The defeat of Hamas, if realized, will not end Israel’s existential problem. If the Palestinian Authority regains control of Gaza, this will be followed by a major U.S.-led effort to establishe a Palestinian state encompassing Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish people. Not only President Bush and his successor Barak Obama, but also the Olmert-Livni-Barak government are committed to this end. As predicted in the Zohar (Exodus 7b), certain kinds of Jews are primed to betray the Land and people of Israel.
We waited nineteen centuries for this land, and this land waited for us. This land is ours, and again the nations want to rob us of this land! To rob us of this land, a fictitious people has been fabricated—an assortment of Arab clans and tribes that call themselves “Palestinians”—and so they are called by the nations. An ethnic and historical lie has become a murderous media truth.
These self-styled “Palestinians,” who have no language or culture of their own, have unwittingly named themselves after the extinct Philistines—pagans! And while they claim the Land of Israel as their own, these neo-pagans are oblivious of the fact that the name “Philistines” is derived from a Hebrew word that means and stamps them as “trespassers” or “invaders.” By their self-chosen name these Arabs give the lie to their claim to the Land of Israel!
These Arabs are further removed from peoplehood or nationhood than the Catholics of the United States. They are fragments of the Sunni Muslim majority that dominates the Middle East. They wear the veneer of monotheism that Muhammad borrowed from the Jews; but beneath the surface one sees not a love of life but a pathological love of death. That Arabs and Muslims use women and children as human shields and as human bombs means that Islam has never transcended its pagan origin.
In the conflict between Israel and Islam, more significant than the “clash of civilizations” famously described by Samuel Huntington is a clash of monotheisms, one genuine, brilliant with life, the other fictitious, dismal as death. Hence, to call that conflict a “clash of civilizations” omits its most important dimension. On the other hand, since Huntington was a cultural relativist, it probably never occurred to him that Islamdom falls short of being a civilization.
Philosopher Lee Harris, who rejects cultural relativism, deems Islam an “enemy of civilization.” By civilization he means a standard that can be applied across cultures and history. Civilization requires three basic ingredients: (1) the co-operation of individuals pursuing their own interests, (2) the ability to tolerate or socialize with one’s neighbors, and (3) a hatred of violence.
These prerequisites are lacking in Islam. What is remarkable is that Syrian-born Wafa Sultan, a psychiatrist now living in the United States, boldly denies that Islam is a civilization.
But let us learn about this subject from the late professor Yehoshafat Harkabi, a student of Arab-Islamic culture who served as head of Israeli military intelligence and who was also a confidant of Shimon Peres. Harkabi is especially relevant because he was a self-professed relativist who advocated the establishment of a “Palestinian” state.
In his book Arab Attitudes to Israel, Harkabi describes Islam as a “combatant,” “expansionist,” and “authoritarian” creed. “The idea of jihad,” he writes, “is fundamental in Islam,” so that “hatred,” “hostility,” and “conflict” are endemic to Arab culture.”
Harkabi unabashedly admits that “the use of falsehood” and “distortions of the truth” are typical of Arab political life. He goes so far as to suggest that mendacity is “second nature” to the Arabs, that one may rightly regard “falsehood as an expression of [Arab] national character.” He quotes the liberated Arab-born sociologist Sonia Hamady, who said “Lying is a widespread habit among the Arabs, and they have a low idea of truth”—something to be borne in mind while hearing Arab spokesmen comment on the war in Gaza.
Their notorious mendacity did not prevent Harkabi from advocating negotiations with Arabs. Nor did it prevent him from deeming them worthy of having a state on Israel’s doorstep. This absurdity or pathological mentality is typical of academics and democrats tainted by cultural relativism, a doctrine that permeates every level of education in the West—the same relativism that has emasculated Europe and facilitated its Arab invasion. By the way, Harkabi dedicated his book to Jews and Arabs alike—a revealing example of moral equivalence between Jews famous for teaching the dignity of human life and Arabs famous for producing the suicide bomber.
Have you ever wondered about the land-deprived Arabs committed to Israel’s destruction? The 21 Arab League countries together have 500 times more territory than Israel. How they hunger for this land of the Jewish people! How the very meaning of their lives or the status of their religion depends on their possession of this strip of land that G-d promised the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! How they can’t cease dreaming of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount from which Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven. Give them the Temple Mount and Muslims everywhere will be inflamed with victory. Nothing will dampen their ambition to conquer the world. Daniel Pipes estimates that at least 300 million millions support Jihad!
In this connection, note that Arab and Muslim countries possess 1.3 times more land than the entire continent of Europe and 1.5 times more land than the United States. Their 5,282,000 square miles of territory constitutes one-eighth of the earth’s land surface! Yes, but these land-starved worshippers must also have the land of the Jewish people. For this sliver of land, “infidel” Jews are promised “peace.”
Poor, wretched Arabs! Whereas these bellicose Arabs have no peace of their own to give Israel, peace-loving Jews have no land they can safely and rightly give Arabs. Nevertheless, diplomats, tainted by relativism, see no reason why six million Jews, surrounded by 250 million Muslims, should oppose a “two-state” solution to the conflict. How unreal and smug are these mirror-imaging experts! How they ignore the ugly truth about the Arab-Islamic world, where the masses live in abject poverty while their rulers wallow in oriental luxury.
Aren’t you tired of peace plans, whether proposed by Arabs, Americans, or Jews? Sparsely populated and oil-rich Saudi Arabia stockpiles weapons of war far exceeding the arsenals of nations like England and France. Yes, and the Saudis purchase these weapons from peace-preaching America, whose entertainment media exult in a constant display of brutal violence!
Nevertheless, fools and scoundrels promise prosperity and peace to the entire Middle East if only Israel expels 280,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria. As if any Arab dictatorship could survive its own people’s prosperity! It is precisely by keeping their people at a subsistence level that dictators retain their power. This simple fact is ignored by Israelis who believe economics is the key to peace in the Middle East, and that economics trumps fourteen centuries of Islam and Islamic imperialism. And these Israelis are called “realists”!
Among these “realists” one finds timid, tired, and transitory Jews who will be satisfied if only the nations allow them a little strip of land on which to pursue their mundane and fleeting existence. The idea of undertaking a sustained intellectual offensive against Jihadism has never occurred to these “realists.”
Leaving this more ambitious goal aside, I want to stress that the survival of the Jewish people depends on their fidelity to the Land of Israel. This land—Judea and Samaria and above all Jerusalem—is inseparable from the noblest ideas of our prophets and rabbis. Without this land the historical memory and national identity of the Jewish people will evaporate.
In the final analysis, however, to retain the Land of Israel the Jews must put God of Israel back into the domain of statecraft. Only then will they be able to overcome the demonic and totalitarian religion that threatens Western civilization.
