It is outrageous to draw a moral equivalence between terrorists and Israel acting to protect its citizens, writes Ze’ev Boker
Ze’ev Boker
It was with interest but also with disappointment that I read the opinion piece by Baroness Nuala O’Loan on Israel and the Palestinians in The Irish Catholic (Peace remains fragile in the Holy Land, April 21, 2016).
Baroness O’Loan refers to Israel as an occupying state. Nowhere in her article does she acknowledge that the Jewish people have had a presence in the Holy Land for over 3,000 years. That presence has varied over time because of historic persecution of Jews by one empire after another over the millennia, but the presence has been constant. Beyond even religion and scriptural texts, there is ample historical and archaeological evidence that shows the Jewish people’s claim to the land.
The Baroness implies that “the Palestinians” (in today’s meaning of the term) are an ancient nation-state in that region until displaced by the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. This is not true. ‘Palestine’ was only ever a geographical concept, and ‘Palestinians’ up to 1948 included Jews as well as Arabs. The modern term ‘Palestinian’ to describe Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was only invented in the 1960s by the PLO and its acolytes in the West.
In fact, nowhere in her article does Baroness O’Loan mention any connection between the Holy Land and the Jewish people. This is an alarming oversight by someone who purports to seriously comment on the Middle East.
Attacks
Baroness O’Loan also refers to “the terrible wall” that Israel has built along its Palestinian border. She ignores the reason why the security fence was built.
During the Second Intifada beginning in 2000, over 1,100 Israeli civilians were murdered by Palestinian terrorists who easily crossed into Israel. Since the security barrier was built such attacks and suicide bombings have become very rare, though Israel’s enemies have tried to compensate by escalated use of rocket attacks against civilians.
Baroness O’Loan is very inaccurate when she refers to Israel’s Christian minority. In fact, according to educational surveys, Christians on average do better in the Israeli school system than do Orthodox Jewish students. Moreover, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian community has grown over the past decade, and where Christians live in peace and freedom.
The dire state of Christians in neighbouring Muslim countries was not mentioned by Baroness O’Loan. The safety and quality of life of Christians living under the Palestinian Authority has deteriorated over the past decade, but that is because of Muslim intolerance. Meanwhile, the tiny Christian community in Gaza, under the rule of Islamic fundamentalist Hamas, lives in dread altogether.
It is also a myth that Israel is annexing land – probably the most widespread libel against Israel.
The truth is there have been no new settlements for Jewish inhabitants in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) since 1998. It is true that construction within those settlements has continued over time but that is inevitable because of natural growing population and infrastructural pressures within those communities.
Moreover, it is important for people to know that the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) takes up only a few per cent of the land. Meanwhile, Arabs account for a fifth of Israel’s own population: these people, both Christian and Muslim Arabs, are Israeli citizens, fully equal with Jews under the law. It is surely abhorrent to suggest that no Jew should be allowed to live in a future Palestinian Arab state while, in contrast, Israel remains multicultural with a large Arab minority.
Hostility
Baroness O’Loan refers approvingly to the United Nations and its hostility to Israel. Perhaps the Baroness is ignorant of the fact that, due to the General Assembly’s huge bloc of Muslim member states, the UN has a deep inbuilt bias against Israel. Since the 1970s it has pursued a relentless agenda against the Jewish state.
For example, the UN Human Rights Council, since its inception in 2005, has passed more resolutions against tiny Israel than all other countries combined. That Committee’s member states, by the way, have included some of the most brutal tyrannies and theocracies in the world. Anything the UN says about the world’s only Jewish state has to be treated with extreme caution.
Baroness O’Loan says that Palestinians “live peacefully”. Nowhere does she refer to the rampant and grotesque official anti-Semitism indulged in by Palestinian state media and education – by both Hamas in Gaza and by the so-called ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority which rules part of the West Bank. During the recent stabbing intifada, media propaganda actually encouraged Arabs to go out and murder innocent Jewish civilians.
Racist anti-Semitism is a chronic fact of life throughout the Arab world, but it is particularly prevalent, and murderous, in Palestinian Arab society. It is frankly outrageous that the Baroness draws a moral equivalence between terrorists and Israel. In contrast to Palestinian Arab society, Israel does not glorify violence, it does not make heroes out of the murderers of civilians, and it does not indulge in racist propaganda against Arab people.
What is most disgraceful is Mrs O’Loan’s conclusion: that Israel is “doing to others what was done to the Jews over centuries”.
It is morally reprehensible, and depressing, that this libel about Israel, usually spoken by the worst anti-Semites, is repeated by a respected stateswoman. Israel, although constantly forced to defend its citizens from attack, has never engaged in pogroms, never forced Arabs to wear yellow stars or change their names or religion, and it certainly has not shoved millions of them into gas chambers.
Compromise
We all want peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but that can only happen when Palestinian Arab society ceases its racist anti-Semitic hatred and agrees to compromise. Israel has repeatedly offered full peace talks without preconditions, and in the past has made very generous peace offers up to and including ceding almost all of the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state, only to be rebuffed each time.
If media commentators are serious about peace, they need to stop indulging the Palestinian ‘victim’ narrative and encourage the Palestinians to be responsible and to meet Israel half way. That surely is a Christian solution to this conflict.
Ze’ev Boker is Ambassador of Israel to Ireland.