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I think the reasons Americans aren't up on Jewish/Arab relations are a couple things.

First, its is considered a "religious" war/misunderstanding/fight so public schools generally steer clear of it.

Second, depending on who you ask, there are as many reasons for the enmity as people telling it.

Makes it almost too much trouble (for some Americans) to bother.  If the experts don't even agree, how likely is it a layman will understand?

 

 

As you know it is not a religious war. The two (or three) religions allegedly involved even agree on the nature of the land. It was secular Arab nationalists who wanted the Jews out, not fanatical Muslims. (One of the leading nationalists was a fanatical Muslim, but his anti-Semitism was inspired by his nationalism, not his religion.)

People like the idea of religious wars. Atheists can use them to claim that religion is evil and everybody else can understand a conflict without learning what it is about.

The conflict in Northern Ireland is also usually described as a religious war, despite the fact that neither Irish nationalism nor British imperialism are based on religion.

 

Most people don't know anything about it.

The test I usually use is the thought experiment about the guy dressing up as a nationalist Arab in Tel Aviv and the guy dressing up as a Zionist Jew in Cairo. Who will survive longer? The answer to that question explains a lot about why there is a conflict.

There are four possible answers, of course. And it turns out most people agree which answer is right, even when they vehemently argue as if they didn't know. When you ask people to put their money where their mouth is, most will admit that they know that it is not the Jews who want to kill the Arabs. That is why everyone agrees that "land for peace" means _Israel_ giving land and _Arabs_ giving peace. They know that there is no reason to bribe Israel into being peaceful. (Otherwise they would have thought that the six-day war would have settled the issue. Israel got the Sinai, war's over. But it wasn't Israel that wanted land instead of peace.)

 

Many experts will not say what cannot be said. How can anyone really describe the evil that is going on in Gaza without seeming like a lunatic?

Who wants to say publicly that a Nobel peace price winner had an uncle and mentor, a personal hero according to his own words, who was a Nazi and an SS leader?

It's the "Israel is no angel" thing. Any expert who openly lists the crimes of both sides, of Israel on the one hand and the Arab states under Nasser, Saddam and the other dictators and all the terrorist groups on the other, will look biased; because he will be after he looks at the first page of his list.

Objectivity is not a virtue.

 

The first thing I learned about Israel as a child (being from a predominantly Christian country at the time and counting myself among them) is God gave Israel (the land) to the Jews.  Because the Jews did not evict/kill all the tribes occupying the land as God commanded, but chose to inter-marry and be neighbors with them instead, there has been conflict and will be conflict until the end times over to whom the land belongs.

If Americans go to church at all as kids, this is the most basic thing learned.  (Which is why its considered a "religious" problem because so many of us first discovered the Jewish culture in church.)  Doesn't make it accurate, or right, but then reality so often doesn't mirror either of those things in my experience.

When I read history and even see news events today, I see it through my Christian eyes (this is always going to be a problem for the Jews) and also filter it through my paradigm (even tho I believe it will always be an issue, I want Israel to kick ass and take names, sorry can't help it).

I don't need to understand the intricacies of specific political individuals to know two things. 

1.  The Jews will always be persecuted.  For this to occur a fair amount of the world must look the other way, deny it, maintain ignorance on the subject, or vilify the culture. 

2.  Jews will ALWAYS be asked to make the most concessions by enemies and friends alike because (see #1).   The only thing I can do as an individual is deal with it in my realm of influence and pray.

 

 

"To Moses We gave nine clear signs. Ask the Israelites how he first appeared amongst them. Pharoah said to him: 'Moses, I can see that you are bewitched.' 'You know full well,' he replied, 'that none but the Lord of the heavens and the earth has revealed these visible signs. Pharoah, you are doomed.'

Pharoah sought to scare them out of the land: but We drowned him together with all who were with him. Then We said to the Israelites: 'Dwell in this land. When the promise of the hereafter comes to be fulfilled, We shall assemble you all together."

"And when Moses said to his people: 'O my people, call in remembrance the favour of God unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the peoples. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.'"




I think one cannot deny that Israel's current existence as a state is a miracle. Most people have forgotten that the 1948 and 1967 wars were not as clear-cut as they now seem to be, now that they are won. In both wars it seemed more likely that Israel would be defeated. In both wars Israel's victory was a very sudden surprise to her enemies, to the world, and to Israel herself.

