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All people of good will desire peace in the Middle East, but it must be peace based on realism, not wishful thinking. There is a huge gap between appearance and reality. How does one separate truth from spin? What are the real intentions of the parties involved? Those who are seeking peace may assume others share their values. They hope so much for an accommodation that they may disregard evidence suggesting that others do not want to accommodate. This is a tragic error and a prescription for intensification of the conflict.
To find real peace it is necessary first to expose false pretenses of peace. It is important to listen to what people are really saying, not just to what we want to hear them say. Peace cannot exist without the willingness to prefer the truth to the lie, even when the lie is much more comforting.
While walking along Broadway one afternoon I passed a table manned by a group of protestors. They had signs calling Ariel Sharon a Nazi, and speculating about who his next victims will be.
I have been hearing this a lot lately: Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, is a Nazi. The Israelis are behaving like Nazis. These comparisons of Jews to the greatest persecutors of Jews in history are coming from people who claim they are working for peace. There is an obvious mismatch: one cannot sincerely claim to be for peace and use the Nazi label to smear people who are targets of an organized terrorist offensive.
Let's first look at the comparison, before trying to understand the reasons for it. What did the Nazis do? They tried to exterminate an entire race of people. They targeted civilians who had committed no offenses against them. They rounded them up and put them in concentration camps. They tortured them for the sheer pleasure of it. They performed bizarre and sadistic medical experiments on them. And finally, they burned them in ovens on a massive scale.
There is no shred of evidence for any application of these charges to the Israelis. If anything, the Israelis have been reacting with remarkable restraint to systematic efforts to destroy their country. These efforts include not only protracted violence against Israeli civilians, but also an expertly orchestrated smear campaign designed to demonize Israel and to delegitimize its self-defense. And so false charges abound, like the charge that Israel committed a massacre at Jenin. Even after having been disproved, the charges still persist.
Who is really acting most like Nazis today?
The Nazis were known for fomenting extreme and irrational anti-Semitism to incite their populations to harm Jews. Such incitement is built into the Palestinian educational system, incitement not only against Israel but against the Jewish people.(1) This propagation of hatred is an epidemic in the Arab world today. Saudi Arabia has long been considered a "moderate" Arab state and even an advocate for peace. But on March 10 of this year (2002) the following appeared in the Saudi Government newspaper Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia does not have a free press). It echoes the infamous "blood libel," the centuries-old Christian allegation that Jews used the blood of Christian children to bake their Passover matzah. (I will quote the article at some length to give the reader an impression of what it is actually like to read something like this):
This holiday [Purim] has some dangerous customs that will, no doubt, horrify you, and I apologize if any reader is harmed because of this....
During the Purim holiday, the Jew must prepare very special pastries, the filling of which is not only costly and rare - it cannot be found at all on the local and international markets. Unfortunately, this filling cannot be left out, or substituted with any alternative serving the same purpose. For this holiday, the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries. In other words, the practice cannot be carried out as required if human blood is not spilled!
...the Jews' spilling human blood to prepare pastry for their holidays is a well-established fact, historically and legally, all throughout history. This was one of the main reasons for the persecution and exile that were their lot in Europe and Asia at various times.
...the victim must be a mature adolescent who is, of course, a non-Jew - that is, a Christian or a Muslim. His blood is taken and dried into granules. The cleric blends these granules into the pastry dough; they can also be saved for the next holiday. In contrast, for the Passover slaughtering, about which I intend to write one of these days, the blood of Christian and Muslim children under the age of 10 must be used, and the cleric can mix the blood (into the dough) before or after dehydration....
Let us now examine how the victims' blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. (These needles) pierce the victim's body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel.
These needles do the job, and the victim's blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment - torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend.
After this barbaric display, the Jews take the spilled blood, in the bottle set in the bottom (of the needle-studded barrel), and the Jewish cleric makes his coreligionists completely happy on their holiday when he serves them the pastries in which human blood is mixed.
There is another way to spill the blood: The victim can be slaughtered as a sheep is slaughtered, and his blood collected in a container. Or, the victim's veins can be slit in several places, letting his blood drain from his body.
This blood is very carefully collected - as I have already noted - by the "rabbi," the Jewish cleric, the chef who specializes in preparing these kinds of pastries.
The human race refuses even to look at the Jewish pastries, let alone prepare them or consume them!
