The Hatred That Will Not Die

"The obsessive need to blame Israel for every catastrophe in the Middle East highlights the antisemitism at the heart of the anti-Israel movement."                   "For centuries, antisemites have blamed Jews for every evil – and now some feel the need to do the same to the Jewish state."                                              "Evidence and facts must always supplant paranoid conspiracy theories."       Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer, B'nai Brith Canada

The skyline of Beirut, Lebanon following the Port's ammonium nitrate explosion (New York Times)

The propagandist rumour mill was, and continues to be rife with accusations that the explosions that blasted Lebanon's capital city's port into oblivion last week, annihilating up to 150 lives, wounding six thousand people, and creating a homeless count of an estimated 300,000 Beirutis was a sadistically evil plot carried out by the State of Israel. In the Arab world this type of deadly slander is generally fodder for bolstering anti-Jew hatred; pleasing an audience that is always on the lookout for deadly incidents that Jews can be blamed for.

In this particular instance, Lebanese themselves are disinclined to take those accusations against Israel seriously. They have for far too long suffered inhumane assaults against their dignity as decent human beings, with tribal, sectarian, clan and ethnic antipathies morphing into a civil war, the presence of Palestinian militants wreaking havoc over the border into Israel bringing an IDF occupation force to oust Yasser Arafat and his Fatah movement, a UN peacekeeping mission, where the fledgling Party of God mid-wifed by the al Quds Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was inducted as an Iranian proxy to carry out suicide truck bombings that killed 300 U.S. marines.

The front page of the February 28 edition of al-Meshwar, an Arabic-language Canadian newspaper that published an article falsely accusing Israel of burying Palestinians alive and stealing their organs. (Screenshot)

Ammonium nitrate was found to be extremely useful to Hezbollah. It has assembled, among other munitions, rockets, sophisticated arms and ammunition, stockpiled against the day when the Islamic Republic of Iran would call it into action in a pincer movement along with the Syrian military and Hamas to attack Israel from a strategic front encompassing all its borders to accomplish the promised annihilation of the Jewish state. There would be little need to persuade Fatah, with the Palestinian Authority, to join the fray.

Citizens of Lebanon, those not part of militias headed by Christian, Sunni, Shiite, or Druze factions, are fed up with constant strife. They resent Hezbollah at Iran's behest involving them in another country's war with its own citizens where Bashar al Assad has succeeded in destroying the lives of a half-million Sunni Syrians in response to their protesting against their inferior status -- though a majority, under a government comprised of Alawite Shiites -- with the use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons. Where millions of Syrian citizens have been made homeless internally and millions more have become refugees.

Four Hezbollah members in Rafik Hariri murder

Lebanon's government, traditionally moulded to include all factions of its fractious population, is now controlled by Hezbollah. The Lebanese are under no illusion that assassinations have eliminated patriotic Lebanese strongmen who tried to counter the influence of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran like former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The level of ineptitude and corruption of their government has enraged Lebanese living in precarious straits in a failed economy, with the additional stress of coping with a global pandemic which its inadequate medical system is unable to cope with.

The most recent daily protests against the government and the influence of Hezbollah post-blast succeeded in shaming some government ministers to resign as a disgrace to their community in their ineffectiveness, leading to the downfall of the entire government at a time when the nation needs a strong guiding hand to carry it through the combined disasters of financial disarray, COVID-19, fallout from the blast that would require part of Beirut to be rebuilt, and the burden of hosting a million Syrian refugees.

To think that the Canadian Arab community has nothing better to do than level accusations against Israel of having fomented a plot to destroy a significant portion of a city, killing a large group of people, injuring thousands, creating a huge homeless population, is beyond contemptibly pathetic. There is no level of malevolence they will not ascribe to Jews, so deep is their hatred. As Canadians, where the national culture is one of both integration and multiculturalism, this is a community that distinguishes itself by spreading hatred.

A situation that somehow fails to make much sense where Canadian values encompass, justice, equality, respect for human rights and equal opportunity. Yet an Arab-language newspaper, al-Meshwar, published an August 7 editorial bylined editor-in-chief Nazih Khatatba titled "Who Is Responsible for the Beirut Port Disaster?" "The Beirut disaster cannot be anything but the result of a planned Israeli-American act by direct implementation or via their local proxies" ... "In the event that Israel is responsible for the detonation, Hezbollah can do nothing but respond with attacks at the same level as the crime".

And nor is this the first time that this newspaper has published slanderous accusations reflecting their obsession with Jew-hatred. Back in February there had been another published attack against Israel:

j.post.com

"The Abuse of the Martyrs and the Manipulation of Their Bodies Are Jewish Commandments and Israeli Directives." by Dr. Mustafa Yusuf al-Lidawi, identified as a former Hamas representative. B’nai Brith Canada states that al-Lidawi’s story 'falsely accuses Israel of burying prisoners alive and stealing their organs, a practice he blames on Israel’s ‘ancient malice, and Talmudic and Torah commandments'."
Antisemitic article in a Canadian newspaper in Arabic. The article written by former Hamas official Dr. Mustafa Yusuf al-Lidawi, who has a track record of accusing Jews of blood libel and other ugly charges.  Roz Rothstein, March 2020