This says it all I'm tired of listening to Palestinian apologists who haven't the faintest clue what has been going on in Israel for the last 50 odd years. These idiots sem to have forgotten that the official position of the Arab world was that Israel should not exist, and shold be wiped out. They attempted to wipe her out several times, each time suffering a humiliating defeat, along with the consequent loss of territory, as Israel acted to secure her borders.
Israel has tried to make peace with the Palestinians, but they are not interested.
While neither a Palestinian apologist or an idiot, Tony Andragna's post over at Shouting 'cross the Potomac sparked this little tirade of mine by asserting that the majority of Palestinians do not support Arafat or his terrorist actions. This is quite simply contradicted by all of the evidence to date, yet he uses this contention to advocate a change of strategy for Israel. From his post:
What’s not understandable, or even reasonable, are the repeated assertions – and not just from Israeli hawks, but from many people whose opinions I respect here in the US – without distinction, that ”Palestinians”are The Enemy. Sure, that the terrorists are Palestinians I won’t deny, but it doesn’t follow that all Palestinians are terrorists. That’s so obvious that I shouldn’t need to make the statement, especially since nobody of significance argues The Non Sequitur. So why did I?
Because everybody is behaving as if The Non Sequitur is true. The argument is that Israel would be perfectly justified in treating all Palestinians as enemies of Israel because Palestinians support the terrorism. Let’s forget The Non Sequitur and ask the relevant question: Do all Palestinians support the terrorists and their objective?
I think the answer is No, and nobody has been able to offer conclusive proof that the answer is Yes. Even those who claim that Arafat’s statements in support of terrorism proves that all Palestinians support terrorism – he is their spokesman – are contradicted by themselves when they point out that Arafat isn’t democratically elected.
This argument, particularly the last paragraph is completely without merit. If the Palestinian people do not support Arafat and his methods, where are the voices of dissent? The proof Tony is looking for is on the reactions of the Palestininas to what Arafat says, and what his terrorists do. Where are the Palestinian leaders calling for an end to the bloodshed? Where are the people rioting in the streets, demanding an end to the Intifadah? Where are the moderate Palestinian voices, calling for negotiations?
They don't exist! Arafat has the support of his people. These are the people who danced in the streets on September 11. These are the people who train their children to become suicide bombers. By their actions, they show that they not only accept Arafat and his terrorist tactics, but they actively support them.
Tony goes on in a later post to talk about the miniscule portion of Palestinians who do support a peaceful alternative as if they hold the key to ending the war. This might be true of they weren't so few, and the hatred so well ingrained. As a comparison, there was a strong minority on either side of the War Between the States that wished to avoid the conflict, but were unable to do so based on the rhetoric of the politicians, and the inflamed passions of the people. There is no reason to expect a different outcome here. A realistic appraisal of the situation demonstrates clearly that the average Palestinian has no wish to make peace with Israel.
As Binyamin Netanyahu said in this article:
The primary objective of Arafat's terrorist regime is not to establish the twenty-second Arab state, but to destroy the only Jewish state. This was and is the heart of the conflict.In 1948, the Arabs rejected an international resolution that would have established an Arab state, and instead attempted to destroy an embryonic Jewish state. Fifty-two years later, Arafat rejected a similar offer and demanded the flooding of Israel with millions of Palestinians, which would effectively bring about the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
With such a regime, whose ultimate objective is our destruction and which pursues this objective by the most barbaric means imaginable, there is no place for negotiations and no hope for reaching any sustainable peace agreement.
Indeed, the much-vaunted political solution to end the conflict was in fact attempted two years ago at Camp David, and it utterly failed. Arafat rejected a scandalously far-reaching Israeli offer of a sovereign Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, which included half of Jerusalem, and instead chose to unleash this war of terror against Israel.
Israel has done her part to end the conflict. She has made every concession possible, and been rebuffed in bloody fashion. The Palestinians may very well deserve a state, but they won't earn it by trying to carve the heart out of Israel.
UPDATE Via Tim Blair comes this story about a young Palestinian girl
DEHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP, WEST BANK – The living room of the Oudeh family, with its flowered settees and polished stone coffee table, its carved wooden antelopes and framed needlepoints, seems an unlikely place to meet a terrorist, even a hypothetical one.
But Shireen Oudeh, 14 years old, a delicate gold chain hanging over the collar of her beige turtleneck, doesn't bridle at the label. "If Sharon is calling us terrorists," she says, referring to Israel's prime minister, "we should show him the terror."Would she herself become a suicide bomber? "If God wills it," she says in a low, serious voice. "If I had the means, I would have done it yesterday."
In Shireen's world, the Deheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, there is nothing hypothetical about her answer. On Friday, 18-year-old Ayat Akhras, a friend and neighbor, walked up to a supermarket in Jerusalem and detonated her explosives, killing two Israelis and herself.
Hard to negotiate with that....
More on this story in another post.
UPDATE AGAIN I've edited this post to clarify the opening paragraph, specifically to remove any implication about the character of Tony Andragna. That was not my original intent, and this revision reflects that. I also fixed the spelling of his last name. Sorry Tony.