Returning from Israel Believing That Peace Is Possible
I’ve just returned home from spending nearly two weeks in Israel, thanks to the Once in a Lifetime project by Stand With Us and the wonderful students at Hebrew University who made it happen. While I was there, rockets were fired from Gaza, prompting retaliatory Israeli airstrikes. The worst violence on the Israeli-Lebanese border since 2006 happened. Yet I come home believing more than ever that peace can be achieved.
It is too often stated that Israeli Jews cannot live with Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims. I have no illusions about the uncompromising nature of radical Islam, or the tub of mass hatred that young children are forced to bathe in. Until the forces spreading this extremism are stopped, peace is impossible. But I saw very inspiring signs while in Israel.
One of the most common things I hear on talk radio — and at colleges — is that both sides just hate each other too much and are equally guilty. On the Israeli side, I never heard one negative generalization about Palestinians or Arabs. In fact, they are crying out to define themselves outside of the conflict. They express their frustration at terms like “pro-Palestinian” that make it sound as if one can only care for one side. It was repeatedly stated to me that they are fighting radical Islam, not the Muslim world, and not the Palestinians as a people. No discussion of the hardships they face went without the Israeli participant decrying the Palestinians’ own hardships.
In Jerusalem, which stands at the heart of the conflict, I saw Jews and Muslims buying and selling from one another in the friendliest of manners. City officials told the Once in a Lifetime group of bloggers that the vast majority of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem are carried out by those outside of the city. The biggest conflict Jerusalem is having is between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews, not between Jews and Muslims. Culturally, it can be difficult to distinguish between the secular Jews and the Muslims, as they dress and joke around the same way. Those that live closest to the Jews are the least inclined to hate them.
It is inaccurate to say Jews and non-Jews can’t live peacefully and respectfully together in Israel, because it is already happening. We visited a Muslim village named Abu Ghosh that is excitedly visited by Israeli Jews for its hummus and houses Roman Catholic monks. An outside observer unfamiliar with the conflict would be unable to tell that a conflict existed.
Peace is increasingly possible because extremist propaganda cannot survive exposure and reality. As globalization increases, cultures and peoples interact more, and as we saw in Jerusalem, this creates bonds. There is a huge amount of tension over Israel’s security measures, but the truth is that peace for Israelis is good for Palestinians. After the so-called “Apartheid Wall” was erected, suicide bombings dropped over 90 percent. This led to economic growth and peace for both sides.
Mr Mauro is day-dreaming.
I don’t even have the patience anymore to reply to this Prozac-journalism.
Okay, a few points to be clarified-while it is true that Jews and Arabs shop together in major cities, what is left unsaid-or possibly not known to Ryan-that Jews do NOT go into majority Arab towns within Israel proper because the Israeli Arabs are very radicalized and one does not know if Jews will emerge intact from their shopping sprees. This is a fact.
While Arabs in Jerusalem, Haifa, Netanya, Tel Aviv are free as birds to go about their business this is NOT the case in Arab dominant towns. This piece of info is rarely spoken about as it proves that Jews are not safe in their own homeland UNLESS they are in the majority in any given town/city.
I place the onus for this abhorrent situation at the doorstep of Israel’s ruling leftists as they kow tow to the Arab minority, scared witless to assert parity-for Jews!-within the Jewish homeland. Similarly, PC contagion has run amok in the US, where western leaders genuflect before Muslim sensibilities-to hell with everyone else.
Adina, Americans are hopelessly naive (generally). Just because we’re not fighting in the streets (yet) & shooting at each other, like in Lebanon, for example, they think coexistence is working. Well, coexistence is NOT working. And, you’re absolutely correct, our idiot politicians are a bunch of dhimmi wimps, and not just leftists either. Just try & enforced the law equally on Arabs & Jews & you’ll see riots from the Arabs. They don’t pay taxes, go ahead, try & collect them! Instead, we hear calls to subsidize their bankrupt municipalities. Illegal construction, same thing. Even crime statistics are suppressed. And our Arab knesset members? No country in the world would allow traitors like that to sit in a legislature. Every Arab organization in Israel calls for an end to the Jewish state, not ONE exception.
Well, there might be one or two exceptions, but generally you are right. And Adina’s point about Arabs – not Jews – being free to move around pre-67 Israel, is right on. And Arabs even in Tel Aviv are far bolder than in the past. I lived in central TA in ’08, and used to walk to the beach and run there. Arab ‘youth’ used to hang out in the plaza at the end of Ben Gurion Blvd, get drunk, leer at and curse the Jewish ‘youth’ walking on the tayelet below. The hippie-like Jews didn’t respond. I lived on Kibbutz in the 80s. Most of the Arabs that I worked with for a year in a furniture factory came from a village well inside the Green Line that is now a hotbed, or semi-hotbed for the Israeli version of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Ryan Mauro seems to have been ‘brainwashed’ by some fairly self-deluding Israelis.