(Translation by The Middle East Media Research Institute.[2])
Is it any surprise that on a recent American TV news magazine members of the Saudi Royal Family were heard saying they believe Jewish people are thoroughly evil and responsible for all the major evil in the world?
But such vilification of Jews does not occur only in Saudi newspapers or Palestinian textbooks. Egypt's leading newspaper, the government-sponsored daily "Al-Ahram," has published similar articles, as has another government daily "Al-Akhbar." Egyptian papers have also published articles denying the Holocaust and promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. An entire book about the blood libel, "Matzah of Zion," was published in Syria, and a movie was even made out of it. And recently Abu Dhabi Television showed cartoons of Ariel Sharon dressed as a devil with horns and a tail and a Jewish Star on his chest, holding up a glass of blood and saying: "The original drink from Arabic blood / Main distributor Ariel Sharon and partners." This is what the rank and file, including children, throughout the Arab world are learning about Jews. Kindergarten children in Gaza are dressed in army fatigues, given weapons to carry and anti-Israel songs to sing. How could we not expect a fanatical hatred of Jews to permeate the "Arab street"?
The following words come from a sermon delivered from a mosque in Gaza City that was broadcast on Palestinian Authority TV just this last April 12: (3)
We are convinced of the [future] victory of Allah; we believe that one of these days, we will enter Jerusalem as conquerors, enter Jaffa as conquerors, enter Haifa as conquerors, enter Ramle and Lod as conquerors, the [villages of] Hirbiya and Dir Jerjis and all of Palestine as conquerors, as Allah has decreed… "They will enter Al-Aqsa Mosque as they have entered it the first time…"
Anyone who does not attain martyrdom in these days should wake in the middle of the night and say: "My God, why have you deprived me of martyrdom for your sake? For the martyr lives next to Allah"…
Our enemies suffer now more than we do. Why? Because we are convinced that our dead go to Paradise, while the dead of the Jews go to Hell, to a cruel fate. So we stand firm and steadfast, in obedience to Allah…
The Jews await the false Jewish messiah, while we await, with Allah's help… the Mahdi and Jesus, peace be upon him.
Jesus's pure hands will murder the false Jewish messiah. Where? In the city of Lod, in Palestine. Palestine will be, as it was in the past, a graveyard for the invaders – just as it was a graveyard for the Tatars and to the Crusader invaders, [and for the invaders] of the old and new colonialism…
A reliable Hadith [tradition] says: "The Jews will fight you, but you will be set to rule over them." What could be more beautiful than this tradition? "The Jews will fight you" – that is, the Jews have begun to fight us. "You will be set to rule over them" – Who will set the Muslim to rule over the Jew? Allah… Until the Jew hides behind the rock and the tree.
But the rock and tree will say: "Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, a Jew hides behind me, come and kill him." Except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews.
We believe in this Hadith. We are convinced also that this Hadith heralds the spread of Islam and its rule over all the land…
Oh beloved, look to the East of the earth, find Japan and the ocean; look to the West of the earth, find [some] country and the ocean. Be assured that these will be owned by the Muslim nation, as the Hadith says… "from the ocean to the ocean"…
Oh Allah, accept our martyrs in the highest heavens…
Oh Allah, show the Jews a black day…
Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and their supporters…
Oh Allah, raise the flag of Jihad across the land…
Oh Allah, forgive our sins…
These are calls for the destruction of the Jewish State with the words "annihilate the Jews." Indeed, a spokesman for the terrorist group Hamas has stated: "Every Israeli, at any time and in any place, is now a target for strikes by the Palestinian resistance."(4) This is a call to genocide. And yet ironically, it is Israelis whom people are now calling Nazis. There are reasons for this, which we will explore later.
Notes:
1. Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace. Reports on Palestinian Authority and Israeli School Textbooks.
2. Al-Jalahma, Umayma Ahmad. "Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers' Blood for 'Purim' Pastries." Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), March 10, 2002. In Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series No. 354, March 13, 2002.
3. Mahdi, Imam Sheikh Ibrahim. "Friday Sermon on Palestinian Authority TV." April 12, 2002. In Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series No. 370, April 17, 2002.
4. IslamOnline.net. "Hamas Was Ready to Declare Truce, Now Every Israeli Is A Target." July 24, 2003.
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
Peace with Realism