PJ Media

Mr. Rubin: an excellent article, and a point that urgently needs to be made from time to time. (If only it could be made just once! But Israel will have to defend herself again and again from the same charges, as she always has.)

A minor quibble: you go to great pains to explain that Israelis are not racist, and that Israelis come from all ethnicities and skin colors — which, as you point out, is not true of the Palestinians. Then, while explaining that sometimes it’s difficult to tell an Israeli from an Israeli Arab from a Palestinian on ethnic grounds alone, you say that there’s less racial variation between Israelis and Palestinians than there is among Europeans.

I understand what you’re trying to say, but this leaves an important hole in the case you’re trying to make.

In re Israeli racism: Menachem Begin said, when Operation Solomon was over (and the press quarantine was lifted), that for the first time in history, white people had brought black people en masse from one country to another — not to transport them into slavery, but to deliver them to freedom. It’s a powerful concept; is there another country on Earth that has done what Israel did, or ever would?

That, by the way, is the flip side of Israel as an “ethnonationalist state”, as commenter Pat Bunion puts it. Here was a case of tens of thousands of people, trapped between warring sides in a civil war, about to be decimated. Nobody in the world gave a damn about them… except Israel, because they were Jewish. So Israel rescued them, brought them home, and integrated them into Israeli society.

Would a Christian country go to such trouble to save the lives of thousands of black Christian refugees? Would a Muslim country? And if not, why not?

If you understand what Israel has had to undergo, and what Israel has done, then you will understand that Israel is by no means immune from criticism… but that Israel stands head and shoulders above her critics, and always has.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline