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

 

 

 

 

Israel's Righteously Unblemished Critics

"[The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] rejects and disapproves] of the new State of Israel proclaiming Israel a "Jewish" state by legislation which contradicts international law]."
"[The international community should] confront such a law and or other Israeli attempts, aimed at perpetuating racial discrimination against the Palestinian people."
Saudi Foreign Ministry 

"[The new law is] racist [it] enshrines the racism of this entity [Israel] through an apartheid system that goes beyond the former apartheid system in South Africa."
"This Israeli law would not have been issued without the unlimited support provided by successive U.S. administrations to this rogue entity. [The Trump administration’s recent relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem] came as a green light [for Israel] to pursue its aggressive policy and racism."
Syrian Foreign Ministry

"[Adoption of the law] reflected the regime of racism and discrimination against the Palestinian people."
"[Israel clearly means to obliterate the Palestinians'] national identity and depriv[ing] them of their legitimate civil and human rights on their occupied homeland."
GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani

Israeli flag.. (photo credit: REUTERS)

Amazingly, unpredictably, there are others in the Arab world of diplomatic niceties who politely and vehemently feel threatened that a clearly Jewish state which freely celebrates its home-coming in the re-establishment of its heritage lands as a place of comfort, security and haven for persecuted Jews worldwide, finally asserting its preeminent position as the only country in the world where being Jewish is not a reason to fear being yet again persecuted, oppressed, threatened and violated adamantly presents itself in legal terms, as Jewish.

The chorus of Arab condemnation of the new Israeli legislation that now enshrines the country as "the national home of the Jewish people", has sung its outrage in a choir including the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, comprised of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Israel, must be feeling utterly devastated, disappointed, outcast and alone; its neighbours, in a totally new move will surely now exclude the Jewish state from the friendly and civil relations that prevail among all countries in the Middle East.

How can Israel possibly live with this rejection and the loss of comradely relations between it and its Middle East neighbours? Possibly if it explains that the thousands of years of Jewish yearning to return to its ancient homeland, to escape the recurring deadly hostility that Jews have been subjected to; culminating from endless pogroms, humiliations, expulsions, scorn, and victimization, Jews have felt worn out from being forced to find a place for themselves where no country would accept them.

Turning as a bright alternative to the ageless pledge to one day return to Zion, they did, after the world extracted an exorbitantly horrendous price, tasking the Angel of Death to hover over the Jews
of Europe while they were tormented and vilified, ghettoized and anguished in preparation for mass annihilation as the ultimate assault and insult to the existence of that people collectively refusing to vanish from the face of the Earth.

Proclamation of Nationhood is read by Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.   Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

In the State of Israel, which considers itself the final refuge for Jewish life, non-Jews were welcome to remain, and they did. Arabs constitute 17.5% of the eight million population, with the Jewish presence estimated at over six million, hosting as well Druze, Kurds, Armenians, Africans and Bedouin among others such as European Christians. Hebrew will now legally represent the only official language of the Jewish state; Arabic downgraded to special status.

Saudi Arabia guards its citizenship, awarding it to Saudis exclusively; it recognizes no religion other than Islam, and its concern for the welfare of Palestinians has not excited it toward offering either haven nor citizenship to them. It considers the Shiite sect of Islam false and results in accusations of a heretical nature, leading to violent enmity. The conflicts that result from sectarian hatred and violence creates gross destabilization, military assaults, mass murder of civilians, starvation, deprivation, refugees.

Syria's Shiite regime has waged an unrelenting war against its sectarian majority population, viewing them as 'terrorists' for the unsupportable crime of protesting against the unjust treatment meted out to them by their dictator-president Bashar al-Assad. Millions of Sunni Syrians have become both internally displaced and external refugees, crowding for safety from the regime into Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, flooding Europe for asylum.

Iran has mustered the strength in numbers of the minority Shiites, supporting their armed militias, creating non-state militias as terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, with an agenda focused solely on the destruction of the State of Israel, with a side-issue of promoting Shiism over Sunni Islam, with all the attendant fury of accusations, venom and threats that accompany a power struggle of one over the other, each reaching to attain the coveted status of ultimate power.

Israel, seeking to live in peace and security in its ancient homeland, cradled in a geography that once held disparate indigenous populations, all of which jockeyed endlessly for territory, has brought modernity and democracy to the Middle East in a geography to which both were foreign in a world stilled in the amber of quaint medievalism and backwardness. Viewing Israel as an usurping intruder, the Arab world shudders at the progress and civility Israel represents, challenging the brutality and ignorance that suffuses their culture.