The other comment, Terry, is that the answer in Israel will have to come through an assertion of Jewish identity. The ultimate root problem is in Israelis. We can get a hundred articles from Caroline Glick or similar Likud conservatives – Zalman Shoval, Gerald Steinberg, etc., – and they don’t provide real answers. The split that Mauro refers to between secular and religious is very real. There has to be a healing between the super-savvy, secularized nationalists and the religious. How will it come about? Certainly we see no clear figure on the scene to help bring it about, but it must happen or the impositions of ‘peace’ that Steve refers to below will continue forever. For the ultimate reason for all these distortions and the feeling of ghettoization is in lack of assertion of Jewish national rights over the land. It began with Begin and Camp David, and continues today. If it is reversed, then in time the rest takes care of itself. But the Jewish people remain in fear of the non-Jewish world: ultimately, we do ourselves in.
Larry, I honestly don’t have an answer to this. Yes, it’s the Israelis themselves. I was more assertive living in an Arab country than many Israelis living in a Jewish country.
Yes, I believe you. Many Israelis make themselves doormats for other Israelis. In the political realm, and given Gush Katif, Amona (and Olmert’s role in that), and the guy just released (sort of) by the Shabak, it is understandable. Chaim Pearlman, is that right? If he is telling the truth about his treatment, then Caroline’s latest piece should be on that instead of on the implications of the US w’drawal from Iraq. But the last piece she wrote on the general subject was a denunciation of Moshe Feiglin. Yet Feiglin is a beacon of hope.
It’s pettiness, ego, stereotypes. When the right-wing intellectuals like Glick embrace the Feiglins, we will know something has changed.
All of us have the same physical needs but that is not what this fuss is all about. It is about evil which the world does not recognize as evil. I don’t think the Palestinians are evil because they are Palestinian or Arab but they are Evil when they seek to satisfy their physical needs at the expense of someone else in an unlawful manner. They blame there own shortcomings on their supposed enemy.
** 1Ki 18:17 ¶ And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?
18 And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim. **
One difference I see is that the Jew has found opportunity and gone to work to develop that opportunity while the Palestinian has not been willing to lay down his greed and work with his hands that which is good. That same error is also bringing down the United States with our multiculturalism,the so-called stimulus Packages and welfare “entitlements” which all come from evil.
Peace is not a one way street. It takes two to make a fuss and it take two to make peace. Unless and until the Palestinians desire peace no amount of compromise from the Israeli will result in peace. Ryan Mauro is right in this not being a material issue but spiritual. The enmity is between the ears and does not require a second party to activate it except the second party is the target. There is no law against standing up for right yet the enemy would have us believe all resistance is unlawful.
Adina is correct in everything she said. I spent two wks in Israel this year and I know that what she is saying is correct. I saw it, I felt the tension between the Israeli Arabs and the Jewish people. The world is telling bold faced lies to say otherwise. The Jewish people have no peace even in their own land. I think being an American and living in a free country made me more aware of the hatred the Arabs have toward the Jews, it was stiffling. God Bless the Jewish people.
‘Peace’ between Israel and her Muslim-Arab inhabitants, to most, means this on-going charade of a “peace process.” The United States for years has led the effort to dismantle and divide the land of Israel, thereby establishing another Muslim-terror state dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Jordan constitutes 75% of the original British Mandate for a Jewish national homeland.
While President Obama is deeply sympathetic to the Muslim world and overtly hostile to Israel, it was George W. Bush (a self-professed conservative Christian) who made the establishment of a Muslim-enemy state in historic Israel a “formal goal of US policy.” Bush unveiled his “vision” early October 2001 only days after the 9/11 Saudi / Al Qaeda attacks on the US, in order to placate his and his father’s Saudi friends and benefactors. America is supposed to be a Christian nation. There is nothing Christian or “Christ-like” about what the Americans are doing to Israel.
I’m not sure GWB deserves our derision. In his two comments on the process he stated that wanted to see a Palestinian state “beside, not instead of Israel.” He did not say where that state ought to be and, in his wording left no doubt that he, better than any president to date, understood the wish of Palestinians to destroy the Jewish state. The second comment he made, that he wanted Mr. Arafat to state clearly that he accepted the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state “and I want him to say it in Arabic.” That last line was the loudest diplomatic slap in the face that went almost unnoticed and unreported. He called him a treacherous liar to his face. So I think reading between the lines, Bush clarified the issue to a greater degree than any previous president.
