The holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel held two parades over the past couple of weeks. One was done by the right-wing and the other by the left-wing. Each side claimed the moral high ground and accused the other of acting in bad faith.
Let’s speak about both honestly.
The Flag Parade
On May 18, thousands of Israelis marched through the streets of Jerusalem carrying Israeli flags to mark the reunification of the city at the end of the 1967 Six Day War. The tremendous pride in country and messianic feel of Jews controlling Judaism’s holiest site for the first time in almost two thousand years was palpable at the time, and many tried to recreate that sense of awe 56 years later.
Marchers near Damascus Gate of Old City during Jerusalem Day, 2023
The parade route into the Old City to the Western Wall could have worked its way through the Jewish Quarter but the nationalist spirit of the marchers directed them through the Arab Quarter, essentially re-educating the Arabs about their defeat. While the march was basically peaceful, roughly 2,500 police officers came to maintain order as past years saw scuffles as the Arabs in the Old City resented the march.
The Gay Pride Parade
On June 1, thousands of Israelis marched through the street in a Pride Parade. While such a parade would have happened without controversy in the liberal and secular city of Tel Aviv, the religious beliefs of devout Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem caused friction.
Thousands of police came to protect the marchers as there were attacks in past years. This year’s event proved peaceful and uneventful.
Some Truths
The Flag and Pride Parades were both legal and unnecessarily provocative. The right wing Jewish nationalists did not need to go through the Arab Quarter and the left wing secular Jews did not need to march through religious sections of the country. Each sought to drive home their own point that they are free and able to hold such events, and enjoyed rubbing the spectators’ noses in the fact.
The left-wing media only focused on the right-wing in both cases. CNN described a “contentious flag march” in which a” number of Palestinian shopkeepers told CNN before the event that they would close their shops in the Old City for fear of attacks by far-right Jewish nationalists.” The New York Times covered the “Conflict With the Far Right Shrouds Jerusalem’s Pride Parade,” with the backdrop of “the most hard-line and religiously conservative government in the country’s history took power.”
Both the right-wing and left-wing held their parades in Jerusalem being proud and provocative, yet the mainstream opinion shapers could only find fault with right-wing and religious Jews. It fed their macro narrative of right-wing White Supremacist Jews as the elite amongst the bigots, despite being the most persecuted group in the world.
The crowds coming to Jerusalem were enormous during the holy month of Ramadan. Despite ongoing Palestinian terrorism slaughtering many Israeli civilians, Israel facilitated the large Muslim crowds into the Old City of Jerusalem.
Tens of thousands Muslim worshippers pray near the Dome of the Rock at Al-Aqsa mosque compound / Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem on April 17, 2023, on the night of 27 Ramadan, celebrated as Laylat al-Qadr, one of the holiest nights during Ramadan. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)
On April 17, some 280,000 people in total entered the Temple Mount compound for prayers during Laylat Al Qadr, also known as the Night of Destiny. Police said that the crowds peaked at 130,000 inside the compound at any one time. Noon prayers the Friday before were estimated to have had 250,000 people.
The Israeli government banned all non-Muslims from visiting the site to make it easier for Muslims to reach the compound. Despite the efforts to accommodate prayer, many leading Palestinians turned what should have been a time of contemplation and appreciation, into caustic calls against the Jewish State.
The former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, said at Friday prayers “There is no room for compromise on Al-Aqsa or space for negotiations around it and we will not give up one iota of its land.”
The political-terrorist group Hamas which rules Gaza and makes up a majority of Palestinian parliament issued a statement calling “on international rights and legal groups to condemn and expose Israeli crimes against occupied Jerusalem and its Palestinian population. The Israeli occupation continues to target Palestinian Jerusalemites, by detaining them, banning them from accessing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old City, and imposing hefty fines on them, in a bid to force them from the holy city.” The statement further “called on all Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world to provide the Palestinian population of occupied Jerusalem with all forms of financial and popular support to confront the Israeli occupation and its policies against them.”
Both Israel and Palestinians prove repeatedly that the Jewish State is the only honest and safe caretaker of the holy sites in the holy land.
Many anti-Zionists point to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (Britain), the San Remo Resolution of 1920 (Britain, Italy, France and Japan), and the United Nations Partition Resolution of 1947 as examples of foreign intervention against the will of the region’s inhabitants. While the Jews had thousands of years of history in the land and a religion which is uniquely tied to the land, the local Arabs did not want Jews in their midst. The Palestinian Arabs’ desires were ignored because foreigners sought to help Jews reestablish their rights in their homeland.
