LETTER OF THE WEEK

Mr. Jamie Hyams of AIJAC wins the award this week for yesterday's response in the Australian to a letter from the Palestine Lobby.

Who’s the intransigent one?

MOAMMAR Mashni (Letters, 3/6) claims all was peaceful in the pre-Israel Palestinian Mandate until mass Jewish migration in the 1920s and 30s. Funny that while the Arab reaction was pogroms and riots that led to Jewish populations, in places such as Hebron going back thousands of years, being forced to flee their homes, the concurrent mass immigration of Arabs into the Mandate didn’t cause a similar backlash from the indigenous Jewish population.

Mashni blames the lack of peace on supposed Israeli intransigence. In 1948, the Jews accepted the UN partition plan but the Arabs rejected it, and invaded. After the 1967 war, Israel offered to return land for peace, and was told by the Arab League there would be no recognition, no negotiation and no peace. In 2000 and again in 2001, Israel offered a full Palestinian state and the Palestinians responded with the terrorist intifada. In 2005 Israel completely withdrew from Gaza and received rockets as thanks.

Leading Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has recently confirmed on al-Jazeera that in November last year, Israel again offered a Palestinian state in land equivalent to 100 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza, but the Palestinians again refused, because Israel wanted to share the Old City of Jerusalem.

Jamie Hyams
Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council
South Melbourne

WIERD PATHOLOGY

There is a weird pathology about Jew haters and Antony Loewenstein is a perfect example. Don't let the name or the circumstances of his birth put you off the track, the man lives to bash the Jewish people and the Jewish State. He is a hater of the most insidious kind and he lives every day just to heap invective upon and tell he most vile untruths about the only true democracy in the Middle East.

In an item on his blog, he opined: "Ever wondered why so many Jews and supporters of Israel seem so “concerned” about Darfur?"

I am indebted to the blogsite RWDB – J.F. Beck for uncovering the piece of racist tripe to which Loewenstein has linked and which accused Israel and the U.S. of inflating the Darfur death toll to create "humanitarian' cover" for "imperial ambitions to control Africa’s oil and other resources". In pursuit of this goal Jewish organisations have supposedly grossly overestimated the number of Darfur deaths, which, according to Loewenstein's link, amount to an insignificant "50 to 70 thousand".

Leaving aside the absurdity of Loewenstein and friends' conspiracy hypothesis, even if you accept the low end figure 50 to 70 thousand, it's hardly "insignificant" at about ten times the number of Palestinian deaths over the past nine years since Arafat launched his vicious second intifada against the Jewish State. The fact that Loewenstein has been obsessed for almost a decade about them suggests that he should be agreeing that the death toll is far more than just "insignificant". Either that or he doesn't really give a rat's arse about the victims of Arab slaughter just as long as he gets his daily rise from abusing Israel.

Take your pick.

OBAMA AND THE INADEQUATE MAHMOUD ABBAS

Marty Peretz blogs in the New Republic about the issues raised in the recent visit by Mahmoud Abbas and notes the inadequacy of Abbas in tackling the situation at hand of making peace with the Israelis and the muddling by US policy makers over the issues of settlements and the two-state solution. The latter is of course, a non-issue from the Israeli side because for years Israeli governments have agreed to the formulation."

The question is what kind of two-state solution which has hardly been confronted and never agreed upon..." We already know that Abbas has spurned the idea that one of the states should be a Jewish State in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947 upon which the peace negotiations are based. The Resolution called for the creation of two independent states - one Arab and the other Jewish. The Palestinians repudiate the idea that Israel should be a Jewish State, yet have their own designs and different principles that would apply their proposed State.

"Yes, there are Jewish settlements and other Jewish settlements. Maybe some of the other ones will remain just where they are and under Palestinian sovereignty. As there are many Arab towns and cities in Israel. Why is it ordained that no Israelis can live in Palestine and that 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs can live in Israel."

Can you imagine someone suggesting that only white Anglo Saxons should be citizens of Australia?

I don't think that local commentators have come to grips with implications of the current Palestinian polity.

THE BLANK PAGES MENTALITY

"IN the annals of daring intelligence operations both failed and successful, the Israeli Mossad stands alone", wrote Matthew Levitt in the Weekend Australian in opening his brilliant review of Fairfax journo Paul McGeough's book Kill Khalid: Mossad's Failed Hit and the Rise of Hamas -Hamas: hits and misses.

The interesting part of Levitt's review is that he encapsulates what I call "the blank pages mentality" that has become so prevalent in Fairfax journalism. What you don't want to say about your pet subject, you simply leave out. That's why readers of McGeogh "should not expect to read of these terrorist attacks in Killing Khalid".

The same as Ed O'Loughlin used to ignore or downplay Palestinian racism, incitement and violence against Israelis when he was Age bureau chief in Jerusalem, why his successor Jason Koutsoukis emphasised Israel's settlements and supposed objections to a two state solution as "stumbling blocks" to peace while ignoring the failure of the Palestinian Authority to take the first steps on the Road Map to Peace and the spectre of Hamas in this process and why the Age's Andra Jackson omitted the words "From the River to the Sea" in describing the chants of Palestinian supporters at a recent rally.

NOT A CHANCE

American friends of Palestine respond to a peaceful march involving tens of thousands of supporters of Israel in New York at the weekend. Those guys look like the sort of people you can have meaningful dialogue with on the subject of peace in the Middle East. In this way, they are much the same as the ugly hordes who attacked demonstrators recently protesting about the play reading by Australians for Palestine of the offensive "Seven Jewish Children" which many consider to be as anti-Semitic as it gets.

An event that draws tens of thousands of people into New York's Fifth Avenue might be expected to draw some publicity around the world - Thousands attend march for Israel in NY but given that this was a parade celebrating the birth of the Jewish state in 1948, commemorating the centenary of the city of Tel Aviv and expressing his sympathy to Noam and Aviva Schalit, the parents of captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, 0the odds are that it won't be covered in Al Age.

Spare the Pieties on Gaza

Author Jack Engelhard tells it like it is:

Israel is a Jewish State. Is that your problem?