I agree Abu Nudnik, IMHO GWB understood the Middle East far better than any other president. I can add BHO understands the ME less than any other president in spite of his MSM-publicity sections claims to the contrary. His metrosexual background probably makes understanding the power/force nature of the area difficult.
It is quiet clearly explained in the New Testament that there will be groups calling themselves followers of Christ when they are not for they do no bear the fruit. In a sense this applies to the United States. There should be no question but that our country is strongly influenced by the Christian doctrine but to call our country Christian in the narrower sense of the word is not factual. Over the past couple of decades there has been a tremendous falling away from the constraints of the truth.
“It is the lack of integration with the world that allows extremist forces to poison minds.” Only partially true, there is also an “over integration” of poisoned minds, often educated ones belonging to celebrities who spread anti-Israel and anti-American sentiments, often as though they were mere “fashion statements.”
Most thinking people understand that the Israelis don’t get a big kick out of bombing or periodically surging troops into these little hell holes, they simply have no choice when attacked. Moshe Dyan knew these areas would be trouble and initially forbade advance into them during the six day war. The Arab countries that had previously controlled these areas let them remain poverty filled slums for decades before the war.
America and her allies are not perfect, hell, if you consider Saudi Arabia an allie, some aren’t even civilized. But even the leftist media can not find stories of Israelis training their children to be suicide bombers. . . and I’ll bet they’ve looked for them.
optimism and pessimism are feelings that won’t change reality
Does the author reside in an alternate universe?
The leadership in the Palestinian areas, both Hamas and Fatah, are
absolutely dedicated TO THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL AND EVERYTHING
IN IT! As long as this is the case, peace between the Israelis
and Palestinians is impossible. Everything else is just worthless
conversation.
The only thing the author’s dreamy eyed stupidity will accomplish
is getting large numbers of innocent people killed.
Mr. Mauro is living in something below what can be called a fantasy; this was not ancient history, and the people who plotted and carried out these attacks are are alive and well, and controlling both Gaza and the West Bank:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphinarium_discotheque_suicide_bombing
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarro_restaurant_suicide_bombing
When these people are all dead, and all of their supporters are dead, the possibility of a calm exists, until then, “peace” is just an empty word used as a strategy to buy time to kill the Jews in Israel. Only war is going to settle this, and, only war can settle this.
The article is pure fantasy.
It isn’t only the Moslem Arabs who are Israel haters, but the Christians also. Remember Hanan Ashwari? Remember George Habash? Indeed it was the “leading” Christians of Jerusalem who began the anti-Semitic movement in Palestine, or South Syria as it was then called.
These people are haters and I’m afraid that Israel will just have to go on fighting to stay alive. Hopefully after the 2012 elections a friendly government will take over in the USA but that cannot be counted on. The Moslem president and his three quarter Christian Arab envoy to the Middle East will go on pressuring Israel for the next two and a half years looking for a mandate to carry on doing so for another four.
In America, Israel will have to be saved from American Jewish voters.
Everyone interested in the Middle East should do themselves a favor and subscribe to the Rubin Report. He explains with greater clarity why peace in the Middle East is fairy tale.
#9 Bob from Virginia.
You should mention that Mr Rubin is a most moderate man, a supporter of peace, not at all conservative or right-wing. And EVEN this moderate of scholars thinks peace is a fairy tale.
That is because it is a fairy tale; Arabs cannot even make peace with themselves. They are simultaneously at war with everyone that borders them, including some unfortunate groups (Kurds, Coptic Christians) that are located within their borders. In my mind, this position is neither left nor right wing. It is just a realistic estimation of the facts on the ground. Rubin’s articles are spot on.
An unbelievably naive article. The author admits that Palestinian children are deliberately bathed in Jew hatred 24/7. But as adults those same Palestinians actually are able to put their murderous rage aside in order to do business with filthy Jew dogs in the marketplace! What a harbinger of peace. Stupid fool!
hey interesting article and responses… can we do this without name-calling? roxanne
How did this article pass the sniff test on PJM?
‘West Bank economy growth..’ nonsense. Nearly the entire area has more subsidence THROWN at it from the empathatic-laden UN and extremist groups in the ME than many African nations. As well as Haiti, before and after its January earthquake.
Go to un.org and you’ll find many articles ‘pleading’ ‘urging’ hundreds of millions more dollars to the ‘Palestinians’.