Israel needs a measure of conflict with the neighbouring countries to stay buoyant. Talk of peace is nice, but low intensity conflict with an Arab "other" helps unify and solidify the ranks despite differences (and disparities).  The ethos of Israel (and of the Jews in general) is survival in the face of perpetual enmity. Without thousands of years of anti-Semitism, Jews in their present form wouldn't exist, most would have fully assimilated into their respective societies through intermarriage and other means.

http://nizos.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-zionism-arabs-and-democracy.html

Isn't this from the Quran? 

Of course American children in Sunday school aren't hearing that....they're hearing...

Numbers 33: 50 ADONAI spoke to Moshe in the plains of Mo'av by the Yarden, across from Yericho. He said 51 to tell the people of Isra'el, "When you cross the Yarden into the land of Kena'an, 52 you are to expel all the people living in the land from in front of you. Destroy all their stone figures, destroy all their metal statues and demolish all their high places. 53 Drive out the inhabitants of the land, and live in it, for I have given the land to you to possess. 54 You will inherit the land by lot according to your families. You are to give more land to the larger families and less to the smaller ones. Wherever the lot falls to any particular person, that will be his property. You will inherit according to the tribes of your ancestors. 55 But if you don't drive out the inhabitants of the land from in front of you, then those you allow to remain will become like thorns in your eyes and stings in your sides - they will harass you in the land where you are living. 56 And in this event, I will do to you what I intended to do to them."

I couldn't find any of my literature from Sunday School classes I taught....but I found this....it (and lesson plans just like it) are used all over this country in evangelical churches.

 

"The bottom line: Today's "Palestinians" are actually Arabs who were strangers to the Land; many were kicked out of surrounding countries for various reasons and ended up in Israel - and they were allowed to remain in Israel after God kept His promise and made Israel a nation once more in 1948! Instead of being grateful and "integrating" these "foreigners" to Israel are now demanding the Land be returned to them.....

So, here's a suggestion: Rather than to bow down to the "Palestinians" by dividing Israel for purposes of "appeasement": Send the Arabs back to where they belong and leave Israel alone! As you can see in the news, Israel and the Jews continue to be attacked from every angle, just as they always have throughout history. Whether you think they're right or wrong, "the Jews" are God's Chosen People, and Israel is God's Land. We MUST be on their side, or suffer dire consequences."

I'm attaching the link, tho I do not endorse the site, I haven't looked at it...just found this and said, AHA!  That is the lesson plan I worked with as an adult, heard as a kid.

http://www.therefinersfire.org/ibp.htm

 

 

I think you'd be surprised how many Christian Americans believe this as well Leauki.  And as one, I was ashamed when our gov asked Israel to give back land and make concessions after winning so decisively.  I am ashamed every time we ask her to absorb attacks and not retaliate, or to retaliate on a smaller scale.

In this I believe America should butt out.  Israel is our ally.  We should let her make her own decisions and support her when she is attacked.

I always wondered...if Arabs are so concerned with the Palestinians having  a home land...why don't they give them some?  Millions of square miles empty, but Arabs want to quibble with Israel over blocks and streets.

 

 

The answer is of course that the Arabs are not concerned with anyone having a home land. When Egypt and Jordan ruled over Gaza and the West-Bank, they did not found a "Palestinian" homeland there. Egypt treated Gaza like a colony and Jordan annexed the West-Bank. (To be fair, the Hashemite monarchy never claimed to want a "Palestinian" home land apart from Transjordan and never claimed to want a united Arab world under secular nationalist rule either.)

The Arabs keep Palestinian Arabs in concentration camps, the so-called "refugee camps". Palestinian Arabs are hated and distrusted by other Arabs. The so-called "Palestinian cause" only has other Arab support when it is directed against Israel and the Jews, not when it is meant to support "Palestinians". Of the "drive the Jews into the sea and establish another Arab state" cause, only the "drive the Jews into the sea" part has any support. When that is done, Palestinian Arabs will be dealt with like other Arabs, if they are lucky, and like non-Arab minorities, if they are not.