After an Arab air raid, bodies of dead Jews lie in the rubble along the Tel Aviv waterfront.
Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Political Realities in Israel

"Today, I'm asking Arabs to take part in our society in droves. I am proud of the role that Arabs play in Israel's success. I want you to play an even greater role ... Respecting minorities isn't just the right thing to do: it's critical to our progress."
"My vision is that young Arab boys and girls grow up knowing they can achieve anything in Israel."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Ronen Zvulun)

"If [Netanyahu] said this seven years ago, when he became prime minister again, you could say, here he's started with good intentions."
"But after seven years of incitement and delegitimization of the Arab population, how do you expect me to believe this person?"
Aymen Odeh, parliamentary member of Knesset

"This message clarifies what he's said to Arab citizens in a direct way:'This government is committed to the goal of a radical change in Arab Jewish relations and in the living conditions of the Arab community."
Ofir Gendelman, Arab-language spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel is a state like none other. It has absorbed tribal Arabs who remained while others fled when Israel was declared a Jewish state in 1948. Those Arab Palestinians who remained have become Israeli citizens, bestowing on them the full rights of citizenship and all that falls to them as a result. They are able to elect their own members of parliament in the Knesset to speak on their behalf, and Palestinian Arabs have reached elite rankings in the judiciary and elsewhere in Israeli government circles.

There are always disagreements over whether full equality, legal, political and social is a reality in this country where Arabs and Jews, Druze and Kurds, Christians, Muslims, and Jews and Baha'i live together in a semblance of harmony. But there is constant incitement over access to the Temple Mount, the most sacred vestige of Judaism's faith in god, and the Muslims who regard it as the Noble Sanctuary, third holiest place in Islam which Muslims would like to see forbidden to Jews.

The Palestinian Authority incites its people to 'resistance' against the 'occupying forces' of the IDF, whose presence has been proven necessary to tamp down violence against Israeli Jews from Palestinian Arabs, both from without the State of Israel and from within. Provocations to violence are constant, and Palestinians who mount attacks against Jews are venerated, taught from childhood that this is their duty, to free all of 'Palestine' from the presence of Israel.

When, during the final days of the last election campaign, Mr. Netanyahu indulged in scare tactics to urge Israelis to vote him back into the Prime Ministership, Arabs were offended that he referred to them as a danger in the country. While many Palestinian Israelis are loyal citizens, others are clearly not. Among other issues that accompanied the assurance by the Prime Minister that Israeli Arabs are appreciated and valued as citizens, was the mention that he had received appeals from Arab citizens to increase police presence in Arab towns.

They have every right to the same type of security and protection as any other part of Israel populated by majority Jewish citizens. Law enforcement stepped up in those towns has a dual purpose, one of which is to uphold the law on possession of firearms, in towns that are known to authorities where some residents are in possession of such weapons, leading to a situation where tens of thousands of illegal firearms are in the hands of some Palestinian Israelis.

The cynicism expressed by Arab Israeli lawyer and politician Aymen Odeh, leader of the Hadash party, and head of the Joint List, a coalition of four Arab-dominated parties, handily overlooks the fact that some elected Arab-Israeli Knesset members actively agitate against the State they are supposed to serve, and find common cause with and reason to support Hamas, an acknowledged terrorist group ruling Gaza whose fundamental purpose is the destruction of the State of Israel.

Israel's parliament passed a law permitting a majority in the Knesset to dismiss any legislator expressing support for Israel's avowed enemies. Admittedly, those legislators have always been Arab Israelis, and so of necessity that law would target any such Knesset members who plan to ally themselves with Hamas; to do so is clearly treachery by those who have been democratically elected who plan to aid and abet a terrorist group in its intention to destroy a legitimate state.

Arab Israelis view with alarm a bill the government sponsored that would crack down on Arab towns where houses are illegally built, without permits. Since the government cracks down on Jewish settlers and others who build illegally, a double standard persists which clearly requires attention. "Nobody fools themselves and thinks that now the Arabs will be big Netanyahu fans", observed a former spokesman for the prime minister. "It's a right-wing coalition and a right-wing leader, and he has priorities that he was elected on."

Just like any other democracy. 