As for Mr. Mauro’s rose-colored outlook of the ‘improving’ numbers of those enamored with Hamas/Hezbollah – wait ’til next week. I’d like to see the refugees have a coupe, TBH. ‘Til then, all bets are off until action is replaced with good intentions, hush hush discussions.
The only way radical Islam beliefs will go way of the dodo is when the displaced Gazans ‘are’ serious about unbinding their chains – they’d give the bird to the UN, ‘peace’ flotilla morons and do the dirty work themselves. A revolution is needed in Gaza. And Lebanon. And Iran. And Indonesia. And Syria. And Jordan. And…
1300 + years of living under tyranny will not be resolved with hand holding/diplomacy. I wish that was the case.
Paul, you talk about the people of Islamic faith “going the way of the dodo bird”, and yet you also proclaim that Israeli peoples should not be persecuted? It seems to me, Paul, that you are talking out of both sides of you’re mouth! If you truly want peace, Paul, than your going to have to give all people all rights to all land that Jesus put here on this earth. You cannot play sides, Paul. Jesus did say that all who speaketh his name shall have a place at the dinner table with God, the father. Well, to me, that means, Paul, both Israelis and Islamics neighborhoods! Your going to have to rethink you’re priorities Paul. God gave this land to every person, not just Muslims and not just Israelis. Either lead or get out of the WAY, Paul!
The debate will only be ended when either the last Jew or the last Arab is dead. That’s the message the entire thinking world has received during the last 60 years of conflict.
But then,,, I’m only 70 years old.
This is an article you can safely disagree with upon simply reading the title.
I hate to burst the bubble of optimism of this author. But I’m afraid that the only way that Israel can please the Arabs is if they all march into the sea and drown.
This isn’t optimistic but it is realistic.
What an adorable and sweet article! I had a dream just like it not too long ago.
When I was as young as you, Mr. Munro, I noted how warm and friendly the Arab sellers at the souk outside the Temple Mount were. I was similarly inspired and hopeful. “Yes,” my brother-in-law said, “and he’ll have the same warm smile on his face when he pulls his razor across your throat.” I thought that was an awful thing to say.
Years later he related a story about one of his friends who, after serving in the IDF in Gaza, decided to go back and help, spending 20 years on infrastructure, banking, getting investments together for start-up businesses. He had two Arab partners who, one day, when two men with axes and black masks walked into their office, walked out without a word. They found pieces of his body on every square inch of the floor, wall and ceiling – that’s how hard he fought and how savage was the butchery of a man who thought himself a friend to Palestinians, a sympathizer, someone who spent his whole adult life trying to help.
But that Abu Goush hummus! That’s just the greatest! Peace, anyone?
Why did/do the American Jewish population support Obama to the degree they do?
Non-PC-indoctrinated Americans can see an analogous situation to Terry and Adina’s Israel if they substitute our most favored identity group (MFIG) for Arab and least favored identity group (LFIG) for Jew. MFIG members can pretty much come and go as they please in LFIG areas without danger, e.g., shopping malls, parks, sporting events, neighborhoods, etc. LFIG members, on the other hand, are risk bodily injury or even their life if they go about MFIG areas, especially in urban areas.
Is that a good analogy to what you mean?
The writer would have more credibility if he had “hung out” in the West Bank or Gaza for a while.
I’ll try not to take too much air out of your tyres; others have already done so.
I’d just like to point out something. Some of the statistics you quote as positive, are not really that great at all. That nearly 1/2 of all West Bank Arabs support Hamas, which is definitely support for the extermination of the Jews, does not bode well for the future. Like you, I was recently in Israel. And like you, I was struck by how accepting of Arabs the Jews I met were. There was barely a hint of animosity to be found. Of course, that was never really the problem, was it? The source of the conflict was not Jewish hatred of the Arabs; it was Arab hatred of the Jews. And Arab hatred of the Jews is alive and well, even in Israel. Everyone walks through the Jewish parts of Jerusalem freely able to go about their day to day business. (I even saw some religious Moslems buying softcore porn from a small shop near Mahane Yehuda.) But the parts that are predominantly Arab are another story. The Arab children are much more likely to throw stones at any foreigners they see than say hello; and the adults are not any better. Indeed, I would not advise walking past Damascus gate anytime near dark unless you are a Moslem.
So the prospects of real peace in the near future? I’d say they are pretty damned slim until Arabs stop living to hate and teaching the same to their children. I’m glad you had a wonderful experience. Keep in mind that the Israeli mindset is relatively inconsequential to the peace process, since they were not the ones who started and propagated the conflict. If we have to brag about statistics like “Only 1/4th of all Israeli Arabs support the annihilation of the Jews!” as positive, then peace is definitely not just over the horizon.
