Category Archives: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Imagine Israelis Seeking Redress from Palestinians

Conflict, Ethics, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

A Palestinian child was injured in an Israeli missile attack launched against a Jihadi in Gaza, that place where all is sweetness and light. The child is paralyzed, and Israel, rightly, has sponsored her care, until now. The Israeli Ministry of Defense wants the child to return to the Palestinian territory. I don’t believe it will come to that. The liberal courts will side with the child. Already a plethora of Israeli human rights organizations is working on her behalf.

Imagine, will you, the reverse situation. An Israeli survivor of a Palestinian suicide bomber wants the PA to treat life-long disfigurement and pain caused by shards of shrapnel, ball bearings and nails embedded in flesh and bone for life. Can you imagine Messrs. Abbas and Hamas of the PA assuming such moral responsibility? Not to mention that, other than cutting-edge killers, there is no state-of-the-art anything in the PA, much less medicine.

The Palestinian Appetite For Destruction

Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East

“Societies are only as good as the individuals they comprise. And individuals are only as good as their actions. Overall, Israeli society is superior to Palestinian society because, like America, it is peopled by individuals who make possible a thriving civil society. Yet to Bush, the latest chaotic chapter in the annals of the M.O.P.E (Most Oppressed People Ever) is an ‘exciting moment.’ It has inspired in him visions (or hallucinations) of “two states living side by side in peace.” Bush’s appetite for destruction must be even healthier than that of the Palestinians.”

In this week’s WND essay, which led the Commentary Page, “The Palestinian Appetite For Destruction,” you can read about how Abbas intends to consolidating his street cred with the Palestinians, why Carter has a point; Bush ought not to be favoring any of the Palestinian Black Shirts. There is also a juxtaposition of Israeli society and the savage society adjacent to it, and the manner in which the two Palestinians and Jews have responded to historical challenges.

Updated ‘Reza Aslan’s Pogrom Amnesia’

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Media, Middle East

About Reza Aslan, the darling of the media on all things Muslim, Myles Kantor observes the following:

“Last night I watched Sam Harris and Reza Aslan’s January 25 debate on religion at the Los Angeles Public Library. Toward the end, Harris noted the anti-Semitic character of the Middle East before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Aslan responded in reference to pre-state Israel, ‘Before 1948, of course, there were tens of thousands of Jews living alongside their Arab neighbors without any problem at all.’

Without any problem at all? How about the Jerusalem pogrom in 1920 and the Jaffa pogrom in 1921? Or Arab massacres of Jews in Hebron and Safad in 1929? Or the Tiberias pogrom in 1938? (There was a reason the Sephardic Jewish sage Maimonides wrote in 1172 regarding Arabs, ‘Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.’)

If Aslan is ignorant of this recurrent savagery, then the Harvard graduate’s study of pre-state Israel has been amazingly selective. If not, his misrepresentation of Arab-Jewish life before 1948 is revisionism in the same gutter as Holocaust denial.”

Or down at curb level with the New Historians’ output.

Update: the post was mentioned favorably at Jihad Watch.

Updated 'Reza Aslan's Pogrom Amnesia'

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Media, Middle East

About Reza Aslan, the darling of the media on all things Muslim, Myles Kantor observes the following:

“Last night I watched Sam Harris and Reza Aslan’s January 25 debate on religion at the Los Angeles Public Library. Toward the end, Harris noted the anti-Semitic character of the Middle East before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Aslan responded in reference to pre-state Israel, ‘Before 1948, of course, there were tens of thousands of Jews living alongside their Arab neighbors without any problem at all.’

Without any problem at all? How about the Jerusalem pogrom in 1920 and the Jaffa pogrom in 1921? Or Arab massacres of Jews in Hebron and Safad in 1929? Or the Tiberias pogrom in 1938? (There was a reason the Sephardic Jewish sage Maimonides wrote in 1172 regarding Arabs, ‘Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.’)

If Aslan is ignorant of this recurrent savagery, then the Harvard graduate’s study of pre-state Israel has been amazingly selective. If not, his misrepresentation of Arab-Jewish life before 1948 is revisionism in the same gutter as Holocaust denial.”

Or down at curb level with the New Historians’ output.

Update: the post was mentioned favorably at Jihad Watch.