There is Nothing New About the "New Intifada"

The recent wave of Arab/Muslim terrorist attacks against Jews in the heart of Israel is not a "New Intifada"; it is just another example of how virulent Arab antisemitism is and how deeply ingrained that antisemitism is in Arab/Muslim society. Check out this video of a Jordanian preschool girl gleefully speaking about stabbing a Jew with a knife (footage courtesy of MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute).

The war between Israel and her neighbors is not about "occupation" or "colonialism" or any of the other buzzwords carelessly thrown around in lieu of a meaningful analysis of the situation. This war is about a group of people being systematically indoctrinated from the cradle to feel and act upon homicidal hatred for Jews, who are depicted as something less than human that must be wiped off the face of the earth.

Make no mistake about it: the child in that video is being trained to kill any and every Jew that she can find. It does not matter if you are a religious Jew or a secular Jew, a right-wing Jew or a left-wing Jew: all that matters is that you are a Jew. This is no different than the Nazi ideology of Adolf Hitler. The only difference is that Hitler had the means at his disposal to massacre millions of Jews. If the Arab/Muslim nations had that capability they would do so. Oil-rich Iran is not developing a nuclear program in order to have enough sources of energy.

If Israel took down her protective barriers and dismantled her military forces, millions of Jews would be killed in short order. If the Arabs and Muslims could restrain themselves from killing Jewish babies for about one year, Israelis would be so overjoyed they would would gladly carve out territory to create a Palestinian Arab state. Israel has been giving up "land for peace" since the 1970s and all Israel has to show for this naive magnanimity is cemeteries filled with dead Jews; since the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords (when Israel ceded control of almost all of Gaza and portions of Judea/Samaria in exchange for nothing more than paper promises of peace that were promptly disavowed and ignored), Arab/Muslim terrorists have killed more than 1500 Israelis in a variety of ways, including suicide bombings, rocket attacks launched from territory given up by Israel and snipers who deliberately targeted babies. In the decade preceding the Oslo Accords, Arab/Muslim terrorists killed 226 Israelis, so it is evident that Israeli concessions do not satiate Arab/Muslim bloodlust; each concession weakens Israel strategically and emboldens her enemies.

Arab/Muslim terrorists are regularly lauded by mainstream Arab/Muslim society as heroes; recently, the Palestinian Bar Association (which, like most Palestinian institutions, exists thanks to the direct or indirect financial support of Israel, the United States and the European Union) awarded an honorary law degree to a terrorist who stabbed two Israelis to death and also wounded a mother and her baby. Could you imagine the outcry if the American Bar Association honored someone who committed cold-blooded murder? I know that I would shred my ABA membership card if that unfortunate day ever arises.

When looking at the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is important to remember that the Arab/Muslim motto is "We love death more than you love life." This is not a land dispute. This is not something that can be resolved through rational negotiations; a democracy cannot negotiate with a death cult unless that democracy has a death wish. The Mideast is awash with blood as a result of the backward thinking, death-glorifying religious and political leaders who hold sway over most of the countries in the region. The idea that Israel's policies are the primary obstacle to peace is absurd and unfounded; the idea that the Middle East would become a peaceful utopia if only Israel would give up more land is dangerously naive. Do the advocates of these ideas really believe such nonsense? Do they really think that if they pressure Israel to give in to the bloodthirsty demands of genocidal terrorist nations and groups that this will promote peace?

Israel is often portrayed as a "colonialist" oppressor or even a supposedly genocidal state. Think about that for a minute. Israel is so small that she fits under your pinkie nail on a globe. In 1948, there were about three quarters of a million Arab refugees--and a similar number of Jewish refugees--in the wake of Israel's War of Independence. Israel's borders have been steadily shrinking for the past two decades and the number of Arab refugees has been exploding. If Israel is truly a "colonialist" oppressor with genocidal intent then she is the least effective such empire in the history of the world. Great Britain used to have an empire on which the sun never set; it would take you less than an hour to do a Sunday drive from one end of Israel's "empire" to the other.