Some Palestinian Arabs have figured this out and put their faith not in the other Arabs, but in the Jewish state (Druze and Bedouin), a bi-national solution (Christian Palestinian Arabs) or fanatical Islam (Hamas supporters). The traditional pan-Arab nationalists (Nasser, Saddam, the PLO) have little support now and exist to the extend they still do only as permitted and supported by Israel and the western powers.

 

These things always make me very angry because of the made-up "international law" they are always based on. There is always a special law for Israel.

In 1967 the UN referred to "international law" since the 1920s which "prohibits winning land by means of war". Yet the Soviet-Union and Poland won large parts of Germany after 1920 and North-Vietnam annexed South-Vietnam (and China annexed Tibet) without such a "law" prohibiting any of it.

The law prohibiting annexation of lands won in a war also doesn't seem to make wars fought in the attempt to do exactly that illegal. Or how come the Arabs could even attack Israel in 1948 without facing consequences other than their defeat at the hands of Israel?

Saudi-Arabia annexed the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejazs in 1927 (after invading it in 1926 for no reason), yet is among the loudest supporters of this alleged "law" that winning land in a war is illegal and that such wins must be undone.

The only other country that was ever barred from kepping land won in a war was Saddam's Iraq. Some international law that only applies to Israel and Saddam. (And to Saddam none of the other laws applied. He was even legally allowed to break cease-fire agreements.)

I am all in favour of international law, if it is.

But the way the UN and the UN Security Council makes things up as they go along in a never-ending quest to declare Israel in violation of laws that didn't exist a week earlier when other countries did the same things and worse, is simply ridiculous.

(As was the world's demand that Israel import a terrorist group from Tunisia lead by an Egyptian to rule over mostly innocent Palestinian Arabs after that sanme group had tried to take over Jordan and started a civil war in Lebanon.)

 

This is one of the reasons many Americans do not support the UN.  If a country actually does support the UN, then the UN by its very nature has some authority over what that country does in the world.

The UN has proved to be fairly ineffective, and as you pointed out, contradictory, when it comes to war and hostile world management.  IMO, they should stick to feeding the hungry, social issues like water, grain etc, and maybe being "politically neutral" participants helping people in war-torn countries.

Eventually the UN will turn against America, try to sanction us for something.  Then we will withdraw from it and things will become far less predictable for us and our allies.

Yes. They should. But doing that is not fun.

It is far more rewarding to be the "good guy" criticising Israel then it is to do something and help people.

If you are at the UN you don't want to start a diplomatic war with the Arabs over the issues of genocide and slavery just because genocide and slavery are wrong. It is a lot easier to start a diplomatic war with the Jews over the issue of Israel's continued survival.

Diplomats and politicians have to choose their bad guys. And they want good bad guys.

 

www.arabsforisrael.com

People don't hear enough of those voices.

I know them. I have also emailed one of the individuals who published their emails there, a woman in Haifa. She gave me excellent restaurant tips for my favourite (and her home) city.

None Darwish, the woman behind the site, has the most interesting life story (from Wikipedia):

Born in Cairo, Egypt, Darwish moved to Gaza in the 1950s when her father, Lt. General Mustafa Hafez, was sent by Gamal Abdel Nasser to serve as commander of the Egyptian Army Intelligence in Gaza, which was under supervision of Egypt. Hafez founded the fedayeen who launched raids across Israel's southern border, that between 1951 and 1956, killed some 400 Israelis. In July 1956 when Nonie was eight years old, her father became the first targeted assassination carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces in response to Fedayeen's attacks, making him a shahid. During his speech announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Nasser vowed that all of Egypt would take revenge for Hafez's death. Darwish claims that Nasser asked her and her siblings, "Which one of you will avenge your father's death by killing Jews?"

Darwish explains:

    "I always blamed Israel for my father's death, because that's what I was taught. I never looked at why Israel killed my father. They killed my father because the fedayeen were killing Israelis. They killed my father because when I was growing up, we had to recite poetry pledging jihad against Israel. We would have tears in our eyes, pledging that we wanted to die. I speak to people who think there was no terrorism against Israel before the '67 war. How can they deny it? My father died in it."