Frankly, given a choice, I prefer the skinheads and other brutes who express their anti-Semitism openly. In such places, we know the enemy.

But please spare me the pieties and the righteous indignation of those "goodpeople" protesting throughout Europe against Israel's defensive operation inGaza. True, thousands have taken up banners in support of Israel. At thesame time, however, the streets of Europe (and even some in America) are inan uproar. These are the "humanitarians" - the good, the noble, the refined,who chant "peace."

Now you're up and about? Now you speak? Where were you when, throughout theyears, thousands of jihadist bombs fell on Israel? The streets of Europe were empty. There were no pictures in the newspapers of grieving Jewish mothers and fathers. You called it "peace" as long as the Arabs were doing the killing and the Jews were doing the dying. All was well with the world.

Suddenly, as Israel answered back, you found your Cause; and how self-righteous you are in your Cause.

You are the best and the brightest of Europe. You are educated. You attended the finest schools. You care for the birds, the bees, the bears, the trees. You favor free speech and freedom of religion. Strange it is that the one and only place in the Middle East that shares your world-view is Israel, and it is Israel that you slander.

Israel is a Jewish State. Is that your problem? At the first hint of Jewish self-defense, how quickly you show your true colors.

I've seen the photos of your candlelight vigils along the streets and boulevards of Europe, all of it; all these tears in the service of those terrorists whom you call your brothers. Indeed you are related to Hamas (and Fatah) as once before, a mere generation ago, you were related to Hitler's storm troopers. Your angelic faces are touching - and disgusting. Your hypocrisy is transparent and nauseating.

You speak of disproportion. You want proportion? Give Israel a population of 300 million residing in 22 countries, similar to the Arab Muslims who surround and ambush Israel - instead of five and a half million Jews in one single country. There's plenty of "proportion" coming from your BBC, which delights in presenting one side of the story and picks up where Der Sturmer left off. Now, with this type of "news", we know how Europe was conditioned for a Holocaust.

Already we see Nights of Broken Glass. Thank you, Europe, for reminding us why America was discovered just in time (and why Israel was redeemed many generations too late). You dare judge Israel? In your deportations, your expulsions, your forced conversions, your inquisitions, your pogroms, you have no moral authority over Israel or even within your own borders. You gave all that up from 1492 to 1942.

To those on the Left who sought peace, well, dear peace-lovers, peace brought this on. "Land for Peace" made this happen, as Land for Peace became Land for Jihad. "Painful Concessions" caused this war. "Goodwill Gestures" backfired. Want more "peace"? Give up the Golan Heights. Give up the entire West Bank. Give up Jerusalem. Imagine the "peace." As for those "innocent civilians" in Gaza, they were given a choice and they chose Hamas. They chos e this pestilence.

As for those "refugee camps" - why are they "refugee camps" when Israel handed over all that territory for a nation to be built in peace and security alongside Israel? Why are all Palestinians automatically refugees even after they've been given a home? The only true refugees are the thousands of Israelis who were driven from Gaza and still live in trailer parks. No tears for them in this world that still dreams of Auschwitz.

On this day, in response to a column I wrote about Theresienstadt, someoneresponded that I was incorrect; that Theresienstadt was not a prelude to Auschwitz, but rather "a vacation resort." I wrote back wishing this person a lifetime in such vacation resorts. I wish the same lifetime vacation resorts to all those parading throughout the streets of Europe with banners crying, "Death to Israel."

God bless the IDF! Go Israel!

LETTER OF THE WEEK

This letter to the editor of the Melbourne Age which responds to some characteristic inventive interpretation of history from Ali Kazak appeared in yesterday's edition. It isn't easy to find on the internet but congratulations to Jamie Hyams:-

State was on offer

ALI Kazak makes some misrepresentations as to Israel's founding (Letters, 28/5). Claims about the supposedly evil Plan Dalet are based on the work of Israeli historian Benny Morris. However, Morris himself has written, "Plan Dalet (Plan D) of 10 March 1948 was not a plan of the Haganah, the main Jewish militia, to ethnically cleanse Arab cities and villages but the master plan for securing the area of the Jewish state-to-be in face of the impending pan-Arab invasion."

The truth is that while the Jews accepted the UN plan partitioning the Palestinian Mandate into a Jewish state where the Jews were in the majority and an Arab state where the Arabs were in the majority, the Arabs rejected it and launched a war designed to kill or expel all the Jews. They could have had their state but they refused, and that's the real Palestinian catastrophe.

Jamie Hyams, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, South Melbourne

APPEASING THE EXTREMISTS UNDERMINES THE MODERATES

Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reminds us in Undermining the "Moderate Arabs" of appeasing extremists like Hamas.

This article follows another interesting item from the same writer who described his experiences when visiting U.S campuses - On Campus: The Pro-Palestinians' Real Agenda. You can get the feel from Toameh's description of his visit to several university campuses that they were not unlike the Australians for Palestine rally/play reading attended and supported by a small number of naive and misguided Jewish appeasers.

They'll never learn.

Starbucks Memories

Works of genius.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Today's Age brings us a first - a news article about Israel that isn't critical of the country, doesn't mention the occupation or settlements and doesn't have the comparative death toll since the start of the Second Intifada - Israeli submarine rescues "exhausted" swimmer.

However, the editor who approved its publication has probably kept his job because the story also doesn't mention the Palestinian cross border rocket attacks on the citizens of Sderot or the racism and incitement to violence coming from the Palestinian media and repeated ad nauseum in the mosques of Gaza and Ramallah.

Julia Gillard to visit Israel

The Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is to lead a high level delegation organised by the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange "as part of an effort to strengthen political, business and cultural ties between the two countries" - Gillard to head mission to Israel.

It's interesting to note that even the Arab Lobby which is vicious in its criticism of anything to do with the Jewish State (including its existence even though it claims to support a two state solution - I'll leave that one to you to work out) was invited along and refused to attend for the most tenuous of reasons.

