Plenty of cults exist - every cult has its 'religious dogma', its idols, its 'prophets', its 'science', its 'proof' and its intolerant liturgy of demands. Cults everywhere: Corona, 'The Science' or Scientism, Islam, the State, the cult of Gender Fascism, Marxism, Darwin and Evolution, Globaloneywarming, Changing Climate, Abortion...
Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
Read this book to understand why Israel must survive.
by StFerdIII
Alan Dershowitz is a Harvard Law Professor and a famous US legal apellate – one incidentally who has been quite critical of Israel. Dershowitz however grew tired of the lies and calumny which are heaped against the Jewish state and embarked on a series of lectures and research to defend Israel's right to exist. The result is a powerful polemic supporting Israel. As he writes in his preface, '..[extremists on the left and right] sought to mainstream this demonization by miseducating a generation of young Americans and feeding them one-sided, anti-Israel propaganda.' Dershowitz sets the record straight. Good for him.
Dershowitz demolishes the 32 most cherished lies held by both the 'left' and 'right' regarding Israel. He uses history, facts, ideology, and source records to support his arguments. While critical of some of Israel's policies, Dershowitz understands that Israel's claim to statehood is perhaps the strongest of any state on the planet. Jews have lived in what is now Israel for 3000 years – long predating the Arab imperial invasions of 637 A.D.
The book destroys the post-modern shibboleth that the woes of the world are the fault Zionists, and their blood-thirsty greedy American supporters. Some inconvenient facts that Dershowitz points out regarding Israel include:
1. Between 1880 and 1967 no Arab or Palestinian called for a Palestinian state. The so-called 'Palestinian territory' was to be merged into Syria and Jordan. Palestine has never existed in the history of mankind as either a state, a separate region, a nation, or an appellation for a specific Arab tribe. As the Palestinian leader Alami said in 1948, 'The people are in great need of a 'myth' to fill their consciousness and imagination.' Indeed.
2. Jews formed a majority population of the land given to Israel during 3 census periods – 1917, 1937, and 1947. The United Nations ratified this fact. The Jews, unlike the Arabs, also purchased land titles and deeds. In other words, unlike Arab imperialists, the Jews actually bought and owned the land – legally. As Dershowitz writes, 'At the time of the partition, there was a clear Jewish majority in that area (538.000 Jews and 397.000 Arabs)....even as early as the mid-1890s, there may have been a plurality of Jews in Palestine that became the heartland of the Jewish area under the U.N. partition.' [p. 27]
3. Only the Jews have been subjected throughout history, to an endless series of pograms, genocidal attacks and of course the holocaust. The impetus to create Israel grew out of the depravity of the holocaust. No sentient person can fail to recognise that for the Jews to survive they need to have their own nation state, in which security and Jewish culture are protected. Given the Jews 3000 year history of living in Israel, the obvious location of a Jewish state is not hard to determine.
4. The 1917 Balfour declaration, granting the Jews a homeland, was ratified by the League of Nations, the precursor to the UN, as international law. This declaration supported by Winston Churchill's 1921 White Paper, which divided the land of Israel between Jews and Arabs, and reflected on the ground population and economic reality. Where the Jews existed, agriculture, trade, society and civilisation followed. This was not true of course [as one would expect] with any parcel of land owned by the Arabs. Where there were Arabs, one found poverty, ignorance, and violence.
Jewish controlled land became so prosperous that Arabs started migrating en masse to the Jewish homeland areas. The Jews were creating jobs; health care; and societal infrastructure – much to the benefit of the Arabs, a fact duly noted by Churchill and the British, who controlled the area post World War One, innumerable times.
5. The Jews have never rejected a two-state solution. In fact no fewer than 3 offers of a Palestinian state [another Arab state]; have been made and rejected by the Arabs. The Arabs simply don't want the Jews to exist. The Koran, Islamic ideology, Arab culture and widespread racism and supremacism, reflected in Muslim ideals, militates against any acceptance of the 'Saturday people'. The Arabs want the Jews dead. Period.
A two-state solution accepted many times by Israel, has never been a political or ideological reality for the Arabs and Muslims. Even the original Balfour and UN partition of 'Palestine' settled 90% of the land in favor of the Arabs. Of course this is not enough.
6. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not the main reason why the Middle East and the Muslim world is in perpetual conflict. Muslims are engaged in killing each other [Iraq, Turkey, Sudan, Algeria]; in killing Christians and secularists [Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Chechnya, South-East Asia], in killing and persecuting Jews [Iran, Lebanon]; and in murdering and killing Buddhists and Hindus [India, Bangladesh]. The only common denominator here is Muslim hate and violence.
