The Mafia Mentality of the Mideast: Take Away the Jews Or We’ll Kill Them and It Will Be Your Fault

Eldad Tzioni
newsrealblog.com
15 February '11





In 1947, just days before the UN vote to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, an Egyptian leader named Mohammed Hussein Heykal Pasha spoke out against the idea at a UN committe meeting at Lake Success.

His argument against a Jewish state was simple.

"There are a million Jews spread throughout the Middle East. it is not our humanitarian duty and your duty on behalf of the Jewish people to place in serious danger a million Jews just to save a few thousand in Europe or to satisfy a Zionist dream.

You are unconsciously on the verge of lighting the flame of anti-semitism in the Middle East, which would be more difficult to extinguish than it was in Germany. At present we regard the million Jews in our countries as brothers – your decision would prompt some of our people to regard them as enemies. I warn you of this while there is still time.”

This little speech is interesting because it uses an argument that has been used by Israel’s enemies for years. The argument is twofold: if Jews get what they want, there will be murderous consequences–and the West will be responsible for those consequences because the Arabs will not be able to stop them from happening.

Notice how Heykal couched his threat against a million Jews. He used human rights terminology! He argued, on humanitarian grounds, that a Jewish state would cause Jews to die. The small fact that it would be Arabs killing the Jews is of little moral consequence, as the corollary to the argument is that Arabs cannot control themselves from acting violently.

There have been variations, but this has been the argument that has been used against Israel for over six decades. Arabs cannot control themselves from killing Jews, therefore Jews must vacate areas that Arabs don’t want them to go.

Today’s version of the argument is that Jews cannot live in the West Bank or much of Jerusalem because the Arab world cannot tolerate them there. It is regarded–by the Arabs themselves when they formulate this line of reasoning–as an inherent part of the Arab psyche. The only way to peace, they say, is by barring Jews from places like Hebron, Shiloh, Bet El, Shechem, Bethlehem, and much of Jerusalem.

In this topsy-turvy worldview, peace is dependent on ethnic cleansing of Jews.

In any other context, ethnic cleansing is considered a war crime. Only in the territories is it considered a prerequisite for peace.

(Read full "The Mafia Mentality of the Mideast: Take Away the Jews Or We’ll Kill Them and It Will Be Your Fault")

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