A spokesman for Australians for Palestine, Moamar Mashni, said he was invited by Mr Dadon to accompany the tour as a non-participating observer.

However, he declined because "I was happy to participate as long as it was meaningful, but not to sit in an audience and hear others speak."

Six Million, Seven Million, It Never Happened Anyway...

Marty Peretz in The New Reublic puts forward some interesting thoughts in Six Million, Seven Million, It Never Happened Anyway...

Working with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a French Catholic priest named Father Patrice Desbois has been excavating grave sites in which masses of as yet uncounted and unidentified Jews who were shot by Nazis and local accomplices across the Ukraine during World War II. Desbois has already identified 800 such random cemeteries, and he estimates that there are possibly 1200 others in the Ukraine alone. This was reported in the Times of London and retold in Sunday's New York Post.

...

... Desbois also seems to be animated to do a historical reckoning. The new discoveries, he suggests, means that many more than six million Jews were erased from life during the catastrophe.

...

I understand that many oh, so calm and responsible gentiles--and some historically untouchable and unconnected Jews--think that Israel should not listen at all to what the the president of Iran threatens for the six million Jews who happen to live in the Jewish state. But we cannot afford the luxuries of deterrence theory.

...

The fact is that World War II was not fought to protect Europe's Jews. Their calvary had begun already in 1933. And, even under F.D.R., no one thought that the bombing of the concentration camps was a fitting strategic purpose. So let me just speak for myself. I trust no one in authority in the West to interrupt what Chief-of-Staff General Mike Mullen envisions as a calamity in the making. The president's words are soothing. But they are not persuasive.

Surprise

"Classified information from UN tribunal investigation obtained by German daily 'Der Spiegel' indicates Shiite terror group behind assassination of former Lebanese prime minister due to Nasrallah's envy of latter's power."

From Report: Evidence links Hizbullah to Hariri death. But why am I not surprised?

TWO MIRIAMS/SEVEN MUSLIM CHILDREN

It's become the flavour of the month to write short plays so I'm writing one myself. It's entitled "Two Miriams" and its about the conflict between Israel and the Arabs (or perhaps, should I say the Jews and the Arabs?).

The first of the two Miriams in my fictional play is Miriam Farhat, a Palestinian mother who has a proclivity for sending her sons out on suicide missions with the aim of murdering and maiming as many Jews as possible. This Miriam is extremely popular with her people and gets elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council on the Hamas ticket (at the same time as a character called "Hitler" is elected on the opposition Fatah list). She is of course, strongly supportive of suicide bombers and the ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli towns across the border from her home town of Gaza.

My second Miriam is a Jewish actor, Miriam Margolem who doesn't much like the idea that the Israelis, whose schools and kindergartens are being attacked by the ever increasingly sopisticated missiles being imported from Iran via smuggling tunnels, should defend themselves forcibly against such attacks. If only Jews delivered lots of food and goodies to the Gazans, they would stop hating them and return the compliment by sending over felafels instead of Grad rockets. Miriam's only line in the play is, "I love Israel but not an Israel that kills people. Now will someone please pass the chopped liver? I'm hungry!"

My play examines the nature of evil and asks which of the two Miriams is the more evil and which of them has the worst breath.

On a similar note I now reproduce the script from another relatively new short play Seven Muslim Children but before you read the play, it would be instructive if you went to Blue Truth to get an understanding of why the play was written and the motives behind it - Seven Muslim Children.

SEVEN MUSLIM CHILDREN

1 (circa 900)
Tell him how wonderful it is
Tell him that we won
Tell him about the swords and the rivers of blood
Don’t tell him about the swords and the blood
Tell him we’re doing it in the Name of the Prophet
Tell him they will all convert or be dhimmis
Don’t tell him about dhimmis
Tell him this will all be ours forever
Tell him al-Andalus is Dar al-Islam


2 (circa 1800)
Tell him how we used to rule
Tell him how the world changed
Tell him it was the Europeans’ fault
Don’t tell him it was the Europeans’ fault
Tell him we will go back to al-Andalus and all the other lands one day
Don’t tell him about al-Andalus

3 (circa 1900)
Tell him the Jews are coming back
Don’t tell him the Jews are coming back
Don’t tell him they were ever here
Tell him they’ve always been here
Don’t tell him they’ve always been here
Tell him they want to live as a free people
Tell him they are buying the land
Don’t tell him they’re buying the land
Tell him they’re stealing our land
Tell him they love the land and are draining the swamps
Tell him we want to live where they have built hospitals and schools and roads
Don’t tell him that we didn’t build anything
Don’t tell him they love the land
Don't tell him they have prayed every day for hundreds of years to return to the land

4 (1948)
Tell him to get his gun
Tell him to shoot the Jews
Tell him to block the road
Tell him to shoot the convoys
Tell him they can’t have a country here
Tell him we were going to have a country too
Don’t tell him we were going to have a country too
Tell him the Jews will slaughter him
Tell him about Deir Yassin
Tell him about Deir Yassin
Tell him about Deir Yassin
Don’t tell him about Kfar Etzion
Don’t tell him about Latrun
Don’t tell him about “itbach-al-Yahud”
Tell him “itbach-al-Yahud”
Tell him we will drive them into the sea

5 (1967)
Tell him we’re going to go back
Tell him we’re going back to Jaffa one day
Don’t tell him we’re never going back to Jaffa
Tell him our Arab brothers will help us
Don’t tell him our Arab brothers refuse to help us
Tell him how our Arab brothers kicked out all their Jews
Don’t tell him that the Zionists took in their Jews
Don’t tell him why we can’t leave the camp
Don’t tell him why we can’t live in Cairo, or Beirut, or Damascus
Don’t tell him that it's because they hate us
Tell him they are doing this for our own good
Tell him they will help us go back to Jaffa
Tell him we’re going to go home soon
Tell him Nasser will take us home
Tell him the armies are ready
Tell him the Jews are scared
Tell him we will slaughter all of them
Don’t tell him we will slaughter all of them, even the children
Don’t tell him…..that we lost again
Don’t tell him that they’ll give it all back for peace
Tell him “no, no, no”

