The Arik Network: ANN
An
Open Letter To The People Commonly Called "Palestinians". Posted
22/6/2002
Written by: David
White
Greetings to any Palestinian
who may be reading this.
My name is David White. I am a citizen of New Zealand,
a small, Western, nominally Christian country in the South Pacific
Ocean. I am not Jewish, or Christian, I guess I'm vaguely agnostic.
Writing this letter is a good way for me to discuss
the horrible mess in the Middle East, spell out as many relevant
points as possible concerning the state of the Palestinian people,
and to see what can be made of them.
I don't speak Arabic, so I can only communicate with
English-speaking Palestinians.
There aren't many here in NZ, though, and I haven't
yet met any. I don't know how many will ever see these words, but,
here's hoping someone does.
I have a post-graduate university education, and
I suppose I could be called an intellectual. Unfortunately, many
such people have supported abhorrent ideologies such as Nazism,
and continue to support Communism, so I refuse to describe myself
in this way.
I don't want to considered as just another "trendy
leftie" academic, as we would say in NZ. So, unlike many university-educated
types, I am anti-totalitarian, pro-peace up to a point,pro-democracy,
pro-capitalism (except the capitalists running Enron), and skeptical
about the "cult of victimhood."
I'm quite safe here in New Zealand, and no-one I know
has been killed by a Palestinian.
My perspective of Palestinians is something like this
- you're Arabs (of course), mostly Muslim, but with a Christian
minority.
Many of you live outside Gaza/West Bank, mostly in
Jordan and other Muslim countries, with some groups living in Western
countries as well. You feel that you have been wronged by Israel
and are fighting to destroy them.
As for my perspective on Israel, I see them like this:
They are a mainly Jewish, small, free-market democracy
with a large Arab minority surrounded by hostile Arab dictatorships.
They have an ancestral claim to Israel, their state
was created as a refuge from persecution, they have a right to exist,
and, having survived a holocaust in Europe, they should not have
to sit still and wait for another one in the Middle East.
A Down Under Overview.
Over the last few months, the conflict in the disputed
territories of Gaza and the West Bank has turned into a war between
the Palestinian people and Israel. (I will not apologise for using
the term "disputed", as I believe it reflects a rather complicated
situation more accurately than "occupied").
Your interpretation, as far as I can tell, seems to
be something like this: You have no state of your own, and you are
fighting a war against those you call "Zionist oppressors" and "colonial
imperialists", in order to create a Palestinian state.
Accusations of massacre and human rights violations
by the Israeli Army are being tossed around like confetti.
Your leader, Yasser Arafat, vows to "martyr" himself
rather than "surrender", and that bungling and incompetent organization,
the United Nations (again, no apologies for venting personal opinions),
is trying to do what it is constitutionally incapable of doing,
i.e. "saving future generations from the scourge of war".
The Israelis see things differently, of course.
For them, it's a simple battle for survival.
They offered you a state, and you attacked them instead.
They have occupied Palestinian towns, have fought it out with various
armed groups, and desperate attempts are being made by the US, other
Arab countries and the UN to break the so-called "cycle of violence".
As a result, the Palestinian situation at the moment
generally, can be explained by putting it into New Zealand idiom.
Put bluntly, the Palestinian people are buggered. Munted. Stuffed.
Rooted. (American equivalent=screwed. British equivalent: done over).
It's like this:
Yasser Arafat turned down the Israeli offer of a
Palestinian homeland in Gaza and the West Bank.
You want, or Arafat claims that you want, a Palestine
"from the river to the sea;" in other words, "all or nothing".
There is one insuperable obstacle to this- Israel.
No matter how eloquent your arguments or numerous
your martyrs, no matter how many European diplomats are angered
by, or UN resolutions are passed against, Israel, the Israelis are
not going to pack up and leave.
The only way you will get the Palestinian state you
want is to destroy Israel.
This is what you have been trying to do since 1948,
and the current "intifada" launched in 2000 is your latest effort.
However, the Israelis are not standing there and letting
you kill them. They are fighting back, and if they have to choose
between their own survival and yours, guess which choice they'll
make.
