Supporters of Israel have struggled to understand why Israel's actions against the Palestinians receive such a disproportionately heightened response even though there are conflicts that are crueler, consequences that are more deadly and victims who suffer more. However it is expressed, a position supportive of Israel will look callous about the plight of the Palestinians, even if callousness is not intended. But in the face of so little knowledge of Jewish history, the constraints of political correctness need to be set aside.
The conflict, with the resultant expressions of virulent anti-Semitism, even in this country, raises a number of questions that are never asked, let alone dealt with, in our mainstream media. Some examples are:
- Why has the plight of the Palestinians justified a UN refugee agency dedicated solely to the benefit of Palestinians for over 65 years (UNWRA)? Why must every other group of victims of conflict anywhere in the world be content with the ministrations of the same UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and for a limited duration?
- Why can a Blade Nzimande or Tony Ehrenreich froth over the evils of Zionism as colonialism, racism and who knows what else, out of all proportion to deadliness of communism, fascism and jihadism? How can so many people blithely propagate a complete inversion of the true situation?
-Why does every radio report about the conflict start with the actions of the Israelis and then, almost begrudgingly, refer to the cause being a resumption of shelling by Hamas? Why does a report never start with rocket attacks initiated by Hamas and follow with the response by Israel?
There are 2 answers: anti-Semitism and the political correctness of the post-70s West. Let's look at aspects of anti-Semitism that are generally never mentioned but that have a significant impact on the situation today.
Russia, during the height of the Cold War, succeeded in having the "Zionism is racism" resolution passed in the UN. Russia went from a neutral position on Israel to a pro-Arab position because of oil and a Cold War strategy. It brought the Arab world on board as partners. Jew-hatred was one way to overcome the natural antipathy between the godless communist USSR and the god-fearing Arab world. The resolution certainly wasn't an exercise in the propagation of human rights. Russia has never taken a human rights position. Its support for wars of liberation was always about extending its sphere of influence in its stand-off with the West.
Russia has amongst the deepest and longest histories of anti-Semitism of any country outside the Middle East.
It grew under the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, which ruled hand-in-hand with royalty, like most religious authorities in history. Most of the Jewish population of South Africa emigrated in the late 19th century from poor, rural communities of Russia because of the murderous pogroms carried out usually by the military or other armed forces of the Russian state.
Between 1897 and 1903 by, amongst others, the head of the Paris office of the Russian Secret service published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It described the alleged secret ambitions of a Jewish plan for world domination. It was a venomously anti-Semitic hoax drawn predominantly from Maurice Joly's fictional Dialogue in Hell, which was a thinly veiled attack on the political ambitions of Napoleon III who, represented by the non-Jewish character Machiavelli, plots to rule the world.
Most of the Arab countries publish The Protocols widely to feed anti-Semitism and a hatred of Israel. Anti-Israel groups were selling it outside the conference centre at the infamous The World Conference Against Racism organised by UNESCO in Durban in 2001. To this day, South Africans have not understood the deep hurt and betrayal South African Jews felt at the fact that neither the UN, nor the government nor the organisors did anything to stop it from being sold.
Notwithstanding that the October Revolution was intended to free Russians from tsarist tyranny, and despite the participation by many Jews in the Revolution in light of their own suffering under the tsars, pogroms continued to be carried out. As a result of one, from 1918 - 1921, an estimated 70 000 to 250 000 Jews were killed and 300 000 Jewish children were orphaned.
It was death and destruction on this sort of scale before the Holocaust, that led Jews to seek life elsewhere, including in Palestine in the late 19th century. Palestine at the time was an area within the vast Ottoman Empire.
Ironically, unlike most of the Arab Middle East, the Zionist project has been a success. A multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious Israel, though far from a perfect society, has been a success. As a result the BDS movement actually has something to boycott. Israel produces food, state-of-the art farming techniques, consumer products, IT inventions, world-class professors, musicians, and writers. The only product that BDS cannot boycott is oil - Israel doesn't have any. Oil, however, is about the only product that countries could ever boycott from some of the Arab countries.
Criticism about the harsh treatment by Israel of the Palestinians is certainly sometimes warranted. The expansion of the settlements is ill-judged, and caters to a historical hysteria and self-righteousness that is as irrelevant in 2014 as the Palestinian demand for the right of return. The only point from which all parties can move is the present. Otherwise, who is to determine which point of history has an imperative over another?