Those same anti-Zionists don’t pause in their push to ignore the will of local Israelis today who do not want millions of Arabs from abroad to move into their country. Not only do the pro-Palestinian advocates ignore the will of millions of Israeli citizens, they dismiss that Israel is a sovereign country with its own laws, something that was never true of Palestine before the creation of Israel in 1948.
Those same individuals point to United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948 Article 11 which states that refugees should be allowed to return to their homes if they are willing to live in peace. Somehow they ignore three critical items: 1) Palestinian Arabs refuse to coexist in peace, as shown in their terrorism and quarterly polls; 2) there are only a few thousand refugees from 1948, not millions of people which include descendants of people who left the region, many taking citizenship elsewhere; and 3) that resolution was for a moment in time and no longer relevant. For example, Article 8 says that greater Bethlehem and greater Jerusalem should be under United Nations control – are they advocating that Bethlehem be stripped from Palestinian Authority control?
The Ottomans and British may have ignored the wishes of the local Arab population in Palestine but they had the authority to do so. Today, there is no basis for the United Nations, the European Union, or anti-Zionists in the US Congress to impose their will over the common position of both the Israeli government and Israeli population.
A popular discussion about creating a Palestinian Arab country runs rampant around the United Nations and political outlets. The reality is local Arabs have no interest in the “two state solution” and the majority favor killing Jewish civilians, so there is no possibility of advancing such a new Arab state currently.
But that doesn’t keep the U.N. and various capitals busy talking about it anyway.
So let’s add an idea which may foster good will and coexistence: should that imagined Palestinian Arab state have Hebrew as an official language?
The idea seems to have merit based on comments made by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres on “World Portuguese Language Day” celebrated on May 5. In discussing languages, he said they are an “indispensable vehicle of understanding and hope. They are also a place of resistance against those who intend to spread hatred, exclusion, violence, extremism, misogyny and discrimination…. Portuguese language is also a good example of this, being shared and constructed by populations on all continents. Marked by diversity, it is a language that promotes understanding and conciliation.”
There is nothing more sorely needed in Palestinian society than removing “exclusion, violence and extremism” and promoting “understanding and conciliation” with their Jewish neighbors.
It is estimated that English is the official language of 67 countries, while French has 29, Arabic has 26, Spanish has 21, Portuguese 10, and German 6. Hebrew is the official language of only a single country, Israel. Perhaps a Palestinian state should be the second.
There are over half a million Israeli Jews and an unknown number of Israeli Arabs living in the West Bank. Presumably, all speak Hebrew already. While many of those Israelis will likely fall inside of Israel if and when borders are defined, it is likely that hundreds of thousands of Hebrew speakers would become Palestinians in a theoretical state. It is natural to include them into the fabric of the country, and to foster a good relationship with Israel.
Today, Palestinian Arabs mostly learn Hebrew so they can work inside of Israel. In the future, all Palestinian Arab people should learn Hebrew to reject the current strain of “violence and extremism”, and to promote “understanding and hope” with their Jewish neighbors.
In May 2016, after the deadly wave of Palestinian Arab stabbing attacks and deliberate vehicular manslaughter of Jewish civilians began to subside, the Israeli government sought to make life easier for Palestinians, hoping that good will gestures would allow for peaceful coexistence.
In response to complaints that it took hours for Palestinians to get processed through checkpoints, Yoav Mordechai, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) posted a note in Arabic that “It has been decided to renew and improve checkpoints in the West Bank, [to] increase the number of Palestinian workers allowed to pass through to their workplaces in Israel, improve waiting conditions and adopt advanced technology at all checkpoints.” He included an image of Palestinians crammed in line, waiting to enter Israel.
Palestinian Arabs waiting at a checkpoint to enter Israel
Israel estimated the improvements would cost 300 million shekels ($78 million), and would increase the amount of goods that pass through Israeli checkpoints by 30% and reduce wait times by 30% to 50%. The announcement was made right before Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, in an effort to lower tensions when thousands of Palestinian Muslims come to Jerusalem from the West Bank.
The Washington Post shared a video in 2019 about the new high tech facial recognition security cameras and turnstiles. It interviewed several Palestinians who were thankful that the crossings which used to take hours now only took minutes or seconds.
Israel uses almost the identical system at its airport for all passengers that enter the country, speeding up entry and reducing unnecessary manpower. People who use Global Entry to enter the United States use a similar system.