6 (2002)
Tell him to put on the bomb belt
Tell him he will have 72 virgins
Don’t tell him that he must die
Don’t tell him that he must kill children
Tell him the Jews aren’t human
Tell him they’re the sons of apes and pigs
Tell him they are infidels in Dar al-Islam
Tell him they let their women be free
Tell him their gays are free
Don’t tell him their gays are free (just in case…)
Tell him Allah will bless him
Tell him we will call him a hero
Don’t tell him how they will die
Don’t tell him how they will be scarred
Don’t tell him they have parents too
Don’t tell him they offered us a country again
Tell him they have no right to a country
Tell him it’s better to die than to admit it
Tell him how we danced in the streets on 9/11
Don’t tell him we danced in the streets on 9/11
Tell him it’s better to kill them than live with them

7 (2008)
Tell him to launch the rockets
Tell him to use the school yard
Don’t tell him to use the school yard
Tell him they’re afraid to fire back because the world will hate them
Don’t tell him they might fire back anyway
Tell him they must all die
Don’t tell him they might attack
Tell him we’re living in the Warsaw Ghetto
Tell him what the Warsaw Ghetto was
Don’t tell him what really happened in the Warsaw Ghetto
Don’t tell him about Auschwitz and Treblinka
Tell him they’re afraid of us and won’t attack us
Tell him we can shoot off rockets forever.
Tell him if he’s lucky the rocket will hit a kindergarten
Tell him “itbach-al-Yahud”
Tell him “Filastin hi arduna, Wa al-Yahud kilabuna”
Tell him we will go back to al-Andalus
In the Name of the Prophet

Notes:

All definitions, unless otherwise hyperlinked, are from mideastweb.org

Andalus: Al Andalus (Spain), and other former Muslim conquests are considered by radical Islamists to be Islamic lands lost to the infidels.

Dar al-Islam: Dar al Islam (Arabic: دار الإسلا) is the area of the world under the rule of Islam , literally, "the home of Islam" or "the home of submission." This is often used by extremists to include areas that used to be part of the Muslim world such as Al-Andalus (Spain) as well as the Muslim world.

Deir Yassin a village near Jerusalem, site of a massacre by Jewish Irgun/Lehi forces (April 9, 1948)

Dhimmi: (Arabic: ذمي) (often pronounced "Zimmi") are Christians, Jews, and sometimes Zoroastrians and people of other faiths living in a Muslim state and enjoying special protection not afforded to other non-Muslims. Dhimmi are supposed to wear special dress and pay the jizyah tax. They are exempt (or rather forbidden) from fighting and from paying the Muslim Zakah tax. The dhimmi were often forced to wear special dress. A dhimmi could not testify against a Muslim in a court of law, meaning that non-Muslims had virtually no legal relief against injustice by Muslims. Many Dhimmi converted, usually because of the social pressure, but also because of forced conversions under various Muslim rulers.

“Filastin hi arduna, Wa al-Yahud kilabuna”: Arabic for "Palestine is our land, and the Jews are our dogs."

Itbach-al-Yahud: Arabic for “slaughter the Jews”;

Both were chanted by Arabs during the 1920 Nebi Musa pogrom and on many occasions since then, including at anti-Israel demonstrations in the US

Kfar Etzion site of a massacre of surrendered Jewish defenders by Palestinians on May 14, 1948

Latrun is the site of a fort and monastery. The position was controlled by the Jordan Legion in 1948, and enforced the blockade of Jewish Jerusalem by the Arab forces.

THE FAKE PALESTINE

Here's an item from elderofziyon about another Palestinian PR scam about Palestinian Arabs holding what are allegdly the deeds and keys to a house, presumably inside Israel.

The Elder points out that while he's not a locksmith, "if old Palestinian keys looked like that, it looks like anyone could get into anyone else's house. No grooves or teeth in the key?

And if the key is fake...what does that say about the deed?"

The Palestinians have collected a very effective array of PR scams - even operas and plays which are clearly offensive to Jews and totally depraved but which manage to get the endorsement of people who claim they're Jewish. The same PR machine is working out ways to sell the message to the public that the murder of Daniel Pearl and the victims in Mumbai's chabad were not the result of anti-Semitic acts and that pigs can fly. Oy vey!

THE JEWISH NAKBA

Thanks to Solomonia, here's the latest excellent must-read and bookmark essay from Ben-Dror Yemini originally published in Hebrew, in MAARIV and presented here in full:

The Jewish Nakba: Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions

Each year, the Palestinians mark Nakba Day, the catastrophe that befell them with the establishment of the State of Israel. But the Jews in Arab countries also suffered catastrophe and it was many times worse.

They say that she was stunningly beautiful. Sol (Suleika) Hatuel was 17 years old when she was beheaded. A Muslim friend claimed that she had succeeded in converting her. When Sol denied the claim, she was accused of renouncing Islam and was condemned to death. Her case reached the sultan.

In order to prevent her death, the community elders tried to persuade her to live as a Muslim. She refused and said, "I was born as a Jew, I will die as a Jew." Her fate was sealed. It happened in 1834. She was from Tangier and was executed in Fez. Many make pilgrimages to her grave. Despite the fact that the incident was immortalized in eyewitness testimony, in a famous painting and in a play, her story has been forgotten. The following article is dedicated to her and to the victims of the Jewish Nakba.

Every year on the 15th of May, the Palestinians - and many others around the world along with them - "celebrate" Nakba Day. For them, this is the day that marks the great catastrophe that befell them as result of the establishment of the State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs became refugees. Some fled, some were deported. The Nakba grew to such enormous proportions that it is preventing a solution to the dispute.

We must remember that in the 1940s, population exchanges and deportations for the purpose of creating national states were the accepted norm. Tens of millions of people experienced it, but only the Palestinians (and they are not alone in this) have been inflating the myth of the Nakba.

However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same years, there was a long line of slaughters, of pogroms, of property confiscation and of deportations against Jews in Islamic countries. This chapter of history has been left in the shadows. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the Palestinian Nakba. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary.

