In whose defence?

Editorial

The thing about Zionists, if you read the organs of the left, is that they prevent open discussion about what is happening in Israel and Palestine by claiming that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

Despite the threat of a "chill" brought on by this nefarious Zionist hushing of criticism against Israel, valiant and plucky defenders of "social justice" somehow manage to continue to accuse Israel of genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, holocaust and much, much more. So, it was with some astonishment that we heard the news that a complaint is to be made against the Jewish Independent for illuminating one of the major causes of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The actual complaint, presumably, will contend that the point of view expressed in our editorial March 14 constitutes some form of incitement of hatred against Palestinians as a people. On this, we defer to the defence also offered by Israel's critics. We're not talking about the country or its people; we're talking about specific policies. Our assertion is that the conflict is rooted in the policies of Palestinian elites to inculcate anti-Jewish hatred in their people. This, of course, is no more racist or inciting than any of the allegations against Israeli policies.

On April 1, the New York Times ran a story about Palestinian incitement as a barrier to peace in Palestine and Israel. The horrendous anti-Semitic diatribes the reporter recounted – similar anti-Semitic screeds are available in a million sources online and have been for several years now – should help North Americans understand the real barriers to peace in the Middle East.

People who seek peace must first seek truth. Those who close their eyes to the fact that Jew-hating incitement to violence is a primary accelerant of the ongoing conflict do not move us closer to peace, but further away.

What is most ironic is that it is those who claim to be defenders of Palestinian rights who seek to underplay and obscure the role incitement plays in the continuing conflict. The main victims of this incitement are ordinary Palestinians – those who will not live to see peace because their society has been so corrupted by hatred that it will take at least a generation to heal the intolerance nurtured by Yasser Arafat and his ilk.

Which begs the question: Who are these supposed defenders actually protecting? The Palestinian people or the extremists and the terrorists?

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