You wouldn’t know any of this by reading The New York Times or Amnesty International.
Cover of the NY Times Business Section on May 2, 2023
In an inflammatory piece of click bait called “Israel Tech Automates Apartheid, Critic Say,” the paper quoted a new absurd anti-Israel Amnesty International report. The jaundiced document said that Israel uses “technology against Palestinians” in “both Hebron and occupied East Jerusalem” as “part of a deliberate attempt by Israeli authorities to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians.”
An absurd inversion of facts.
First, Palestinian Arabs created the hostile environment during their multi-year guerilla war against Israeli civilians from 2000 to 2004, which necessitated Israel building a security barrier.
Second, Israel put in place the high technology checkpoints to address the concerns of Palestinians that hated the long lines to enter Israel. Israel doesn’t have security cameras dotting Areas A or B in the West Bank to track Palestinians in their daily lives; it is focused on those areas near the security barrier.
Third, the technology focuses on everyone that goes before the cameras, not as portrayed by Amnesty or the Times which said “in Hebron and East Jerusalem, the technology focuses almost entirely on Palestinians.” For sinister measure, the anti-Zionist paper added “Government use of facial recognition technology to so explicitly target a single ethnic group is rare.”
But Israel doesn’t do that. It captures the images of everyone before the cameras, just as it captures the faces of everyone at the airport.
Israel was forced to spend $1.5 billion to build a security barrier to protect itself from Palestinian terrorists, and then opted to spend another $100 million to address Palestinian complaints regarding long wait times at checkpoints. No matter. Both the defensive action and the noble effort are varieties of a fictional “apartheid” for the anti-Zionist Amnesty International and New York Times.
As Israel celebrates its 75th birthday, it is appalling to watch Palestinian Arabs and their supporters turn the remarkable and historic reestablishment of the Jewish state into some sort of offense against Arabs. The inversion of facts turning the Arabs into the victims is a modern day blood libel, attempting to whitewash the historic crimes committed by Palestinians.
Consider the leading anti-Israel voices in the U.S. Congress, Ms. Tlaib (D-MI), Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ms. Omar (D-MN), Ms. McCollum (D-MN), Ms. Newman (D-IL), Mr. Bowman (D-NY), and Ms. Bush (D-MO) who put forward a resolution in congress to commemorate the “Nakba”, which called for 7 million descendants of refugees to be pushed into Israel, ending the two state solution. The anti-Zionist Congresspeople noted that “on November 29, 1947, [the United Nations voted] to partition Palestine into two states against the wishes of Palestine’s majority indigenous inhabitants,” but they simultaneously ignored that the majority of Israelis today are against allowing 7 million Arabs who never lived in Israel a so-called “right of return.” These same Congresspeople claim that the Nakba continues today, with the “ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land.”
The Palestinian Arabs committed massacres against the Jews in Palestine in the 1930s, and effectively got the British to stop Jewish immigration just as the European Holocaust was starting. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with leading Nazi Heinrich Himmler to encourage his genocide of the Jews. Himmler sent a telegram to the mufti on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, noting that both the Nazis and Palestinian Arabs were partners in a fight to eradicate the Jews.
After the slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Arabs in Palestine did not let up on the local Jews nor Holocaust survivors who had lost everything. The Arabs continued to reject a Jewish presence in the Jewish historic homeland. They voted against partitioning the land and giving a slice of the Jewish holy land for a new Jewish state. They opted to wage a war to annihilate the persecuted Jews. Thousands of Arabs left the field of battle as they encouraged five Arab armies to converge on the nascent Jewish state to annihilate the Jews completely.
This is the vile truth of the Arab war against Jews before, during, and in the shadow of the Holocaust. No amount of NakbaWashing will remove the indelible stain of Palestinian Jew hatred. The current pathetic attempts at Nakbawashing are a latest form of antisemitism, disgustingly turning the Jews into aggressors and Palestinian Arabs as peace-loving victims.
As the reestablished Jewish State celebrates its 75th birthday, it is worth pausing to consider its amazing accomplishments, in the middle of the illiberal Middle East.
Happiness. According to the World Happiness Report, Israel ranked as the 12th happiest country in the world, well ahead of its neighbors. According to Gallup Poll, Israel ranked as the 4th happiest country in 2023. It was the only country in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region to score in the top 20.
Wealth. Israel’s GDP per Capita of $44,178 is over 4.75 times the average of the eight surrounding countries. Only two other countries – Cyprus and Saudi Arabia – have GDP per capita in excess of $20,000.