No one doubts Israel's military capabilities; why has she not just wiped out/conquered all of her neighbors and kicked out all of the  Palestinian Arabs? Arab countries are at war with each other all the time and they constantly expel and/or massacre the Palestinian Arabs in their midst, with nary a peep from the rest of the world. If Israel is so evil and so bent on genocide then why doesn't Israel do the same thing? If Israel is building an empire then why does Israel give up lands that are holy to the Jewish people? When Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria from 1948-67, no Jew could set foot there and the headstones from the ancient Jewish cemetery were used as latrines. Since Israel liberated those areas, Jewish prayer at Jewish holy sites has been restricted by Israel in deference to Muslim sensibilities. Maybe you don't think that the accommodations Israel makes are good enough--but would any other country, let alone a "colonialist" oppressor, make such accommodations at all? Would any other country continue to make such accommodations while terrorists target defenseless men, women and children? Every time I hear some British politician spouting off his half-baked thoughts about what Israel should do and what Israel's strategic interests are I recall how Great Britain considered it vitally important to go to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. So, Great Britain has a vital strategic interest in South America but the Jewish State should not unite Jerusalem or build a wall to keep out suicide bombers? This brings to mind how the early 20th century Zionist leaders often reminded their British colonialist oppressors that Jerusalem was the Jewish national capital back when London was a small, insignificant settlement.

Take a good, long look at that video again. The evil being committed by that child's parents--the evil that the child's parents want her to commit in the near future--will not be quenched or satiated with the destruction of Israel. The nightmare that is being unleashed in Israel by genocidal terrorists will spread worldwide if it is not stopped now. I am consistently saddened and outraged when self-proclaimed "progressives" align themselves with Hamas and Iran against the so-called "colonialist oppressors" United States and Israel, as if Hamas and Iran give a damn about black people, women or gay people and as if Hamas and Iran stand for free speech, free thought, religious freedom and economic freedom.

Imagine a world without Israel. Do you really think that Syria will magically become tranquil? That democracy will spring forth in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the countries in the region? There are many elected Arab political leaders in Israel, several of whom are openly working to destroy Israel. How many elected Jewish political leaders are there in any Arab or Muslim country? How many elected political leaders in any Arab or Muslim country are black, female or gay? How many political leaders in any Arab or Muslim country are elected, period?

Life in America and Israel is really too good for "progressives" who sit in academic ivory towers or plush homes and act as if the enactment of their twisted ideologies would help anyone who is actually being oppressed. The madness that is spreading throughout the Middle East will only be inflamed and encouraged by the destruction of Israel.

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Here are some educational links from MEMRI:

1) The knife attacks on Israeli civilians are not random or amateurish. Instead of trying to build a functioning civilized society, Israel's so-called peace partners are making instructional videos about how to kill Jews. Here is one such video, titled "West Bank Intifada--Preparing a Knife for Stabbing." The instructor is wearing the garb of the Palestinian Authority, the terrorist organization to which Israel has been surrendering land since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

2) Hamas cleric and TV host Sheikh Iyad Abu Funun recently said that he would swear on the Quran "that not a single Jew will remain on this land." He also declared, "We will not leave a single one of you, alive or dead, on this land. By Allah, we will dig up your bones from your graves and get them out of this country." He was speaking on Al-Aqsa TV on October 13, 2015. He added, "Let me say something clearly to the Zionists, something that should reach all those enemies--whether left-wing, right-wing, secular, religious, or extremist. Regardless of their appearance or the color of their skin, they are on the land of Islam, and the Muslims, on the land of the Prophet's nocturnal journey. Any of our enemies living on this land must understand that they have no place on this land."

Here is the video.

3) The way that mainstream Arab and Muslim organizations systematically train their children not just to hate Jews but to kill Jews is depraved and sickening. This is a quote from a children's show on a Palestinian TV channel: "We revere the young heroes who have sacrificed their lives for Jerusalem and who carried out all those great heroic acts."

Here is the video.

Pay attention to the thematic quote near the end: "They are more afraid than us. They love life."

4) The Jewish State has made the desert bloom and contributed immensely to the world scientifically, culturally and economically. The Jewish State's enemies are much better at tearing things down and blowing things up than building anything and they are proud of a culture that glorifies killing and death and encourages their children to kill and be killed.

Do you think that such bloodthirstiness will be contained to the Middle East? Do you think that if these people succeed in destroying Israel and killing every Jew there they will suddenly become civilized and peaceful? Do not fool yourself into believing that this is only about Israel or that the root cause of the problem is alleged Israeli oppression. There is a deep moral sickness infecting much of the Arab/Islamic world and the Arab/Islamic world needs to do a lot of soul-searching about this.