Alan Perlman, a resident of the community of Carmel in the Hebron Hills region, is a technical writer. Perlman has a master's degree in social work. He can be reached at ahperlman@yahoo.com.
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Hijacking at Durban
By Alan Perlman   September 2, 2001

The Durban conference is not the first instance of the Palestinians hijacking something other than an airplane.

Many years ago, the National Organization of Women made media darling Hanan Ashrawi its "Woman of the Year." It offered Ms. Ashrawi a great opportunity to bring to public attention such injustices against Palestinian women as forced "female circumcision" and the murder of rape victims by their brothers, husbands, fathers or sons because of the shame the rape brings on the family. But Ms. Ashrawi had more pressing sexism to rant about - how the Israeli occupation is oppressive to Palestinian women.

The Arabs ritually hijack every international conference organized to deal with humanitarian issues, and use it as a club to batter Israel. The current Durban conference against racism is no different. Its draft resolution speaks against the "racist policies of the Zionist regime in Israel" (article 39), and its "barbaric state terrorism" (article 52). These charges of racism and terrorism are leveled directly against the national character of Israeli society. The question is: Do these charges really apply to Israeli society, or do they actually apply to the Palestinian instigators of the charges. Clearly, an examination of both societies, with regard to these charges, is in order.

Which society is racist?
Those who believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict began when the Arabs were forced to pay the price of an Israel established in the wake of the Holocaust should consider the following: The Palestinian pogroms against the Jews in Mandatory Palestine in the 1920's and early 1930's preceded both the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. Long before the State of Israel, the Arabs found the presence of Jews in the Holy Land insufferable. And their goal has always been the same -- to eliminate Jewish presence from the land.

During World War II, the Arabs of Palestine were enamored with Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews, and they aligned themselves with the Nazis. Their spiritual head, Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini, was a welcomed guest of Hitler. They were comrades in arms. (If you follow the pronouncements of the current Mufti of Jerusalem, you can see that this man of the cloth is cut from the very same cloth.)

All Arab wars against Israel were fought with one purpose only -- to destroy the State of Israel and to rid the land of Jews by either killing or expelling them. The expression, or more correctly the promise, to drive the Jews into the sea, is a uniquely Arab promise.

This goal of eliminating Israel and its Jews was clearly spelled out in the charter of the PLO. And since Oslo, the PLO, now repackaged and accepted by the rest of the world as the PA, still demands that Jewish settlements be dismantled to render the land Judenrein. Official PA policy is to execute any Palestinian found guilty of selling land to a Jew.

But the Palestinians went one step further. Instead of limiting its fight to those Jews living in Israel, they target Jews the world over.

The case of Leon Klinghofer comes immediately to mind. Under orders from future Nobel Prize winner, Yasser Arafat, Palestinian "activists" murdered this wheelchair-bound American Jew in the presence of his wife during a cruise, and then threw him, wheelchair and all, overboard. This scenario has been repeated countless times, and in all case the crime of the victim has generally been the same: being Jewish.

Today, guards must be posted at synagogues and Jewish community centers the world over because of the threat posed by a murderously anti-Semitic Palestinian and Muslim society. If Israeli society is so savage, one must surely wonder why such guards are not required at mosques and other Muslim meeting places.

On the diplomatic front, the Palestinians freely float blood libels against the Jews. Baseless charges of poisoning Palestinian children with poison gas, poison candy, and poisoned wells abound. Mrs. Arafat even leveled a blood libel charge in the presence of First Lady, Hilary Clinton.

Israeli society provides a lesson in contrast
The Arabs of Israel have Israeli citizenship and the same protections under the law as Jews. They have the same access to medical care, the right to vote, and the right to field their own candidates in their own parties during elections.

There are some ten Arab members representing Arab political parties in the Knesset. The two main Israeli parties, Labor and Likud, have Arab Knesset members. Even the Sharon government has an Arab minister.

Israeli society also has a bona fide peace movement that calls for coexistence and a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict through peaceful means. This movement was of such tremendous size that, before the current Palestinian war against Israel, it controlled the Knesset and offered far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians in an attempt at coexistence.

None of this characterizes a racist society. Yet, there are even more contrasts that go to the very core of Arab/Muslim and Jewish/Israeli society.