Leading companies. Israel has 24 private companies with over $1 billion in valuation, ranking 6th globally. Turkey was the only other country in the region with a company with such valuation according to Hurun.
Nobel prizes. Not surprisingly, based on educational achievement and GDP, Israel leads the region in Nobel Prizes. It has won more than the entire region COMBINED.
Life Expectancy. Israel only trails Cyprus in life expectancy among neighboring countries.
Maternal Mortality. Israel’s health system is very strong, as can be seen by the very low number of women who die during child birth. While Cyprus has a slightly higher life expectancy than Israel, Israel leads the region in prenatal care.
Population growth. Despite the better healthcare system and higher life expectancy, Israel’s population growth over the past decade was lower than most in the region. This is typical of countries with higher GDP and education rates for women. Only Turkey had a lower growth rate.
Gender inequality. In general, Israel looks much more like western countries than those in the Arab and Muslim Middle East. It can be seen most clearly by looking at overall gender inequality (maternal mortality, adolescent birth rate, percentage participation in parliament, percent with secondary degrees, percent labor participation).
In its short history, Israel has proven itself to be a remarkable liberal democracy, thriving by almost every measure. To do so while neighboring countries are in a state of war and refuse to recognize the Jewish State’s existence makes it a modern miracle. Wishing it many years of success and peace ahead!
For thousands of years, people have sought to improve themselves. As human beings, we often make mistakes and thereafter attempt to rectify the wrong. Beyond avoiding the error, organized religion offers a path to redemption which includes confession.
In Religion and Secular Society
In Judaism, the pathway from sin is called tshuva. Rambam/ Maimonides (1138-1204) lays out the pathway to Repentance in several steps he described in the Mishneh Torah, the first of which is confession. The sin – whether with man or God – is first confessed to God: “I implore You, God, I sinned, I transgressed, I committed iniquity before You by doing the following. Behold, I regret and am embarrassed for my deeds. I promise never to repeat this act again.” The confession is critical to obtaining absolution, as Rambam further writes that even “those obligated to be executed or lashed by the court do not attain atonement through their death or lashing unless they repent and confess. Similarly, someone who injures a colleague or damages his property, does not attain atonement, even though he pays him what he owes until he confesses and makes a commitment never to do such a thing again.”
Christianity uses members of the church as a pathway to confession, rather than directly to God. Many Catholic churches have confessional booths, in which a priests sits on one side of the booth and listens to people confess their sins through a darkened partition to enable the person to open up more freely through the shroud of anonymity.
Catholic confessional booth
Secular society has its own views on sin and demands of confession.
When famous people do something perceived as bad, their public relations people send out composed apologies. Sometimes the star also appears on talk shows to help clear their name. The absolution comes from society that allows them to keep their job and income. If the evil act was perceived as too great to clear with an apology road tour or the apology was insufficient, the person becomes “canceled”, either permanently (like Matt Lauer and Anthony Weiner) or temporarily (like Louis C.K. and Whoopi Goldberg).
The average person can also get “canceled” via exclusion from his desired community. The confession may be viewed as insufficient to be afforded absolution. Perhaps God will accept the plea but people have a lower tolerance for perceived wrongdoings.
Secular Society’s Religion and Inquisition
There are parts of society that are attempting to create new socially accepted norms, crafting their Bible in real time. They have launched an inquisition to out and oust the new sinners.
While transgenderism has existed, it has recently become “mainstreamed”, in which schools which never had any such students suddenly have twenty. Laws are being drafted for and against these students using locker rooms and competing in sports based on their gender rather than their biology. People (and states) who take positions opposed to the new doctrines become ostracized.
Another tenet with drying ink is the gaslighting campaign against the Jewish State of Israel. It started at the 2001 Durban Conference, pushing the “Zionism is racism” credo into the mainstream, after it was ousted from the United Nations in 1991. The effort gathered significant momentum in 2014-5 after the Gaza War and killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, when intersectionality bound Muslim anti-Zionism with the Black Lives Matter movement. Israel was falsely labeled as a “police state” of “colonial imperialists” committing “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” against “indigenous Arabs.” American Jews were no longer correctly viewed as the most persecuted people but were tarnished as an even more sinister part of the problem of “White supremacy” which included “Jewish supremacy.”