Jacob, you got it exactly. We can coexist with them, they can’t coexist with us. There is ZERO reciprocity.
I’ve got a good story to illustrate this fact. I’ll probably through a longer post up on my blog when I get the time.
I’m Jewish, but I did have the opportunity to talk to some Arabs who didn’t know. Some of them were extremely westernized and wanted to remain in Israel. In fact the disdain they had for Gazans staying in the same hotel was almost embarrassing, considering that they were in Israel to receive cancer treatment. (Won’t see that story in the MSM very often.) There was one guy that I met that I really liked in the beginning. He had lived in the West and spoke English extremely well. He was well travelled and seemed to have an adventurous nature. We also had some hobbies in common, which meant we ended up chatting several times for a couple of hours each time. About most topics, he was very insightful, and a pleasure to talk with. Then once, out of the blue, he started talking about the Jews. The monologue was not a frothy mouthed, venomous sermon like you often see on MEMRI: quite the contrary. In between talks about traveling and cooking, he inserted a very calm, collected side note that could have come straight from the Protocols or Mein Kampf. The Jews want to control the world (check), they believe they were chosen to rule over all the goyim (check), they have a plan for world domination that they are putting into place now that they’ve embarrassed the Arabs and taken over Palestine (check), do not believe that the lives of non-Jews have any value except when they can be manipulated to serve Jewish interests (check, check.) And this came in a very matter-of-fact manner from someone who from all outward appearances was quite westernized.
Someone like this will never reach a state where he will accept peace. My guess is that neither will his children who probably hear the same on a daily basis. And this person was a well travelled, educated Israeli Arab, who didn’t realize he was talking to a non-Israeli Jew. The problem is not about land, or where future borders will be; the problem is about a mindset and worldview that eliminate any possibility for peace.
Jacob, I can’t tell you how many otherwise intelligent and cosmopolitan Arabs I have met who hold similar views (add Persians and Eastern Europeans to that mix as well) once they feel comfortable enough with me to say so openly. And they say these things as if its just common knowledge, without any reflection or qualification at all. And the stuff is pure bilge, not even original, but low-grade, run-of-the-mill Jew hatred that could well pass for something the Nazis would dream up. And this from the best of the bunch–the “educated” classes among the Arabs.
I read something interesting about Egypt about 5 or 6 weeks ago. In Germany, there is an organization called the “Friedrich Naumann Stiftung” for freedom; in fact, it is connected to the FDP party which is the most economically liberal of the 5 large parties in Germany. (By liberal, I mean that they are pro-free markets.) The FNS seeks to promote free trade and free markets in many parts of the world, including the middle east. There was a bit of a kerfuffle recently involving the Egyptian partner promoting obviously anti-semitic work in their newsletter. When asked why the FNS would stoop to work with anti-semites even if they were free market anti-semites, the answer was quite telling. They said that if they refused to work with anti-semites, they would not be able to work with anyone in Egypt. The facts on the ground are that anti-semitism throughout the Arab/Moslem word is so pervasive, that it is a type of understood knowledge, like the sky is blue, or you should go to the doctor when you break an arm. It is so widely accepted, that most people have never heard anything to the contrary.
It is a congenital, in-and-out-of-the-homeland defect that we rarely see enemies, announced or covert, when in fact we have many. Zionism was supposed to shake this crippling naivete out of the collective system. Jews are conditioned to seek approval; what’s more, while a liberal Diaspora Jew might be shocked to hear the Arab’s words and get privately upset, a liberal Israeli will dismiss them on the grounds that ‘we’re in the majority so it doesn’t matter.’
I may have an advantage over many diaspora Jews in that I’ve lived in Europe for the past 10 years and have met many educated anti-semites. I was not really shocked as much as perplexed, since his aside came just a couple of minutes after discussing the lack of logic that colours the worldview of racists in general. How he could grasp the relatively complicated concept of racism being due to what someone is instead of what they do and then thoroughly fall for the same logical fallacy he criticized in others is somehow quite ironic.
As for the prospects of some kind of peace, I have some very reasonable doubts that enough of Palestinian society will ever be satisfied with less than a “humiliating” victory over the Jews to agree with such an optimistic viewpoint as the one presented in the article. Some of what I was told by Arabs was pure BS and they realized it as they were trying to sell me on it i.e. the Gaza blockade is crushing the people of Gaza, said standing next to several cancer patients who were allowed to travel into Israel for medical treatment. Even they realize that this is BS. I mean, what other countries do that regularly?