Like tens of millions of other refugees around the world, they preferred to heal the wound. Not to scratch it and not to open it and not to make it bleed even more. The Palestinians, in contrast, preferred bleeding to rehabilitation. And now they are also paying the price.

The industry of lies has intensified the myth of the Nakba and turned it into the ultimate crime. The Nakba has spawned innumerable publications and conferences, to the point of completely distorting the actual historical process. The Deir Yassin massacre has become one of the milestones in the Palestinian Nakba. There is no need to hide what occurred there (even though the issue of the massacre is in dispute). Innocent people were killed.

There were a few other instances of behavior that should be exposed and condemned.

Extermination War against the Jews

A long series of massacres was perpetrated against the Jews in Arab countries. They did not declare war on the countries in which they lived. They were loyal citizens. That did not help them. Their suffering was erased. Their story is never told. The Palestinian narrative has taken over history. There is no need for a Palestinian narrative versus a Zionist narrative. We need to shake off narratives in favor of the truth. And the truth is the number of Jews murdered was greater, their dispossession was greater, and their suffering greater.

A stunning testimonial from those years, which actually comes from the Arab side, sheds light on the issue. In 1936, Alawite notables sent a letter to the French Foreign Minister in which they expressed their concern for the future of the region. They also referred to the Jewish question: "The Jews brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed gold and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything by force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and didn't hesitate to massacre their children and women ... Thus, a black fate awaits the Jews in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria united with Muslim Palestine." The interesting thing is that one of the letter's signatories was none other than the great grandfather of Bashar Al Assad, the president of Syria.

We must remember that Nakba Day is the date of the declaration of Israel's independence, May 15th . We must remember what happened just a few hours after that declaration. The Secretary of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzamaha, announced the declaration of war against Israel: "This war will be a war of annihilation and the story of the slaughter will be told like the campaigns of the Mongols and the Crusaders."

The Mufti, Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was close to Hitler during the Second World War, added his own bit: "I am declaring a holy war. My brother Muslims! Slaughter the Jews! Kill them all!" The mini-Holocaust of the Jews in Arab countries.

Various documents, some of them discovered only in recent years, show that the declaration of war was far broader. It was actually a declaration of war on the Jews.

Research that was conducted, among others, by Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada, shows that the Arab League formulated a bill that would place a series of sanctions on the Jews, including confiscation of property, bank accounts and more. The preamble to the bill states that "All Jews will be considered members of the Jewish minority in the State of Palestine." And if the fate of the Jews of Palestine was sealed, the fate of the Jews in Arab countries was clear.

The bill was indeed the background to the sanctions against the Jews in Arab countries - sometimes by way of legislation, as happened in Iraq and later in Egypt, and sometimes by taking those measures without the need for any legislation. According to the industry of lies, the Jews in Arab countries lived peacefully in their environment, under the protection of the government, and it was only because of the Zionist movement and the harm done to the Arabs in Palestine that the Jews began to suffer.

This lie has been repeated innumerable times. Most of the Jews in Arab countries did not undergo the horrors of the Holocaust. But, even before the advent of Zionism, their situation was not any better. There were periods in which the Jews enjoyed relative peace under Muslim rule, but those periods were the exceptions. Throughout Jewish history in Muslim lands there were humiliations, expulsions, pogroms and a systematic deprivation of rights.

Series of Pogroms

We can, of course, start with the conflict between Muhammad and the Jews. Muhammad undertook social reforms, bringing the Arabs out of the Jahaliya period, and borrowed the concept of monotheism - primarily, perhaps, from the Jews. Many motifs from the Jewish religion appear in the Koran, for example, circumcision and the prohibition on eating pork. But Muhammad wanted to convert the Jews, they, of course, refused. The result was a confrontation that ended in the expulsion and slaughter of hundreds.

The Jews, as the "People of the Book," were given the right to live under the protection of Islam and to practice their religion. From time to time, from generation to generation, the conditions underwent changes. In many cases, the Jews lived under the covenant of Khalif Omar.

This covenant enabled them to live as protected people ("Dhimmis"), albeit with inferior status. But many times, under Muslim rule, they were not even allowed a life of inferior status.

The Golden Age: One of the proofs of the coexistence of Jews and Muslims is Jewish prosperity under Muslim rule in Spain and the Golden Age. The reality, however, was different.

It encompassed a series of violence events against the Jews. In 1011 in Cordoba, Spain, under Muslim rule, there were pogroms in which, according to various estimates, from hundreds to thousands were murdered. In 1066 in Granada, Yosef Hanagid was executed, along with between 4,000 and 6,000 other Jews. One of the worst periods of all began in 1148, when the Almohad dynasty came to power (al Muwahhidūn), and ruled Spain and North Africa during the 12th and 13th centuries.

Morocco: The country that suffered from the worst series of massacres. In the 8th century whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First. In 1033, in the city of Fez, 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob. The rise of the Almohad dynasty caused waves of mass murders. According to testimony from that time, 100,000 Jews were slaughtered in Fez and about 120,000 in Marrakesh (this testimony should be viewed with caution). In 1465, another massacre took place in Fez, which spread to other cities in Morocco.

There were pogroms in Tetuan in 1790 and 1792, in which children were murdered, women were raped and property was looted. Between 1864 and 1880, there were a series of pogroms against the Jews of Marrakesh, in which hundreds were slaughtered. In 1903, there were pogroms in two cities - Taza and Settat, in which over 40 Jews were killed.

In 1907, there was a pogrom in Casablanca in which 30 Jews were killed and many women were raped. In 1912, there was another massacre in Fez in which 60 Jews were killed and about 10,000 were left homeless. In 1948, another series of pogroms began against the Jews which led to the slaughter of 42 in the cities of Oujda and Jrada.