After his death, her family moved back to Cairo, where she attended Catholic high school and then the American University in Cairo, earning a BA in Sociology/Anthropology. She then worked as an editor and translator for the Middle East News Agency, until emigrating to the United States in 1978 with her husband, ultimately receiving United States citizenship. After arriving in the US, she became a Christian and began attending a non-denominational evangelical church. About a year after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Darwish began writing columns critical of Islamic extremism and the silence of moderate Muslims.

    "After 9/11 very few Americans of Arab and Muslim origin spoke out and from my experience it took us a long time to get noticed by Western media. Western media still regards Muslim organizations such as CAIR as representative of moderate Muslims in America. This is not the case. Muslim groups in the U.S. try to silence us and intimidate American campuses who invite us to speak. I often tell Muslim students that Arab Americans who are speaking out against terrorism are not the problem, it’s the terrorists who are giving Islam a bad name. And what the West must do is ask the politically incorrect questions and we Americans of Arab and Muslim origin owe them honest answers."

Darwish's Arabs for Israel website describes itself as an organization of Arabs and Muslims who "respect and support the State of Israel", welcome a "peaceful and diverse Middle East", reject "suicide/homicide terrorism as a form of Jihad", and promote "constructive self-criticism and reform" in the Arab/Muslim world. She often says "Just because I am pro- Israel does not mean I am anti- Arab, its just that my culture is in desperate need for reformation which must come from within".

She has spoken on numerous college campuses including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Oxford, Cornell, UCLA, NYU, Virginia Tech, UC Berkeley and several others. She has also spoken on Capitol Hill, the House of Lords, and The European Parliament.

Nasser was, of course, the Egyptian officer who during World War II betrayed his king and tried to take power and ally Egypt with the Nazis. He failed until after the war. ("Nasser", coincidentally, means "wet one" in German. And there was a common German joke in the 50s and 60s among the then-different-than-today left that "Hitler fled Germany and swam to Egypt where he reappeared as Nasser", i.e. as a wet one.)

Anyway, Noone Darwish is a _real_ peace activist. The word is cheap because it is so often used for people who scream "death to the Jews". It's weird to find the word used to refer to someone non-violent for a change.

 

From Wikipedia on the 1948 war:

"On 12 May David Ben-Gurion was told by his chief military advisers, "who over-estimated the size of the Arab armies and the numbers and efficiency of the troops who would be committed", that Israel's chances of winning a war against the Arab states were only about even."

The same article also states that on the eve of the war, Israeli troops actually outnumbered the Arab ones, and the Arabs were highly disorganized. Also:

"[Yishuv] perceived the peril of an Arab invasion as threatening its very existence. Having no real knowledge of the Arabs's true military capabilities, the Jews took Arab propaganda literally, preparing for the worst and reacting accordingly."

It would appear that the perception of Israel's doom on either side is because both sides were buying the Arab propaganda.

Likewise, the wikipedia article for the six-day war seems to illustrate complete tactical and strategic dominance. The Arab air forces crippled at the very start of the war, gaining complete aerial superiority, and defections by Arab pilots giving Israel a chance to test fly the planes on the opposing side seem like huge advantages. As for the opposition, the Arabs had terrible communication, incompetent leadership, and were knocked completely off balance for the entire war. Hell, Jordan even entered the war under erronous intelligence... they were told that the radar signatures of Israeli planes returning from a bombing run were actually Egyptian planes moving to attack Israel in order to convince them to commit to the war, apparently.

While these victories might have seemed like miracles at the time, it appears that, while impressive and strong examples of the competence the IDF has displayed since its inception, "miracle" is stretching it.

All of these articles were written after the fact. That was my point.

If you look at an event X and see how it went, you are not likely to see that it was a miracle. The fact that a militarily dominant country won a war wasn't the miracle. The miracle was that Israel turned out to be the militarily dominant side, that the Arab propaganda was wrong.

Betting on that propaganda being wrong was seen as a lost cause, yet it won the war.

If you read texts written before and around those wars, you'll get a different picture.

A CIA memo on the six-day war from back then:

http://www.sixdaywar.co.uk/graphics/arab_israeli_memo.jpg

And this recalls how Robert Kennedy saw Israel's changes in 1948:

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2008/06/robert-kennedys-1948-reports-from-palest/

A good analysis by my friend Steven Den Beste:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/TheSixDayWar.shtml