A Vast Wringing Of Hands, A Great Fluttering Of Diplomats.
That has been the overall response to the disaster you have created
for yourselves.
You, the Palestinian Arabs, are obviously hoping for
some kind of international intervention to save you.
As we in New Zealand would say, "Get Real!".
The European Union and the UN have demonstrated on
numerous occasions in the past their incompetence and total incapacity
to take any sort of firm action without American leadership.
Ask your Muslim brothers of Bosnia-Herzegovina, about
how effective the EU and the UN were in protecting them without
American intervention.
In spite of the impression that American diplomatic
efforts have created, the US will not take sides against Israel,
and will eventually abandon its futile attempts at evenhandedness.
If they do join forces militarily with Israel in
their war against terrorism, your fighters will be snuffed out like
candle flames.
As for your "beloved Arab brothers" in the Middle
East, they make a great deal of noise about your "liberation struggle",
and have sent money and arms, but have not sent a single tank to
save you.
Their diplomatic proposals are ones that could have
been offered at any time, and are aimed at benefiting them, not
Palestinians.
The Egyptians themselves will not declare war on Israel
unless they receive $100 billion to cover their costs.
Do you really believe that the rest of your Arab
Muslim brothers think you are worth that much?
Do you really believe they will put your interests
ahead of their own?
Although your friends and Arabs in Europe are passing
sanctions and burning synagogues in your support, not a single EU
warship has sailed to your aid, and not a single NATO aircraft has
dropped a single bomb on your "Zionist oppressors".
I have noted that large numbers of people, including
university educated intellectuals support the Palestinian cause.
Don't be misled by this.
No matter how many western intellectuals, news media
and international organisations may support the Palestinian struggle,
none of this matters because America stands by Israel.
The Unbearable Burden of Life How did you get into
such a mess?
As you yourselves would say and have indeed said
on many occasions, it isn't your fault.
It's always the "Great Satan" America, and it's "Lesser
Satan", Israel, that you blame for all your woes.
Everything that you do, such as your "martyrdom operations",
are described as the products of your "rage" at being "dispossessed
of your land", and of your "helplessness" in the face of "Zionist"
might.
There are only 300 million Arabs against over 5 million
Jews! How unfair! How unjust, that so many can do so little against
so few!
A number of Western commentators have put Arab failures
down to numerous cultural factors, not the least being Islam.
Your religious beliefs in martyrdom and jihad, coupled
with a total inability to accept any blame for your own predicament,
have combined to do you great and lasting damage.
Look closely at why Western countries such as Israel
have succeeded, and Muslim countries have not.
Western countries are free-market democracies.
Muslim countries (other than Turkey) aren't.
Surely that should tell you something.
Why I Stand.
As I said, I do not, and I will not, support the
Palestinian cause.
Why not?
I have a number of reasons, and here they are:
1. You have made it clear beyond any shadow of doubt
that you intend to destroy Israel and kill or drive out its Jewish
population.
This is genocide, pure and simple.
You justify this by saying that Israel has committed
many crimes against your people, and that you seek "justice".
I say this in response- NOTHING WHATSOEVER is an
acceptable justification for genocide.
Loss of land, humiliation at being militarily defeated
- others have suffered these and moved on to create new nations
and opportunities for themselves.
Examples abound- the Germans thrown out of East Prussia
in Europe, 1945, the Nationalist Chinese who fled to Taiwan in 1949,
to name but two.
Germans and Taiwanese have coped with military defeat
and the loss of land.
They haven't warred with their neighbours, nor have
they launched terrorist attacks upon them. Both countries have more
wealth than any Arab nation.
Why can't Palestinians cope? Are Germans and Chinese
better able to deal with adversity than Arabs?
2. You have accused the Israelis of "genocide" against
you.
Here's a question for you: Israel has atomic bombs
and powerful military forces.
If they really, truly wanted you all dead, they could
easily do it.
Why haven't they?
If the Israelis went all-out, you would be, as we
say in New Zealand, "dog tucker".
Why did they spend so much time negotiating with your
leaders? Because Israel wants peace and secure borders.
You refuse to give them even those. You plan genocide
and accuse Israel of the same crime. Prove it!