Arab societies were major purveyors in the slave trade and many still permit slavery today. Contrast this with the fact that Jews were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement in America, and that Israel went all out in order to rescue the black Jews of Ethiopia and bring them to Israel.

Muslim society believes in the imposition of its religious beliefs on others. Jews, on the other hand, have always believed in "live and let live," and have never imposed their religion in any country where they have lived.

Following Israel's war of Independence, the Arabs destroyed almost 50 synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem. In this past year, the Palestinians gleefully destroyed the Tomb of Joseph, and are currently destroying all Jewish artifacts under the Temple Mount.

Contrast this with the fact that Israel protects the places of worship of all religions, even going so far as to allows the Wakf, the Muslim religious authority, nominal control on the Temple Mount, the holiest site to Jews.

The picture of which society is racist, and which society practices ethnic cleansing, could not be any clearer.

Which society is terrorist?
Only a borderline psychotic could come up with the idea that settlements and suicide bombings are moral equivalents. But once the Palestinian media darlings uttered these words, they were accepted as holy writ in world politic. It is not surprising, therefore, that the world characterizes any defensive measure taken by Israel as Israeli terrorism.

Whether Israel imposes a closure to keep out suicide bombers, or kills suicide bombers and their handlers in pinpoint operations, or destroys terrorist headquarters, Israeli defensive measures are viewed as terrorism.

Part of the problem is that the world likes to view the military power as the bad guy, and the military underdog as the good guy; but reality is not that simple. Let's see which society is really the terrorist society.

Following the Oklahoma bombing, many people's first thoughts turned to Arab or Muslim terrorists. Very likely, no one's thoughts turned to Jewish or Israeli terrorists. And an examination of daily newspapers since the '60's will explain why. Simply put, when it comes to terrorism, Arab and Muslim society is way ahead of its closest competitors, and Jews are a non-starter.

That Europe has made a career of capitulating to Arab terrorism to protect their airports, citizens, and oil interests, only accentuates the fact that Arab terrorism is mainstream, not marginal.

How mainstream? A recent Palestinian poll shows that 76% of Palestinians favor suicide bombers. Turnout at funerals of suicide bombers and other terrorists often numbers in the tens of thousands. This hardly represents a lunatic fringe.

And just whom do these suicide bomber target? Shoppers, teenagers going to a disco, and families going for pizza are just some of the many targets.

The PA runs summer camps, and broadcasts television programs, where it teaches young children to become suicide bombers and martyrs. It also pays a stipend to every parent whose child is martyred, because dead children make for great media coverage. Palestinian parents, for their part, send out their children to stand in the line of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian soldiers (aka policemen). In any other society, those who felt that a struggle for liberation was underway might themselves go out and struggle, but they would leave their children home. This society does the reverse.

This society also engages in, and justifies, lynch-torture. Hence, two reservists who made a wrong turn were savagely tortured and bludgeoned to death, as were two young boys out for a hike, and a shepherd out with his flock. These acts were not perpetrated by serial killers, but by everyday citizens who just hate Jews with a passion.

Contrary to popular belief, the Palestinians are engaged in terrorism, not guerilla warfare. They target civilian populations, not the military. They engage in brutality that falls outside the norm even for war. And they are training their children to be savages.

Also contrary to popular belief, the higher number of Palestinian casualties over Israeli casualties is not an indicator that Israel is the aggressor in this conflict. It only indicates that Palestinians choose victim-hood by provoking or joining battles. In contrast, the Jewish victims have been people merely following their daily routines -- driving to work, going shopping, eating in restaurants, etc.

Israel targets only those people responsible for the terror. It has even allowed itself to absorb major blows in its attempt to not harm Palestinian civilians. Given Israel's military might, if Israel was guilty of the charges leveled against it at Durban, Palestinian casualties would be infinitely higher. It is only due to Israel's restraint that Palestinian casualties in this yearlong war are so low.

Conclusion
As with the earlier resolution equating Zionism with racism, the outcome of this resolution will have little impact on Israel. Approval is nice, but Israel can live without approval. Ultimately, these resolutions say nothing about Israel; rather, they speak volumes about the rest of the world.

This conference could have, and should have, dealt with the serious issue of racism. Instead, the Palestinians have turned it into a litmus test of where the world stands on anti-Semitism. Whatever your views on Israel's presence in the "West Bank," Israeli society is neither racist nor terrorist; Palestinian society clearly is.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

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