Sophia, on Jennifer Rubin:
Empiricon, with respect, you are presenting straw man arguments.
1) People who support Israel’s right to exist are all over the map politically, socially, religiously, and have many diverse points of view.
2) Israeli schools teach their children about the Naqba, it’s hardly a secret so claiming that people ignore the suffering of the Palestinians either there or in Europe or in the US is baloney.
3) However, Holocaust denial is common in the Middle East where it is also mocked (go figure).
4) The Palestinians would have a state already except for the violence. It is impossible to convince people to cede more territory when doing so would be suicidal. That is simple common sense. It is absurd to argue that this is the same thing as “ignoring Palestinian suffering.” What about Israeli suffering? The children of Sderot now have a bomb-proof playground. Imagine growing up in a bomb-proof playground. Yet, what is reported 24/7 in the MSM all over the world is – the suffering of the Palestinians.
5) It most certainly is antisemitic to argue that Israel should be destroyed either militarily or demographically. There are dozens of Muslim and Christian states, there are Hindu states, one of them huge, there are Buddhist and Communist states; there isn’t room for Israel? Why not?
6) Property rights – what about all the property lost by Middle Eastern Jews or for that matter, those of the Jews on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem? That had been home to Jews for 3400 years before they were ethnically cleansed by the (British led) Arab Legion during the Israeli War of Independence. NOT. ONE. JEW. WAS. LEFT. THERE. This is real ethnic cleaning, deliberate and total. Not an accidental consequence of war.
Meanwhile it’s illegal to sell property to Jews in the PA and in Jordan for that matter and it’s foolish even to consider that Jews would be able to live safely in their old homes throughout the Arab world – a handful remain here and there, many under threat as in Yemen where about 200 Jews remain. There had been nearly one million Jews living throughout the Arab world. Most lost everything.
It is true that a fraction of the original large Iranian community – about 25,000 people – continues to live there. But, they lack real freedom, equality and political power. It is true, they are better off than the Bahai.
7) It is foolish and ahistorical to deny the thousands of years of Jewish history and pretend that somehow the existence of Israel is a threat to the huge Arab League, the Muslim or the Christian worlds or that room can’t be found for the Palestinian people as well. Yet somehow this is seen as a zero-sum game.
Why?