It was extremely strange to see the divisions in Arab society. I met some Arabs who were big fans of Tel Aviv, which seems to go along with wanting to live in Israel as integrated citizens. These people knew much more about their Jewish neighbours, interacted with them, ate with them, shopped with them, and partied with them. These people were never religious and were able to joke about their religion and the religion of others in what I would call a very western way. They could understand Jewish jokes about Jews for example and could also make jokes about Moslem society. Most of these people had a favourite alcoholic drink and clubs in Tel Aviv that they liked to frequent. The Arabs that were for the destruction of Israel and the general anti-semites often knew nothing about life outside of East Jerusalem. I mentioned to the same person that I had eaten a salmon bagel, and his response was that he didn’t know where you could get one “in Palestine.” I mentioned the name of the place and the street, and it took him a second before he said, “Oh, you ate in the Jewish part.” The man was in his mid to late 30′s and had never seen a salmon bagel…. in Israel. That’s like spending your entire life in Paris and never seeing a baguette. Unfortunately, the Arabs who could integrate peacefully into a Jewish state seemed to be the exception that proves the rule; the majority are so far away from accepting anything less than the complete annihilation of the Jewish state that such figures as “only half of the West Bank supports Hamas!” doesn’t really phase me.
The author of this piece has been living in LaLa land or doing too many illegal drugs…or both.
16. JohnQAmerican:”Why did/do the American Jewish population support Obama to the degree they do?”
When you figure out the answer, you’ll know why Jews have been continuously ambushed for thousands of years.
The situation is somewhere between Ryan’s and Terry and Adina’s understanding: not so rosy as Ryan’s nor so dire as Terry’s.
Ryan might be interested in the history of the village of Abu Gosh, and why (beyond the amazing hummus) so many Israelis frequent it. Abu Gosh was the sole Arab village in that region (out of 38) that refused to attack Israel in the 1947 war and the efforts of the villagers to keep the road to Jerusalem open is the prime reason we did not lose Jerusalem entire in the war of independence. Because of that, the keys to Jerusalem are symbolically held by the leader of the village. Many in Abu Ghosh serve in the IDF (commando Abu Ghosh). But also because of their Zionist history, Abu Gosh families are shunned by other Arab-Israelis –there is very little intermarriage with Abu Gosh families for instance because they are viewed as traitors.
In support of the arguments of Terry and Adina, I recently had my safety threatened by the head of an Arab-Israeli moving firm (and frightened into paying more than twice what the move was supposed to cost) but did not file a police report on the advice of a friend (who is a cop here) who said, listen, the police are afraid to enter arab villages and pursue matters like this and all they will do is make a phone call to the company and if they do that you really will be in danger as these guys will come after you.
On the other hand, more and more Arab-Israeli youth are doing national service and even joining the IDF. In general, the political leaders of Arab parties (Balad, etc) are far more extreme than the average Arab-Israeli. Approximately 45% of Arab-Israelis do not vote for the Arab parties but for Zionist parties (there are even Arab-Israeli members of Lieberman’s Israel Our Home party). It is a slow process but the trend is positive over all.
Okay. On the other hand, Yaeli, you just acknowledged that an Israeli Arab, ‘using’ his Arabness (which he knew itself would frighten you) extorted large amounts of cash from you while demonstrating to you and to himself that the police are basically impotent. And that impotence is for good reason, because if cops did go into Arab villages with authority, and meet violence, and return said violence, they will have little confidence in the Jewish (or Arab) judge that will hear the case inevitably placed against them by the Arab ‘victim’ with his Jewish lawyer. Next time, don’t use an Arab mover. Better not to deal with them at all. Take care.
Nun bet. The affection for Abu Ghosh is most likely an effort to grasp at straws, and to point to the possibility of Arabs being pro-Jewish. That the Abu Ghoshians are pariahs within even Israeli Arab society is telling. By the way, if I remember correctly, many of the residents of Abu Ghosh or surrounding villages are actually descended from Bosnian Mulsims brought into ‘Palestine’ by the Turks; so, not really Arabs at all if true.
Larry.
Now imagine if this had happened to me when I was still living in Morocco. Do you think I would have been intimidated like Yaeli? Hell no. I would have screamed at the guy, refused to pay, called the police. I would have intimidated him.
It’s what I said above in my comment, I just can’t understand the mentality here in Israel, too many Israelis are infected with some sick political correctness, afraid to offend Arabs, they babble on about coexistence & peace.
I certainly believe you. Stand up to them and see if they really come back and attack you. I doubt it. OTOH if we’re talking about a single woman living alone, well – all the more reason to get a decent Jewish mover, not to say that they’re all decent. Jews are just too nice.