The disproportionate response to Israel is a failure to understand that even if Israel's behaviour is sometimes cruel and illegal, it simply cannot concede land to opponents who genuinely do not believe in the existence of a Jewish state. Fatah says that this is no longer its position, but it is not been categorical about that. Hamas is clear. Hamas was founded on the ideal of the destruction of Israel.
So when Israel blockades Gaza it's not because that's what it feels like doing on any given day. Or because it just wants to make Gazans' lives difficult. It is because Hamas will use free waters to bring in material and armaments to assist in the destruction of Israel.
Sixty percent of the world's Jewish population was murdered by Nazi Germany. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered by tsarist Russia. And this does not touch on the actions of Poland and surrounding countries. The desire to have a country of one's own (Zionisim) became an imperative that resulted in Israel. The Arabs were never going to accommodate the dhimmi Jews, irrespective of what they had suffered. So the Jew was going to fight for it - whether that fight was always fair or not.
One hears repeatedly the question: how can the Jews, who were the object of genocide, treat the Palestinians so harshly? They see it as the ultimate double standard. But it has an entirely human explanation: 60% of your world population is murdered with industrial efficiency merely because you exist; you have been persecuted because one of the great religions accuses your people of having ‘killed Christ"; and said churches accused you of being "ritual child murderers".
So when your enemies (Iran, Hamas et al) say they want to destroy you, there is absolutely no reason for you to believe that they do not mean what they say. The Western paradigm thinks it's a hollow threat, if perhaps somewhat cruel and venomous. Israel does not believe it is a hollow threat: they believe it's a promise. And until Hamas promises otherwise, Israel will respond accordingly.
After 2 000 years of being threatened, hated and killed, your first priority is not the well being of your enemies. It's the well being of your own people. And if you risk alienating your friends, so be it. It's the price you have to pay. If your enemies persist in being refugees, looked after like children for 66 years, being the subjects of pity, paternalism, and handouts, then that becomes their problem not yours. Sound harsh? Yes. But not as harsh as facing possible genocide.
Israel could offer the West Bank and Gaza greater help to build successful societies than any other Middle Eastern country (other than those flush with petro dollars and where the hell have they been?) but such help would never be accepted. The "Shame: Honour" dialectic of Arab society will never allow it.
Fatah and Hamas are single-party regimes. Egyptian scientist and columnist, Amr al-Zant, says that it takes openness for societies to progress. Unlike Israel, Palestinian society is not open. Nor were the Arab societies that became the subject of the Arab Spring.
Islam requires dhimmitude of the Jews. A successful Jewish state in the middle of a unsuccessful Ummah is an affront. In the Arab world of the "Shame: Honour dialectic", the Jewish state must be destroyed. Otherwise Arab honour is always delayed and its shame is eternal. That's why the nature of anti-Semitism in Arab media and teaching materials is so abominable. The Jews are dhimmi and must be treated as such.
The one way to ensure perpetual honour is to ensure that the status as victim is perpetual. A state of perpetual pity ensues. Successful societies cannot be built upon a state of perpetual victimhood and perceived humiliation.
The issues raised in this article are almost never addressed in the mainstream media; they are confined to discussions and writings by academics, scholars and Middle East experts. And much has been written about these issues by historians, political scientists and academics of international renown. But is it political correctness that demands that the media never speak honestly? Does it not strike the media that their ready access to Gaza is, literally, not measured against the lack of access and extreme danger the media face in the new caliphate?
Israel was to be eradicated in the war of 1948. It didn't happen and 66 years later the Jewish state is still there. In almost every respect, Israel could teach the Middle East how to farm, how to conduct business, how to educate its citizens to contribute to the growth of its societies. But that would mean regarding Jews and the Jewish state as an equal.
But until Fatah and Hamas categorically accept that the conflict is about Israel's borders and not its existence, nothing will change. No country will go into negotiations with a partner who says that its very existence is on the table.
The Israelis can never owe it to the Palestinians to "save Palestinian face" by agreeing to put its very existence on the negotiation table.
Those Jews who want Samaria and Judea are not going to get it. The Palestinians who want Israel are not going to get it.
As South Africans well know, history must always inform the present, but it cannot dictate the future.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
