Israel, the Palestinians, Anti-Semiticism

Israel, the Palestinians, Anti-Semiticism

I am one of few Americans who have lived in the Middle East and are aware of the Palestinian side of the formation of Israel in 1948.  History’s memory, worn down by politics and historical events, barely acknowledges the exodus of some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, forcefully displaced from their homes and lands, by the Israeli military and settlers during the formation of Israel as a country.  (The Brits were also complicit).  One could make a comparison to the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament, except that there was no actual blood genocide, just economic confiscation.  Christians comprised about 7% of this Palestinian diaspora.

I lived and worked south of Sidon, Lebanon in the mid 1960’s.  We met many professional level Palestinian Christians and Muslims who were displaced from their land by the formation of Israel. We also saw the abysmal Palestinian refugee camps outside of Beirut and other Lebanese cities.  These were not op-ed pieces in the New York Times.  These were real people whose homes and property were effectively confiscated when Israel was formed.  We socialized with Palestinian refugees and our children went to school with some of them.  I evacuated my family from Beirut in 1967 as a result of the Arab-Israeli 6 Day War.

All of the above did not turn me against Israel, conceptually and politically.  Israel was still a beacon of freedom in the convoluted Middle East, although its origins were tinged with nineteenth century European thinking, including Marxism.  From Wikipedia, “The economy of Israel was initially primarily democratic socialist and the country dominated by social democratic parties until the 1970s. Since then the Israeli economy has gradually moved to capitalism and a free market economy, partially retaining the social welfare system.”

The kind of anti-Semitic rhetoric being voiced by the two Muslim congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, are just a continuation of the virulent anti-Semitism prevalent in much of the Muslim world since the nineteenth century, and particularly since the formation and success of Israel.  Muslim Arab children are taught from birth, in the madrassas and byways of Islam, to hate Jews, hate Israel, hate America as antheses to Muslim and Sharia philosophies.  Some, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others, reject this hatred and join the real and rational world.  Others, like Omar and Tlaib, continue to try to spread their bigotry within congress, to the American public and to the world.

Omar and Tlaib and other bigots have first amendment rights like all Americans.  If the democrats fall for and adopt the perverse views of these outliers, in addition to the democrat party’s observable slide toward socialism/communism, they are pounding another nail in the coffin that Trump will bury in the 2020 election process.

Ray Gruszecki

August 20, 2019