Larry.
Yes, Jews are too nice. But, since I come from what is basically an all-Arab environment, I treat Arabs exactly how Arabs treat Arabs. Israelis by & large want to treat Arabs as if they were Jews & it doesn’t work. That’s the problem with the West generally.
Yaeli.
They vote for Labour, I’m not sure you can still call Labour a Zionist party.
Very few Israeli Arabs do national service, the actual numbers are pathetic.
The fact of the matter is that very few Israelis have social relations with the Arabs, anonymous contacts in a souk or saying hello mean absolutely nothing. What you see on the surface when dealing with Arabs is a facade, it has little or nothing to do with how they really feel. You are only seeing what you want to see, not reality.
I would file all of this under “exceptions that prove the rule.” A lot of the dynamics of understanding the situation are misunderstood. The Arab world still operates in an honour-shame culture. Israel, culturally very much a part of Western thought, operates within a guilt culture. Well meaning Israelis and Westerners in general will seek peace as a means of ending the conflict. That is logical from our frame of mind. A very large percentage of Arabs still have a very collective culture which lends itself to feelings of shame when they “lose face.” It is why Americans are not keen on returning to Vietnam or carpet bombing Iraq. We don’t feel that we have “lost face” in these matters so flattening these places would do nothing to restore our lost prestige. The Arabs are still pining for Al-Andalus, which was lost to Christendom over four centuries before the oldest person alive now was even born. It is because this loss threatens their honour and shames them.
Of course, losing a series of battles to Jews has the same effect. It is made even worse by the fact that Jews were regarded as weak and inferior in the Arab world; furthermore, our small numbers (14 m. worldwide give or take) versus the roughly 320 m. Arabs in the world further shame them. The fact that they were beaten by a much smaller group of people, multiple times, and especially by a people that they considered inferior is just too much to bear. The number of Americans that would consider carpet bombing Iraq because of the 4,400 Americans that died there would be extremely tiny. The number of Arabs that would carpet bomb Israel if they had the chance? I would be surprised if the number doesn’t easily round up to a couple ticks shy of 100%. Israelis want to bring about a new era of peace; the Palestinians want to restore their lost honour. (The only way of doing that would be to “undo” Israel’s creation and kill or subjugate the Jews living there. That is why each Arab war was launched with the promise to drive the Jews into the sea.)
This is why killing a wayward sister can restore family honour in the Middle East, but would be considered abhorrent in the West.
It is also why you regularly hear calls by Palestinians to drive the Jews into the sea and erase the Jewish state, but the idea of launching an all out war of destruction from our side would be considered abhorrent.
It is why so many Arabs I met would bring up their hatred of Israel within 2 minutes of chatting with them. As for Jews? Other than warnings not to go into the Arab parts with a kippah or tzitzit visible, absolutely nothing of the sort.
It is also why Arabs deny Israel’s existence entirely, refusing to trade with the “entity” or even to place it on maps, when Israelis would gladly trade with these nations if given the chance.
So, Mr. Mauro, Yalla Balagon. When will we take our trip together to the West Bank dressed as religious Jews to see just how close peace is to us?
Terry in the last election nobody voted Labour
While it is certainly true that historically labour was the most popular party for arab voters, in the last election this was not the case. Kadima drew the largest percent of the Arab vote in 2009, followed by Labour, but Likud also did not do badly among Arab voters. Amusingly, in the last election, United Torah Judaism engaged in a concerted effort to woo arab voters with limited success, on the platform of fighting for family honour and chastity and promising to be a foil against Lieberman’s party. Lieberman’s party did well among Druze voters, as did Shas, Likud and Kadima (there are Druze MKs in all the major parties). Likud had majority support among the tiny Christian Arab community probably reflecting their unease over the persecution Christians are experiencing in Gaza under Hamas and the more subtle discrimination and pressures against the Christian community in the West Bank (Bethlehem is rapidly becoming Christianless). Since the 90s voting patterns among Arab-Israelis have become increasingly diverse.
Basically the guy who wrote this article thought that Jews and Arabs were fighting in the street and hating each others all the time and discovered that most of the time, they live along normally, so he went from one extreme to another and imagine that peace is easy. Well if it was so easy, it would have been achieved long ago.
I live in Jerusalem, I see Arabs all the day, I shop with them or from them, I don’t hate anybody even if the Arabs tend to have a problem with cleaning parks and public places (they always leave the worst mess). And they don’t hate me as much as I can feel.
