gaza, Judeaea and Samaria. The arabs want a world without israel, let them taste it.
Posted by: winta at February 22, 2006 8:46 PM
In a word: zero.
Posted by: pythagoras at February 22, 2006 10:39 PM
Less than zero -- though for obvious reasons it pains me to use that phrase.
Posted by: Hugh at February 23, 2006 8:05 PM
Lisa:
Dick Cheney with a beer after lunch probably understands the Israel-Arab (I am NOT going to use the p-word) conflict a lot better than you do. Which isn't saying a hell of a lot.
The Arab-israel conflict has been going on for thousands of years--it did not originate in 1948 and it was not started by the Jews either. This conflict was recognizably begun in its present incarnation in the early 600s by Islamic jihadists who invaded it to begin Islamizing it. (Three guesses who the p-people really are, came from and what they want from Israel).
Since you apparently are rooting for the Muslims in this, I wish to inform you that Islam, once it vanquishes Israel and eliminates the Jewish faith from the earth, will move onto whatever non-Islamic pasture that suits its fancy--Hindu India (which al-Qaeda was created to destroy in 1988), Western Europe, Russia, America--you name the location of the "infidels". They're all on Islam's "to do" list of places to annihilate.
I guess you couldn't care less that the Kuran insists YOU have no right to be alive either (unless you already are a Muslim). It sounds like you might want to go convert to Islam and enlist. Ousamah bin Laden needs recruits these days I hear...
Posted by: pythagoras at February 27, 2006 2:25 PM
Lisa was quoting from the Nation, the tragic case of a once intelligent, if leftist, weekly, that is now just a rag full of dumb lies and cant. But since Americans with degrees today are often so dumb and iggarit, the Nation can influence them.
By the way, the Nation was very pro-Khomeini in 1979 after he had overthrown the shah, with Zbig's help of course. In the first few months of Khomeini rule, the Nation claimed that the man drawing up a new constitution for Iran had "impeccable civil libertarian credentials." So the Nation has been misleading people for at least since 1979.
Posted by: Eliyahu at February 27, 2006 5:16 PM
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