Am I Gonna Catch It For This One!
By Gerald A. Honigman (05/21/07)
What the heck.
Here goes anyway…
A friend sent me an article the other day from the May 18th Jewish Daily Forward, “Foxman, Wiesel Upbraid Israel For Pace of Peace Effort.”
Elie Wiesel co-hosted the third annual Petra Conference (“for improving the world”) of Nobel Laureates and others in Jordan. Abraham Foxman participated in a panel discussion at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Both men are Holocaust survivors and have made a lucrative career out of Jewish victimization. Indeed, besides Moses in the bulrushes and Jesus on the cross, Wiesel has become the Gentile’s favorite Jewish victim.
Wiesel’s writings have no doubt served an important purpose…and perhaps, in the Eternal Plan, he was spared for this. Both he and Foxman have sired much good in a post-Auschwitz world.
But human both are…
Now please bear with me for a moment.
Oprah Winfrey has been listed as one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” On both her April 25, 2005 widely-viewed television show and in her almost three million readers a month June 2005 edition of O Magazine, she showcased alleged Arab victimization at the hands of Israelis. Both were blatantly one-sided depictions of reality.
In case you haven’t heard yet from the Arabs and their assorted derriere kissers, the Jews have become the new Nazis. A favorite theme…victims now victimizers.
That someone as influential as Oprah lends support to this nauseating lie is tragic. But it gets worse…
To shut the Jews up afterwards, she soon dragged out guess who?
The world’s third most famous Jew victim!
On her May 24th and 25th 2006 shows, she strolled arm-in-arm with Wiesel to Auschwitz.
So, the Jews were victimized too. Oprah says so…How ‘bout that!
But Wiesel’s return to Auschwitz did nothing to counter Oprah’s anti-Israel endeavors.
Some things need to be spelled out very clearly.
The differences between what happened to stateless Jews for millennia and what is happening to Arabs in their attempt to create their 22nd state on the ashes of--not along side--the Jews’ sole, resurrected nation were definitely not.
As both Foxman and Wiesel know, time after time Arabs have shown that they seek to replace the Jew of the Nations with a purely Arab one. So-called Arab moderates themselves have repeatedly stated that their “moderation” was/is simply a Trojan Horse. Arafat called it “the Peace of the Quraysh,” the pagan tribe Muhammad temporarily made a hudna with until he felt strong enough to deal the final blow.
The State Department and the West’s darling, Mahmoud Abbas, is Arafat in a suit. He ran on a platform for Israel’s destruction…but by more acceptable means. As I like to point out, blown buses bring bad press. He still holds to this…no matter what Foggy Bottom says. The latter needs an Arab good cop to present along side the Hamas bad cop to shove virtual suicide and/or total dependence upon others’ support down the Jews’ collective throat.
Despite the periodic infighting, the difference between Fatah and Hamas, when it comes to a Jewish Israel, is tactical, not strategic. Any real Arab moderates on this issue go the way of Isam Sartawi…they’re dispatched from this world. Others, like Wiesel’s conference colleague, Yasser Abed Rabbo--whether serious or (probably) not--are temporarily tolerated for the assorted mileage they achieve in Western eyes. For such sweet talk, the Jews are expected to bare the necks of their kids and give away the store.
Withdraw, Jew, from (disputed) territories and the conflict will end. Agree to return to your pre-‘67 nine-mile wide armistice line (not border) existence as a rump state and the Arabs will grant you peace (of the grave).
Like in Gaza…
And I’m Santa Claus.
Keep in mind that Wiesel knowingly played right into all of this.
At the conference, he even made Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert (arguably the Arabs’ best buddy), the brunt of mockery and laughter. The latter deserves this…but not for the reasons Wiesel & Co. charge.
Think about it…
While placing blame for the lack of real progress towards peace on the Jews themselves for not caving in to all that Arabs demand, elsewhere both he and Oprah speak of Darfur and the Sudan and never mention the word Arab. I guess the Martians are responsible…
Again, some things need to be spelled out very clearly.
Had those “oppressive Jews” used Arab techniques against black Africans in the Sudan, against Kurds in Iraq and Syria, and so forth, their Arab headache could have largely been resolved long ago. Millions of black Africans have been killed, maimed, raped, enslaved, murdered, and so forth on behalf of purely Arab patrimony.
Decades ago, President Nimeiry's stated during the earlier Arab slaughter of blacks in the Sudan in the 1960s and 1970s (and now several times more ever since) that...
“…the Sudan is the basis of the Arab thrust into...black Africa, the Arab civilizing mission " (Arabism and Pan-Arabism in Sudanese Politics, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 11, #2, 1973, pp. 177-78).
Why is it that, for Oprah and far too many others, the Arab Man’s Burden is acceptable, but the White Man’s Burden isn’t?
Back to Wiesel’s virtual anti-Israel pandering and, to a lesser extent, Foxman’s more vague statements about Israel’s “seriousness.”
While there’s always room for improvement, and mistakes are surely made by both sides in any conflict, surely both men--one of whom I know personally, worked with for years, and so forth--understand the real facts of life here.
Given real and even not-so-real peace partners, Israel has repeatedly bent over backwards, forwards, and sideways to reach honorable compromise and accommodation…certainly far more than Arabs have ever done with their own ethno-nationalist competitors. So, indulging in such things as pointing the finger at Israel during a conference like that in Petra (very likely filled with Israel bashers) is nothing short of self-serving and cowardly.
Both Foxman and Wiesel know that the root cause of this conflict has always been an Arab refusal to accept that anyone but themselves be granted political rights in “their” region. Again, scores of millions of Kurds, Copts, Assyrians, black Africans, Berbers, Semitic but non-Arab Lebanese, native and whom the Arabs call kilab yahud--Jew dogs--have been murdered, gassed, subjugated, enslaved, turned into refugees, and so forth for daring to disagree.
The conflict Israel was criticized for at Petra could have been solved long ago had Arabs been willing to grant Jews a mere microscopic slice of the very rights they demand for themselves. And, again, both men know this very well.
So, given such an enemy, it is hard to conceive of what they were thinking when they willingly participated in shifting the spotlight onto Israel.
Will either take up permanent residence in Israel’s Sderot, blasted daily by Arab rockets and adjacent to Arab-controlled and now Judenrein Gaza, or in Israel’s narrow waist (where most of its population and industry are located) after it’s forced to return to its 1949 Auschwitz, er armistice, lines and next agrees to accept millions of allegedly “returning” jihadist Arab refugees?
Sure…
But if the answer to my question just happen--by some small chance--to be in the negative, then perhaps its time to put the period of perpetual Jewish victimization behind us…despite what these two famous Holocaust survivors now assert.
Their approach will, no doubt, only perpetuate this further. Maybe afterwards Wiesel can then get the world to weep for yet millions of more dead Jews.
Maybe…
But while this may be good for the Jewish victimization business, it’s not good for Jews.
I’ll demand empathy over sympathy any time…
And Israel better do likewise.
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