But I don’t love them either and they don’t love me. If there were no Arabs in Jerusalem, I would not complain. Or at least less Arabs. The city would be much better.
And anyway the conflict is not at the personal level but at the national level, I am not at war with the Arabs on the street but with the Palestinian national and islamic groups. And there can be no peace with them as they want my land.
There is no such thing as peace with Muslims. The only reason, this is an issue, is because we non Muslims likes peace. For Muslims violence is no big deal. That is just their way of life. We think there is a conspiracy from Muslims against us, because they keep making violent attacks and blow up bombs. But Muslims blow everybody up including other Muslims. They don’t discriminate. The vast majority of terror victims are other Muslims.
So forget this idea of having peace with Muslims. The only way Muslims can become peaceful is by stop being Muslims.
Just like there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. A so called moderate Muslim is really just a Muslim who doesn’t practice his religion. As soon as a Muslim begins to practice his religion seriously he becomes radical by default. Violence is simply in the DNA of Islam.
It’s like saying you want to live in peace with followers of Shintoism or Norse mythology, Greek Mythology or the mythology of ancient Rome. They are/were religions of war. And seriously what do you expect from a religion created by a warrior/conquerer? Naturally a religion that puts a high value on war and conquering.
Given Ryan Mauro’s background and his investigations into the islamists training in our midst, I must say if I had the energy I’m be shocked that he could claim “peace in our time” here where the majority of us know better. What part of drive Jews into the sea does he not understand. Drive Jews peacefully into the sea a la Gandhi?
This is really a disgusting, deluded, misleading piece of writing. Your next article should be an apologia and explanation for how you could be so duped.
When women who were treated at Israeli hospitals stop returning wearing suicide belts to kill them some Jews, maybe we’ll take you seriously.
How weird !.I am privileged to travel once for a while to our nano Jewish state and my personal conclusion are 180 ° opposite to Mr Mauro !
Are we living in 2 parallel worlds ?
Jews in Jerusalem shop in Jewish parts of the city whereas Arabs are free to shop everywhere because they know the risks to their personal safety is nil.
Concerning the Arab economic growth in Judea Samaria, it reminds me the first steps of the new soviet factories:if you produce 1 match from 0,your growth is 100 %.I do think this growth is artificial,supplied by European and gulf money but I am not sure it will lead to a viable economy.
What will they produce/export ???? Corruption is a known liability as well.
Addendum:
Fayed’s call to boycott Jewish products from Yesha ,the persistent Arab incitement against Jews in their medias and the insistence of mahmud abbas to keep Judea Samaria “judenrein” are not very promising peaceful postures either …
To Jacob, above – I hear you, man. I do hear you. Sooner or later it will all leak out of the bottle.
What Ryan and his insane radical Islam myth, as if there are two versions of Islam, two versions of the Koran, and two versions of the Sunnah, one that is moderate and one that is radical, can’t seem to understand is even if a miracle happened and Israel somehow came to terms with the PA, it would not stop Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and all the other Islamic countries behinds the scenes from pursuing jihad against Israel, as the jihad is permanent, just like the global jihad is also permanent.
Nevertheless, Abbas will never sign any peace agreement unless Israel is forced to return to the pre 1967 indefensible Auschwitz borders, including in Jerusalem, and Israel also agrees to accept all the Palestinian refugees. Anything less than that, Abbas would be signing his death certificate.
Then before the ink could dry on any peace agreement, the West Bank Palestinians would start launching rockets into Israel’s population centers.
We must not forget, that the so-called Palestinian people and their so-called secular nationalist movement were created in Moscow in 1964 in order to camouflage their genocidal jihad and as a KGB disinformation campaign.
Meanwhile Ryan, your credibility as a security beat writer keeps spiraling down hill. I mean I get brain damage every time I read your crap and see terms like radical Islam and extremists. It’s getting to the point where I can’t hardly click on your articles any longer, because I know you will just piss me off.
To the entire world Israel may be two small to see on a world map yet the reality is that to them it is the largest nation of all the nations. It is so large to them, that dividing Israel and cutting Jerusalem in half is the goal of the mightiest powers. It is like a speck of sand in the eye, too small to see but a giant boulder to the senses.
Why would Muslims inside the protection of Israel worry? It is not their existence that is being called into question, and the Jewish People are still trying to prove to the world that they mean no harm and just wish to live and love with their family and friends.
How long does a person have to prove themselves to others, so that their very right to exist is accepted and they have a place to rest their heads? In the Islamic World Israel will never have a place to rest, a speck of sand would be too large. If you go to Israel and not know that truth, you have not learned anything. Prozac indeed.