Algeria: A series of massacres occurred in 1805, 1815 and 1830. The situation of the Jews improved with the start of the French conquest in 1830, but that did nor prevent anti-Jewish outbursts in the 1880s. The situation deteriorated again with the rise of the Vichy government. Even before 1934, the country was permeated by Nazi influences, which led to the slaughter of 25 Jews in the city of Constantine. When it achieved independence in 1962, laws were passed against citizenship for anyone who was not a Muslim and their property was effectively confiscated. Most of the Jews left, usually completely penniless, together with the French ("pieds noirs").

Libya: In 1785, hundreds of Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha. Under Nazi influence, harassment of the Jews intensified. Jewish property in Benghazi was plundered, thousands were sent to camps and about 500 Jews were killed. In 1945, at the end of World War II, a program against the Jews began and the number of murdered reached 140. The New York Times reported the horrible scenes of babies and old people who had been beaten to death. In the riots that broke out in 1948, the Jews were more prepared, so only 14 were killed. Following the Six Day War, riots broke out once again and 17 Jews were slaughtered.

Iraq: a massacre occurred in Basra in 1776. The situation of the Jews improved under British rule in 1917, but this improvement ended with Iraq's independence in 1932. German influences increased and reached a peak in 1941 in the pogrom known as Farhud, in which 182 Jews were slaughtered (according to historian Elie Kedourie, 600 people were actually murdered) and thousands of houses were pillaged.

Those were the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, who preached violence against the Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iraqi parliament acted according to the Arab League bill and in 1950 and froze the assets of Jews. Sanctions were imposed on those who remained in Iraq. The Farhud massacre and the harassment from 1946 to 1949 to all intents and purposes turned the Iraqi Jews into exiles and refugees. The few thousand who remained in Iraq suffered from harsh edicts. In 1967, 14 Iraqis were sentenced to death on trumped up charges of espionage. Among them were 11 Jews. Radio Iraq invited the masses to the hanging festivities.

Syria: The first blood libel in a Muslim country occurred in 1840, and led to the kidnapping and torture of dozens of Jewish children, sometimes to the point of death, and a pogrom against the Jews. In 1986, the Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Talas, published a book, "The Matzah of Zion," in which he claims that the Jews did, indeed, use the blood of a Christian monk to bake matzah. Same old anti-Semitism, new edition. Other pogroms occurred in Aleppo in 1850 and in 1875, in Damascus in 1848 and in 1890, in Beirut in 1862 and in 1874, and in Dir al Kamar there was another blood libel which also led to a pogrom in 1847. That year, there was a pogrom against the Jews of Jerusalem, which was the result of that blood libel. In 1945, the Jews of Aleppo suffered severe pogroms. 75 Jews were murdered and the community was destroyed. There was a resurgence of the violence in 1947, which turned most of the Syrian Jews into refugees. Those who remained there lived for many years as hostages.

Iran: There was a pogrom against the Jews of Mashhad in 1839. A mob was incited to attack Jews, and slaughtered almost 40. The rest were forced to convert. That is how the Marranos of Mashhad came into being. In 1910, there was a blood libel in Shiraz in which 30 Jews were murdered and all Jewish homes were pillaged.

Yemen: There were fluctuations in relations that ranged between tolerance and inferior subsistence, between harassment and pogroms. The Rambam's Letter to Yemen was sent following a letter he received from the leader of the Yemeni Jews, describing edicts of forced conversion issued against the Jews (1173). There were further waves of apostasy edicts which cannot be detailed here for lack of space.

One of the worst milestones was the Mawza exile. Three years after Imam Al Mahdi took power in 1676, he drove the Jews into one of the most arid districts of Yemen. According to various accounts, 60 - 75% of the Jews died as a result of the exile. Many and varied edicts were imposed on the Jews, differing only in severity. One of the harshest was the Orphans' Edict, which ordered the forced conversion of orphaned children to Islam. In nearby Aden, which was under British rule, pogroms occurred in 1947 which took the lives of 82 Jews. 106 of the 170 shops that were owned by Jews were completely destroyed. Hundreds of houses and all the community's buildings were burned down.

Egypt: As in the other Arab countries, the Jews of Egypt also suffered inferior status for hundreds of years. A significant improvement occurred when Muhammad Ali came to power in 1805. The testimony of French diplomat, Edmond Combes, leaves nothing in doubt: "To the Muslims, no race is more worthy of contempt than the Jewish race." Another diplomat added, "The Muslims do not hate any other religion the way they hate that of the Jews."

Following the blood libel in Damascus, similar libels began to spread in Egypt as well and incited mobs to carry out a series of attacks: in Cairo in 1844, 1890, and in 1901-1902; and Alexandria in 1870, 1882 and in 1901-1907. Similar attacks also occurred in Port Said and in Damanhur.

Later on, there were riots against the Jews at the end of World War II, in 1945, in which 10 were killed and hundreds were injured. In 1947, the Companies Law was passed, which severely damaged Jewish businesses and led to the confiscation of property. In 1948, following the UN resolution on partition, riots began in Cairo and Alexandria. The dead numbered between 80 and 180. Tens of thousands were forced to leave, many fleeing and abandoning their property. The lot of those who remained did not improve. In 1956, a law was passed in Egypt which effectively denied the Jews citizenship, forcing them to leave the country with no property. This was an act of pure expulsion and mass property confiscation.

***

The above is just a partial list out of a long series of massacres in Muslim countries. It happened before the Zionist endeavor. It continued with the Zionist endeavor. We are talking about a succession of events. Tens of thousands were murdered simply because they were Jewish. So the fairytale of coexistence and blaming Zionism for undermining that coexistence is yet another completely baseless myth.

Before the UN vote on partition in November 1947, Egypt's ambassador to the UN, Heykal Pasha, warned that "The lives of a million Jews in Muslim countries will be in danger if the vote is for partition... if Arab blood is spilled in Palestine, Jewish blood will be spilled elsewhere in the world."

Four days afterwards, the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Fadil al Jamali said that "We will not be able to restrain the masses in the Arab countries, after the harmony in which Jews and Arabs lived together." There was no harmony. There had been a massacre of Jews just a few years earlier. El Jamali lied, of course. The very same Iraqi government had encouraged the harassment of Jews and issued orders to confiscate all Jewish property.