Woke Jews were at risk of losing membership in their community of leftists. Rather than fight the tide of falsehoods and slander, they publicly confessed that they hated Israel and agreed with the ridiculous portrayal of an illegal and racist state. Some were granted absolution and welcomed to pray once again at secular altars, while others were deemed to not go far enough, by not embracing the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement or the calls to “globalize the intifada” to cancel, harass and attack Jewish Zionists everywhere.
Fratricide in Religion and Secular Society
While the first sin in the Bible was Eve and Adam eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the first sin committed with the knowledge of good and evil was Cain’s killing of his brother Abel. When God approached Cain to find out what happened, Cain failed to confess his crime to God and was marked forever as a sinner.
Today, Jewish anti-Zionists are loudly vilifying their brothers and sisters in Israel as the worst sort of people, to be punished and left unprotected from the wolves that seek to destroy the “Zionist entity”. Their confession is not to God but left-wing extremists. In sharp contrast to Cain, their cries are not ignoring the murder of their brother but that they are different from their brothers, as proven by working to have the sinners annihilated.
New York City, home to the greatest number of Jews outside of Israel, has a rapidly growing antisemitic and anti-Zionist group gaining political power. The Democratic Socialists of New York City now stands at over 85,000 people, which demands that politicians not visit Israel, and supports Palestinian “resistance” (violence) against Israel’s “ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.” Left-wing extremist Jews vocally support this group and its candidates.
Summary
Christianity believes that Jesus died for the sins of mankind and the church is the gateway for absolution. Catholics enter church to privately and anonymously confess their sins to be granted that forgiveness.
Meanwhile, secular Jews find the Bride of Absolution in far left extremist groups. The anti-Zionist Jews take to public platforms to denounce their brethren as heathens, crucifying them in the fervent wish that their deaths will afford the enlightened the grace to live amongst the woke.
While Judaism tasks people with confessing their own sins, today’s anti-Zionist Jews declare the sins of their brothers. It is fratricide, the original sin of knowledge gone astray.
There are millions of religious Christians who look at the founding of the State of Israel as a matter of divine will. One of the points of evidence they use is that the year of the founding of the state was 1948 in the Gregorian Calendar, commonly referred to as the Common Era. It was in that year in the Jewish Calendar – 1948 – that Abraham was born according to the Old Testament. Remarkably, after two thousand years of persecution and wandering, that the Jews would reestablish their homeland in that common year is considered too much of a coincidence. It is a sign from G-d.
It is therefore important to note this moment in time, 2023CE. As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary milestone, it was in that year of the Jewish calendar, that Abraham entered the land of Canaan and G-d promised him and his descendants blessings and the land.
“יהוה said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And curse the one who curses you; And all the families of the earth; Shall bless themselves by you. Abram went forth as יהוה had commanded him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.”
Seventy-five years since the rebirth of the Jewish State, the country thrives while it continues to have challenges. It has remained stable and economically sound despite the mayhem in the surrounding countries. It has defeated its foes in battles repeatedly, and has forged peace treaties with several former enemies. It has managed to ingather millions of Jewish exiles from around the world, as it rekindled Hebrew into a common spoken language. It granted citizenship to non-Jews living in the land, in a unique forum of coexistence in the Middle East.
Abram was 48 years old at the time of the Great Dispersion from the Tower of Babel. He witnessed firsthand the ill effects of unanimity, and was part of G-d’s global directive towards particularism – in both language and place. At 75 years old, he was told to relocate, to a place already inhabited by others, to become the source of blessing for the entire world.
In 2023 of the Jewish calendar, the father of monotheism was not directed to conquer or convert the slightly more “indigenous” people (by 27 years) in the holy land, even as the land was soon to be promised to him, his son Isaac and the generations after him. Abram was to be an inspiration and a talisman for everyone. In that generation which broke the embraced orthodoxy of universalism, he embodied G-d’s will of particularism.
Today, in 2023 of the Common Era we live in a very tense world. People are divided, in part, because of technology that has enabled microtargeting of people with customized news and advertisements, couple with social media algorithms which keep people hyper-engaged. While fifty years ago everyone was basically fed the same media and news, now billions of people can consume and transmit whatever they want. While more satisfied with being fed unique content whenever they want, the hyper-particularism has left many isolated, angry and distrustful.
In considering the year 2023 both in the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian one, it is time to reset our thoughts on universalism and tribalism.
We don’t all need to think, dress or worship the same way. We must break with the notion of unanimity of position, and embrace a society of tolerance. That mean stop canceling, firing and unfriending people if they don’t share your opinions on critical race theory and transgenderism, or dislike the people you follow on Instagram. Allow space for unique attitudes, as long as they are not harmful.