None of these conflicts has the slightest thing to do with Israel. Islamic imperialism is a 1400 year phenomenon – after all the Arabs invaded the Jewish state in 637 AD. Muslim violence is endemic in its ideology and in the Koran.
7. Israel has been invaded 5 times by the Arabs. It has won every single war. 300 million Arabs surrounding Israel cannot subdue a Jewish land of 5.3 million. This must certainly embarass the swaggering Arab anti-semite. There is no record in the history of man, where a state has been invaded 5 times, yet is labelled by the multi-cult, Arab-appeasing media and educational establishment as 'aggressive'. It is Orwellian nonsense at its finest.
8. Israel is a modern democratic state, where the military must answer to civilian laws. This is true even in war. This means that Israeli soldiers must act within strict and rather constrained limits. Israel is the only state in the world, in which during war-time, the military is under civilian legal restraint. Israel has never once targeted Arab civilians, population centers or non-military targets. Not once. The Arabs of course slaughter innocents and in fact this is the preferred Arab strategy – to terrorist the civilian population and weaken morale.
9. More Arabs have been killed by Arab terrorists, than by Jewish forces in the past 60 years. Indiscriminate Arab bombings, rocket attacks and terrorist activities have murdered hundreds of Arabs inside Israel. Far more than the Israeli's have killed during 60 years of conflict.
10. Israel is a multi-ethnic state. Out of 7 million citizens inside Israel 5.3 million are Jewish or 'other' and about 1.7 million are Arab. There are even about 25.000 black Ethiopian Jews [some of dubious Jewish ancestry it should be noted]. The demographic balance of course sits with the Arabs, who produce 4.4 babies per woman, versus 2.5 for the average Jewish woman. Without immigration Israel's existence is at risk. Yet the obvious fact remains – Arabs inside Israel enjoy full rights and a far better life-style than those outside of Israel. How many Arabs migrate from Israel to the Greater Arabian empire? Not many.
11. The Palestinian refugee problem is an Arab created problem. Dershowitz quotes a former Prime Minister of Syria who states [in 1972]; 'Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees...while it is we who made them leave [when the Arabs invaded Israel they demanded that all Arabs leave]....Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs....in the service of political purposes.' [p. 84]
Obviously so. The Palestinian refugee problem is an Arab created problem that is a convenient propaganda tool for Arab leaders to use. Though great weeping and hand-wringing is expressed over the 472.000 Palestinian 'refugees', no such lamentations exist in the international community for the 900.000 Jews dispossessed of homes, property, and citizen status throughout the Muslim world post World-War II. Hypocritical? Rather.
12. The Arabs and Muslims have been on the losing side of 3 World Wars, yet somehow they are the victims. A group of people and ideological fanatics who allied themselves to Hitler, and Stalinism, can hardly lay claim to any right of morality, deference or even due process in arbitration of Arab-inspired 'disputes'. Allies of fascists and communists should receive no quarter. Especially so since they routinely demand another holocaust and have murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews in the past 1400 years.
13. Land for peace, usually ends up meaning land for more bombs and rockets. The Jewish state of course faces a demographic problem. Pulling out of Gaza and West Bank settlements is for a lot of Jews, bowing to demographic reality. Better to reduce the borders and ensure Jewish plurality, than to say, 'occupy' Gaza with its teeming 1 million Arabs, swarming over 10.000 Jewish settlers. This has a lot of sense to it.
The problem is that land for peace means nothing to the Arabs. The more land you give up, the more emboldened the Arabs become. Leaving Lebanon in 1982, and in 2006 has not bought Israel peace. It has of course energized the various fascist Islamic organisations to redouble their efforts. Why if the Jews can be driven out of Gaza, should not Jerusalem be next?
This is just a sample of what Dershowitz discusses with detailed sources and notes. It is clear that the problem with Israel and the Middle East is not the Jews. It is the Arabs. The Jews would like nothing better than to be left alone. The Arabs have other designs.
Whilst not perfect, Israel has a 3000 year old claim to statehood, and Dershowitz devastates the usual anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic arguments, calling for Israel's disappearance. If you want to understand Israel's importance; why it must survive and the hostile fascisms and cultures that bay and yelp for its annihlation than read this book. Israel is indeed the forward outpost of Western civilisation.
May it long continue to prosper – as a Jewish and quite modern state.
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Alan Dershowitz. 'The Case for Israel'. Wiley and Sons. 2003. 244 pages.