Additionally, the Iraqi leader of the time, Nuri Said, had already presented a plan for expelling the Jews in 1949, even before the hasty - actually forced - exit of the Jews from Iraq. He also explained that "The Jews are a source of trouble in Iraq. They have no place among us. We must get rid of them as best we were able." Said even presented a plan to lead the Jews via Jordan in order to coerce them into passage to Israel. Jordan objected, but the expulsion was implemented anyway. Said even admitted that this entailed a type of population exchange.

So the massacres, the pogroms and the great expulsion of the Jews was a continuation of their suffering under Muslim rule. There have always been Muslims who came out in defense of the Jews. They are also worthy of mention. That were also periods of prosperity, but it appears that most of the Jewish prosperity, as in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, in Algeria in the 19th and 20th centuries, in Iraq in the 1920s - was under colonial rule. In most cases, the situation of the Jews was bad before the European invasion and worsened once again with the end of the colonial era.

* * *

Throughout the relations between Jews and Arabs, in Arab countries or in the course of the Zionist enterprise, there was not one case of a pogrom against Muslims of the type committed by the Arabs against the Jews. Even in the worst cases, which must be condemned, such as Deir Yassin, they occurred as part of a military confrontation.

Those are cases that should be condemned, but we need to put things in perspective. The Arabs slaughtered the Jews without any hostilities and without any military excuse, just because they were Jews. And those few Arabs who were killed, were killed as part of a military campaign. Despite this, any injury inflicted on the Arab population resulted in innumerable investigations and references. The worst abuse of all, the abuse of Jews by Arabs, was erased and forgotten.

Let's return to Deir Yassin, the ultimate symbol of the Nakba. We have called it an indecent act and we will repeat that. But we must note that it was preceded by a series of murderous terrorist attacks against the civilian population. Waves of incidents, which to all intents and purposes were actual pogroms, by an incited mob that attacked the civilian population. Thousands of Jews were slaughtered - women, children and the elderly. The Palestinians even murdered their own people. In the great Arab Revolt in the 1930s, 400 Jews and 5,000 Arabs were killed, most of them at the hands of their brethren.

The months before Deir Yassin were the worst of all. 39 workers were murdered at the Haifa refineries, 50 Jews were killed by car bombs in Jerusalem, and on and on. In total, in the four months between the vote on partition and the declaration of establishment of the State of Israel, 815 Jews were murdered, most of them before the Deir Yassin incident (on April 9, 1948), some afterward (the slaughter of the Hadassah hospital convoy, 79 killed, April 13, 1948). Most were civilians. Most died in massacres and terrorist attacks. And that is the real background. Far more murdered Jews. But they have all been forgotten. They should be mentioned. That is the Jewish Nakba, whose victims, in Israel and around the world, are mentioned less and less.

The Palestinians paid the price

Close to a million Jews lived in Arab countries at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel. Just a few live there today. Most left because they suffered from pogroms and the threat to their lives. It was a crueler expulsion than the one suffered by the Arabs of Palestine, who paid the price for the declarations of war and annihilation made by their leaders. Even the Jewish property that was confiscated or abandoned as a result of the expulsion is more valuable than the Arab property that remained in Israel.

Various investigators have tried to estimate the value of the confiscated Jewish property following the forced departure of the Jews from Arab countries, compared with the Arab property left in Israel following the forced departure of the Arabs. Economist Sidney Zabludoff, an international expert in the field, estimates that the value of the Arab property is $3.9 billion, compared with the value of the Jewish property which is $6 billion (at 2007 values).

So even in this area, the Palestinians' claims are refuted. They dragged the Arab countries into war. They paid the price. And they are the ones who caused the Jews to pay an even higher price. Both in property and in blood.

This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba, and it by no means includes all the cases of pogroms, property confiscations, forced conversions and other harassment. The purpose is precisely the opposite. When they understand, in the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in lives, is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The Jewish Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous. But it is the suffering of many nations, Jews and Arabs among them, who went through the experience as part of the creation of new nation states.

It is therefore worth presenting the story of the Jewish Nakba. Not for the purpose of increasing the hostility, but for the purpose of presenting the truth, and for the purpose of reconciliation between the nations. Inshallah.

TULIP

The National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes is to be congratulated on taking part in a joint initiative together with Michael J. Leahy, general secretary of Britain's Community union and Stuart Appelbaum president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, representing workers in the US and Canada which presents a pragmatic approach to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians through co-operation, dialogue and reconciliation - UNIONS MOVE TO OVERTURN ISRAEL BOYCOTT.

The TULIP initiative is a practical way of moving the peace process forward and stands in stark contrast to the movement to delegitimize and dehumanize Israel through any means possible fostered by groups such as Independent Australian Jewish Voices and Australians for Palestine which brought Caryl Churchill’s execrable piece of hatred soaked agitprop “Seven Jewish Children” to Melbourne this week. The AFP which promotes boycotts of Israeli products and Israeli academics has been effective enough to fool one Jewish academic who describes himself a “Zionist” and others who claim they love Israel into sharing its podium in a one sided discussion after the play reading.

Perhaps they might be interested their friends at AFP where it stands in terms of its preparedness to lend its support to TULIP or any other like practical initiatives that involve a positive approach rather than the destructive approach inherent in their constant propaganda onslaught against the Jewish State.

CLUELESS

Our local media is totally clueless when it comes to an understanding of the discussions going on in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Much of the discourse between the two leaders is, of course, pure show and the United States and Israel remain firm allies. The Age reports and opinion articles on the meeting seem to wishfully reflect that the situation is otherwise and the Australian is at least reasobably close in Middle East requires pragmatic realism but the great Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen (above) gets it right.

JACOBSON v MARGOYLES

It's worthwhile reverting to Howard Jacobson's article Let’s see the 'criticism' of Israel for what it really is to assist in understanding the evil of the self-serving and arrogant Miriam Margoyles who describes herself as "a really good actress" (that's what she told the Age which seems to be promoting the cause of Australians for Palestine lately) and has thrown her not inconsiderable weight behind the notorous Jew baiting rant disguised as a play "Seven Jewish Children" (brought to you by AFP).