The Bible tells us that Abraham left his “native land” to a land where he would become a focus of not just the local inhabitants but “all the families of the earth.” In today’s world of billions of isolated people, Jews and the Jewish State continue to demand global attention. It is an opportunity for a universalistic approach towards the particular: for the world to bless the Jews and receive G-d’s blessing in return.
A pretty simple formula for a better and happier world.
Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, died this week at 103 years old. He brought many individuals who committed crimes against humanity to justice, and had words of advice for future generations
You cannot kill an entrenched ideology with a gun. You have to teach compassion and tolerance at a young age.
Benjamin Ferencz
While Ferencz prosecuted individuals, he understood that an “entrenched ideology” feeds violence. Unfortunately, vanquishing criminals brings a temporary respite. To bring about an enduring peace requires teaching “compassion and tolerance at a young age.” Such actions can yield long term benefits for a community of coexistence.
Benjamin Ferencz
In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazis and their collaborators had an entrenched ideology that Jews were evil creatures who were harming the purity of Aryan land. They sought to ethnically cleanse the land of their supposed filth through twisted laws and via violence. Alas, they mostly succeeded in their vile aim. It was only upon their defeat, admission of wrong-doing, and re-education towards tolerance, that Germany was welcomed back into the community of nations, including having a good relationship with the Jewish State.
Today, the terrible entrenched ideology exists among Palestinian Arabs about their Jewish neighbors. The Arabs refuse to acknowledge the basic fact of the long history of Jews in the region. They deny Jews the basic human right to pray at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount. They ethnically cleansed Jews from the eastern portion of Israel including eastern Jerusalem in the 1948-9 war, and now demand a return to such Jew-free situation. They are attempting to use laws and violence to purge the Jews of what they see as purely Arab land.
While several Palestinian terrorist groups wage war against the existence of Israel and presence of Jews, the future must be waged with Palestinian youth. The lesson plans for compassion and tolerance should include:
The 3,300 year history of Jews in the holy land
That Judaism is a unique religion, with ties to a specific land, that is Israel
Judaism’s particularity poses no threat to Islam: there is no desire to convert people nor to turn al Aqsa or any mosque into a synagogue.
Jews and Arabs are both descended from Abraham. Judaism teaches that Abraham loved Ishmael and promised that he would become great nations
Jews are the most persecuted people in the world. Since 1900, they were tortured, routed and slaughtered in Russia, Ukraine, Europe and a dozen Arab countries.
As the Holocaust began in Europe, Palestinian leadership convinced the British to implement the White Paper capping Jewish immigration to Palestine, which led to the death of over 100,000 Jews in Europe
When Jewish survivors made it to Palestine after the European genocide, Palestinians and neighboring Arab armies waged a war to annihilate the paltry and weak remaining Jews
The Jewish State gave all Arabs citizenship when it declared itself a country and offered the Arabs of Jerusalem citizenship when it reunited the city. Over 25% of Israel is not Jewish.
Israel made peace with many Muslim and Arab countries and is willing to do so with local Arabs as well. It made several peace offers to Palestinian leadership which were all rejected
If Arab youth are taught that Jews coexist with non-Jews in Israel who have full rights in a liberal country, and that the Jewish State would welcome peace agreements with all neighboring Arab states, hopefully the evil ideology will be vanquished.
Alas, Arab youth are taught the evil ideology of their parents and reject coexistence and “normalization” as they seek a jihad with false claims:
That Jews are not indigenous but “colonizers”
There were no Jewish temples in Jerusalem
Jews are ethnically cleansing Arabs and committing a genocide (despite all facts and figures showing otherwise)
Israel is not a liberal country but committing “apartheid” against Arabs
The al Aqsa compound is a purely Islamic site and Jews have no history or rights
It is the Palestinian Arabs who are the real victims of a “Nakba” both from 1949 and 1967, lying that did not start either war
Israel has never made any real effort towards peace
The Israeli army likes to shoot Palestinian babies while Palestinians are simply “resorting to violence“
That Zionism is racism
That the United Nations will force Israel to absorb 6 million additional Arabs into Israel
This evil ideology does not accurately reflect the past, present or future. It is a concocted anti-Semitic invective which will stymy the chance for peace.
Benjamin Ferencz led a life of fighting evil and gave us a roadmap for enduring peace by teaching compassion and tolerance to young people. Let’s use that roadmap with Palestinian youth to bring peace to the holy land.
FirstOneThrough 