Shameful for Jews to act this way

Letters

Editor: Stephen Aberle, on behalf of Jews for a Just Peace, has accepted my challenge to be candid about their intentions regarding the state of Israel. In his letter to the Bulletin (“Another Question,” March 22), Mr. Aberle says that his group cares deeply for Israel and believes that “Israel has the right to exist and endure.” However, reading the rest of his letter shows that his group is completely in the Palestinian Arab camp.

He completely accepts all the Arab clichés and misinformation. The Palestine Liberation Organization was established in 1964, three years before Israel gained control of the disputed territories. Not having these territories for Israel’s first 19 years did not free the Jewish state from Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton treated PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat with the utmost respect and hosted him at the White House many times. Clinton stated this year that he had engineered a generous peace proposal but that Arafat chose to abandon negotiations in favor of armed confrontation. Arafat’s Fatah chief openly admitted that he started the new intifada in September 2000 by arranging armed attacks in 16 different places.

Arab media hardly ever show Jewish civilian deaths but concentrate only on Arab deaths and use them to incite further violence. Stephen Aberle goes along with the Arab version of events and implies that Israel is at fault because “the vast majority of deaths” are Palestinian Arabs. He makes no mention of more than 300 Jewish men, women, children and babies murdered by the Arabs between Passover 2001 and Passover 2002.

If the Jewish state acted in the same manner as Arab regimes, the number of Arab deaths would be 100-fold. When Arafat’s PLO challenged the authority of King Hussein of Jordan in 1970, Hussein ordered his army to blast the refugee camps and killed 25,000 Arabs before forcing the PLO to flee to Lebanon. When, in 1984, Syrian Muslim clerics and their supporters challenged the Syrian dictator, Assad ordered a crackdown. In a city of 180,000, about 20,000 to 38,000 Arabs were massacred, according to Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times. And last month, the world Human Rights Watch asked the World Court to indict Saddam Hussein for the murder of 100,000 Kurds in 1988.

The world community, including the countries that recognize Israel, regard West Jerusalem as disputed territory. With very few exceptions, they refuse to locate their embassies in the capital of the Jewish state. However, Stephen Aberle’s group regards the walled Old city in Jerusalem as undisputed Palestinian Arab territory. This, despite the fact that Jewish have continually lived there for several thousand years, until the British-officered Jordanian legion killed or evicted the Jewish inhabitants and destroyed their synagogues.

By rallying with non-Jewish organizations that are trying to demonize the Jewish state, Mr. Aberle and his group will not change the situation in Israel and the disputed territories by one iota. However, the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric at these gatherings may have a similar result here in Vancouver as in Europe. There, during the past 18 months, hundreds of Jewish institution have been attacked and vandalized.

Moishe Golubchuk
Vancouver

^TOP