Here's what Jacobson says about the work:

Rhetoric is precisely what has warped report and analysis these past months, and in the process made life fraught for most English Jews who, like me, do not differentiate between the worth of Jewish and Palestinian lives, though the imputation – loud and clear in a new hate-fuelled little chamber-piece by Caryl Churchill – is that Jews do. “Massacre” and “Slaughter” are rhetorical terms. They determine the issue before it can begin to be discussed. Are you for massacre or are you not? When did you stop slaughtering your wife?

I watched demonstrators approach members of the public with their petitions. “Do you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?” What were those approached expected to reply? – “No, I want it to continue unabated.” If “Massacre” presumes indiscriminate, “Slaughter” presumes innocence. There is no dodging the second of those. In Gaza the innocent have suffered unbearably.
...

Quite simply, in this wantonly inflammatory piece, the Jews drop in on somewhere they have no right to be, despise, conquer, and at last revel in the spilling of Palestinian blood. There is a one-line equivocal mention of a suicide bomber, and ditto of rockets, both compromised by the “Tell her” device, otherwise no Arab lifts a finger against a Jew. “Tell her about Jerusalem,” but no one tells her, for example, that the Jewish population of East Jersusalem was expelled at about the time our survivors turn up, that it was cleansed from the city and its sacred places desecrated or destroyed. Only in the crazed brains of Israelis can the motives for any of their subsequent actions be found.

Thus lie follows lie, omission follows omission, until, in the tenth and final minute, we have a stage populated by monsters who kill babies by design – “Tell her we killed the babies by mistake,” one says, meaning don’t tell her what we really did – who laugh when they see a dead Palestinian policeman (“Tell her they’re animals... Tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out”), who consider themselves the “chosen people”, and who admit to feeling happy when they see Palestinian “children covered in blood”.

Anti-Semitic? No, no. Just criticism of Israel.

Only imagine this as Seven Muslim Children and we know that the Royal Court would never have had the courage or the foolhardiness to stage it. I say that with no malice towards Muslims. I do not approve of censorship but I admire their unwillingness to be traduced. It would seem that we Jews, however, for all our ingrained brutality – we English Jews at least – are considered a soft touch. You can say what you like about us, safe in the knowledge that while we slaughter babies and laugh at murdered policemen (“Tell her we’re the iron fist now”) we will squeak no louder than a mouse when we are abused.

Caryl Churchill will argue that her play is about Israelis not Jews, but once you venture on to “chosen people” territory – feeding all the ancient prejudice against that miscomprehended phrase – once you repeat in another form the medieval blood-libel of Jews rejoicing in the murder of little children, you have crossed over. This is the old stuff. Jew-hating pure and simple – Jew-hating which the haters don’t even recognise in themselves, so acculturated is it – the Jew-hating which many of us have always suspected was the only explanation for the disgust that contorts and disfigures faces when the mere word Israel crops up in conversation. So for that we are grateful. At last that mystery is solved and that lie finally nailed. No, you don’t have to be an anti-Semite to criticise Israel. It just so happens that you are.

If one could simply leave them to it one would. It’s a hell of its own making, hating Jews for a living. Only think of the company you must keep. But these things are catching. Take Michael Billington’s somnolent review of the play in the Guardian. I would imagine that any accusation of anti-Semitism would horrify Michael Billington. And I certainly don’t make it. But if you wanted an example of how language itself can sleepwalk the most innocent towards racism, then here it is. “Churchill shows us,” he writes, “how Jewish children are bred to believe in the ‘otherness’ of
Palestinians...”

It is not just the adopted elision of Israeli children into Jewish children that is alarming, or the unquestioning acceptance of Caryl Churchill’s offered insider knowledge of Israeli child-rearing, what’s most chilling is that lazy use of the word “bred”, so rich in eugenic and bestial connotations, but inadvertently slipped back into the conversation now, as truth. Fact: Jews breed children in order to deny Palestinians their humanity. Watching another play in the same week, Billington complains about its manipulation of racial stereotypes. He doesn’t, you see, even notice the inconsistency.

And so it happens. Without one’s being aware of it, it happens. A gradual habituation to the language of loathing. Passed from the culpable to the unwary and back again. And soon, before you know it...

Not here, though. Not in cosy old lazy old easy-come easy-go England.

Jacobson wrote this in February. It's almost as if he saw three months into the future and looked at Melbourne, Australia.

DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT THIS

I recently came across some email correspondence sent by a political commentator who appears on a radio programme and who seems to think of himself as progressive.

The writer of the email was criticising the recipient of the email for the mere mention in correspondence of the connection between Hitler and the wartime Palestinian leader and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al Husseini (pictured above in Berlin).

According to him, if you mentioned this fact you were committing an act of racism against the Palestinian people.

I never quite understood why telling the truth and stating undisputed historical facts was so wrong, particularly in view of the admiration Yasser Arafat later had of al Husseini (he even lied that they were related) and of the fact that the philosophies of the Grand Mufti's Moslem Brotherhood inspired the birth of Hamas in the 1980's.

Al Husseini spent the war years assisting the Nazis in plotting their final solution for the Jews, a solution he had in mind for export to the British Mandate of Palestine but for the defeat of fascism.

So it's not only verboten to speak the truth about such evil monsters lest we offend the Palestinians but its also racist and yet when a playwright yells lies in a work of art and makes the obscene comparison between Nazis and Jews defending their children's lives, some people - even some Jews - think it's kosher.

I am grateful for the many people who come out in support of the Jewish people in the face of the travesty we had to witness inside our own State Library when the play “Seven Jewish Children” was staged while some in the crowd outside chanted in unison "Free Palestine, from the river to the sea".

On hearing about this, I thought it was so ironical that the Australians for Palestine are doing such a particularly good job in infusing their followers with hatred, a belief in the contents of the Hamas Charter and the cause of destroying Israel while, inside, a few stupid Jews are sitting smugly believing they are doing something good.