Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/
Amid all the propaganda against Israel going on within American and European academia, you might think that the Palestinians were the ultimate victims of brutality, occupation, and apartheid. I don't buy it. However, rather than defend Israel's security measures, which I have already done many times, I want to express here why I have so little sympathy for the Palestinians.
All during my adult life, I have been reading and hearing about Palestinian terror since the 1960s. First it was the airplane hijackings. Then it was the Munich massacre during the 1972 Olympics. There have been too many to count. When I was living in Italy in the 1980s, there was the Achille Lauro takeover in which Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American Jew, was killed in front of his wife and thrown overboard in his wheelchair. There were the simultaneous attacks on Rome and Vienna airports, in which random victims were killed. Yes, the Palestinians have been not only content to kill Israelis, but Americans and Westerners in general.
When 9-11 happened, what did Palestinians do? They danced in the streets and passed out candy, just as they have done when terrorists blew up Israeli buses and pizza parlors killing civilians, women and children. They passed out candy when an entire Jewish family was slaughtered in their home in the West Bank including a 3- month-old infant sleeping in a crib.
The problem is that the Palestinians have hitched their wagon to blood-thirsty leaders like Yasser Arafat, Hamas and Hezbollah. They don't really want a two-state solution and peace with Israel. They want it all-"from the river to the sea". To this day, they continue to lob rockets into southern Israel, hitting schoolyards.
In Gaza, Hamas rejects peace talks. They want every last Jew driven from the Holy Land and the establishment of a Muslim state. Their very charter quotes the hadith that talks of the "last Jew hiding behind a tree and calling to the Muslim to come and kill him." To this day, they continue to lob rockets into southern. Israel hitting schoolyards where children play. Meanwhile, the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority features a news media that demonizes Jews as apes and monkeys. How is Israel supposed to sit down and negotiate with that?
In the face of all this, liberal Westerners, radical academics and gullible students have been brainwashed into thinking that Israel is the aggressor. As for the terrorism, they ignore it or call it "legitimate resistance". Our problem in the West is that we have lost our moral compass.
Yes, I want to see an eventual settlement that will lead to peace, but I am skeptical. The Palestinians have not demonstrated that they can even run a country-let alone one that would live in peace with Israel. It is easy to speak of a Palestinian nation, but once nationhood is granted, it has the sovereign power to make its own alliances with radical nations like Iran and receive shipments of God knows what. Who needs the establishment of another outlaw state?
Finally, I am convinced that this conflict is not about land, rather it is about religion. The Arab world will not accept a Jewish state in the region. That is why they tried to defeat Israel by war in 1948, 1967 and 1973. They failed, but the Palestinian "cause" is just an excuse to continue that war by other means.
Until the Palestinians decide to forget conquest and renounce terror, I cannot feel sympathy for them.
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