3. The use of terrorism.
Killing people for being Jewish is despicable.
Terrorist attacks on innocent civilians are also despicable.
At this point, I'd like to pause and get a question of nomenclature
cleared up, regarding those Palestinians who kill themselves and
others with explosives strapped to their bodies.
You call them "martyrs". Western media sources and
academics debate the precise term to use in describing them.
Others, including the Israelis, call them terrorists.
I have a better, more appropriate term. I prefer
to use the word "kamikazes".
The original kamikazes appeared in 1944, in the war
in the Pacific. They were Japanese Navy and Army pilots,organised
into "Special Attack Units" with orders to crash their planes into
American warships, in the hope of destroying them - "one plane,
one ship".
Their initial impact was similar to that of the Al-Quaeda
attacks on New York and the Pentagon- shock and horror. (I noted
that many Palestinians appeared on Western TV celebrating the September
attacks).
Note: The American response, in both cases was not
the one hoped for.
Once the shock had worn off, the US set out to destroy
the kamikazes, and terrible destruction was rained down on Japan,
ending only with 2 atomic bombs.
You know what is happening right now in Afghanistan
to the Al-Quaeda group.
4. Using children as suicide bombers.
Anyone who teaches children to kill themselves in
suicide attacks is not worth supporting under any circumstances.
For you to do this to your children is an abomination.
A commentator on a Web magazine said that if the Palestinians
laid down their arms, they would get peace and land.
If the Israelis laid down their arms, they would be
killed.
You know that is true, even if most of Europe doesn't.
Your cause is evil, because it seeks destruction
at any price. Genocide is not justice.
Sacrificing your own children for the sake of your
leader's personal ambitions is wicked.
That's why I cannot support you. That's why I stand
with Israel.
Palestinian Past or Future?
The Second World War in Europe ended with Hitler's
suicide.
He was replaced by Admiral Doenitz who quickly made
peace with the Allies. Japan's leader, Emperor Hirohito, decided
on surrender rather than see his nation destroyed.
If Arafat chooses surrender, though, will the rest
of the Palestinians go along with it?
If he dies, will the war end? If the answer to both
of these questions is No, then the Palestinian people are doomed.
Do you really prefer death as a people?
Do you fully comprehend what you are doing?
If you are indeed aware that the path you have embarked
on leads to destruction, and if you have freely chosen to walk in
that direction, then as a people you are truly beyond hope.
Are Palestinians really going to be a "Kamikaze Nation"?
Are you really going to give Israel no other option except your
destruction?
If they must choose, then as Israeli historian Martin
Van Creveld said, "better a terrible end than terror without end".
Do not think that kamikaze tactics can get you what
you want.
The Israelis can tell you all about Masada, if you
ask them.
Remember what happened to the Japanese at places
like Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
Palestinians deserve better than the current mess
you are in now - but before you can be given anything, you must
offer a sincere peace, you must stop teaching your children to hate,
you must stop believing that "victimhood" justifies everything and
- above all other things - GIVE UP ISRAEL!
Accept that you will never go there again except
perhaps as workers or tourists.
Accept that Jews are human beings.
Accept the verdict of 1948 and learn to live with
it.
Invest in banks, not bombs.
Build computer chips, not Kalashnikovs.
Teach science and mathematics, not hate.
Look to the future, not the past.
Stop blaming Americans and Jews for all your problems,
and take responsibility for your own actions.
Read those parts in the Quran about living with the
"peoples of the Book".
Golda Meir, the former Israeli Prime minister, is
quoted as saying " there will be peace in the Middle East only when
the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel ".
Every time I see pictures of Palestinian children
waving guns and wearing dummy explosives, then I can only say she
is right.
The alternative to peace is not victory but death.
Think about it- before it's too late.
From an Infidel to Those Who Submit, and are living
in the Holy Land - May God grant you steadfastness in the face of
things that cannot be changed, the capacity to cope with those that
can be changed, and the wisdom and the ability to tell the difference.
David White
Auckland, New Zealand
The Palestinian leaders: Yassir Arafat (Fatah) and
Sheich Yassin (Hamas).
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