And, as it happens, this is not the first time Mr. Netanyahu has apologized for that piece of Realpolitik. Back in March of last year he had made a similar apology, right after the election, for having stated: "The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out."

He took that opportunity to clarify that Israel's 1.7-million Arab citizens had the right to vote and he had no quarrel with 20 percent of the Israeli population exercising their franchise as they should. It was, he said, outside interference from foreign governments whom he felt were funding leftist nongovernmental organizations that he was concerned with. 

Something akin to the current mad dysfunction taking place during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections where the Democratic Party is all afire over allegations that Russian governmental interests are intervening hoping to influence the outcome of that election....? 

Innocent of Ill Intent

"This Jewish propaganda succeeded until it became prevalent throughout the media that six million Jews were victims of Hitler, even though the total number of Jews in Germany was less than a quarter of this figure that they say Hitler burned!"
June/July edition Al Saraha London, Ontario Arabic-language community newspaper

"Steps [are being taken to determine] whether [this] qualifies as a Criminal Code offence inciting hatred, promoting hatred or on the contrary, is it free speech."
London Constable Chris Loizides

"You don't even have to read the whole article, all you have to do is read the headline. To say that is offensive is to minimize the article. It is absolutely hateful rhetoric, and it is unacceptable that this is being published in a newspaper in Canada."
"We have new immigrants coming into our country all the time and I think, as Canadians, we want to always ensure that these new immigrants learn the language of tolerance. Canada is the place where, while we may have our own opinions back home, and we may have our own prejudices back home, we don't import those to Canada."
"We get along, we work together here. We live together here, and this [article] is completely antithetical to that."
Michael Mostyn, chief executive, B'nai Brith

"I was curious to know why Hitler killed Jews during the Holocaust, so I read through his article and I found information."
"I don't know. History knows. I believe in the correct history. If someone told me the correct history was 10 million or 20 million people died, then I'll believe it as long as it's correct history."
Arabic publisher, London Al Saraha newspaper

The cartoon's heading: "The sixtieth anniversary of the Holocaust."  Akhabar al-khalij, January 28, 2005 

The feigned naivette of a compromising situation is hardly compelling as an error in judgement by someone so innocent that he would take a rancid slander of Jews as 'history'. There are ample legitimate historical accounts that could be consulted readily if the editor of the Arabic-language newspaper published in London, Ontario really was interested in discovering for himself the historic truth.

He chose instead to headline the except he published: "The Question Which Everyone Ignores: Why Did Hitler Kill the Jews?"

Why indeed. Possibly because they were Jews and Hitler's brand of anti-Semitism was powerful enough to have him plot their extinction, to set in motion an inquisition that began with slanderous characterizations of Jews as a pestilence, to inure the greater public only perhaps slightly tainted with prejudice to the plight of a people singled out for the oppression of degradation gradually building toward slave labour, death camps and mass murder.

But the original article, published in al-Masry al-Youm, a daily Egyptian newspaper, had its own explanation. It answered its own question by recounting the reasons why the Third Reich carefully planned the extermination of an entire people and successfully committed genocide to the extent of six million that were lost which German records themselves carefully annotated and measured for accurate future reference.

Anne Frank in bed with Adolph Hitler.
Web Site of the Arab European League (February 2, 2006)

The Jews got their comeuppance because they were responsible for the "economic collapse" of the 1920s that placed Germany in an untenable situation ...  They were guilty as well of the crimes of promoting "promiscuity ... homosexuality ... every type of sexual deviance". That being so, the Jews of Europe clearly earned the fate that awaited them, every baby, child, teen, adult male, female, aged or ailing Jew who was gassed, and whose body went up in smoke in the crematoria.

The London newspaper is distributed in restaurants and grocery stores serving the Middle East neighbourhood throughout the Greater London area. The newspaper is even promoted by the London and Middlesex Local Immigration Partnernship, an agency funded by the Ontario government, as a source of news meant especially for the immigrant community.

It was, fortuitously enough, a member of the Arab Canadian community who is a local, who brought the article to the attention of B'nai Brith so the Jewish human rights and advocacy group could take it from there. London police were alerted, then the B'nai Brith made contact with the office of the Ontario premier. The very same office that in the same issue of the newspaper had a "best wishes" message for Ramadan from the "Ontario Liberal Caucus".

"I didn't mean to reject something that happened historically", said Abdul Haidi Shala, the newspaper editor, speaking to a reporter in Arabic through a translator.