The Terrible Hypocrisy About Israel

…the Europeans were the most racist and anti-Semitic from their age of exploration right up to Hitler’s “final solution”. Spain, you may remember, was one of the greatest culprits.

January 2, 1492 saw the formal surrender of Moorish Granada to Christian Spain. Under the terms of the surrender agreement, all the conquered Moors were to be allowed to remain in the territory and practice their faith, unless they chose to convert to Christianity or emmigrate to Africa.

However, ten years later, the agreement was abruptly abrogated by the Spanish monarchs Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon, and all Muslims were ordered to embrace Christianity or be expelled forthwith.

On August 2, 1942 the final deadline arrived for the expulsion from Spain of its entire Jewish population. Some 120,000 to 150,000 were forced to flee from homes and lands their families had occupied for generations, in some cases for centuries, to take with them only their most immediate personal possessions but not, however, their gold, silver, jewels, or currency, which were left behind for the Spanish crown and its agents.

This anti-Semitic persecution by the Spanish Christians predated the first German Nazi anti-Semitic persecution by 441 years. But long before the arrival of Hitler, the Spanish – followed later by the British, the French, the Dutch, the Italian, the Portuguese, the Belgians and other Europeans – gave full rein to their genocidal impulses from the Americas to Africa, Asia and Australasia. If you wish to go into some of the details of this most shameful and most horrific episodes of human history, read Robert A. Williams, Jr’s book, of which I had cited earlier.

The Arabs and the Muslims did not persecute the Jews; as a matter of fact, many of the Jews expelled from various parts of a supposedly Christian Europe sought and obtained refuge in Arab and Muslim countries.

The cruel irony today is that Europeans, who have this great guilt complex about the Jews they had persecuted for so long and so viciously, are trying to give lectures to the Arabs and the Muslims and the world at large about human rights, racism and civilizations. Yes, including the British, the Anglo-Saxon cousins of the Americans, whenever they forget conveniently the Balfour Declaration of November 1917.

One may or may not fully agree with Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s version of the Jewish Holocaust during the Second World War in Europe. But that doesn’t mean Ahmadenijad is necessarily wrong on everything he says about racism and extreme cruelty perpetrated by Israel and Zionism.

But then again, the Iranian leader has been so demonized by the West that no rational discourse on his arguments is possible with, and in, the West.

However, surely Susan Nathan is not in that unfortunate and unenviable position? Not yet, hopefully. At least not fully yet.

Susan Nathan is a British-born Jew. On the 10th of October 1999, Susan Nathan left London to take up the ‘Law of Return’ offered by Israel to Jews throughout the world.

Within months of her arrival in Tel Aviv she decided to cross the ethnic divide between Jewish and Arab Israelis (Palestinian who are Israeli citizens, as distinct from the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) to settle in Tamra, a town of 25,000 Muslims, between the port of Haifa and the Sea of Galilee (which is actually a lake), living as guest of the Abu Hayjas family.

It was here at first hand that she learned about the great suffering and neglect endured by the one million Arab Israeli citizens, about 20 per cent of the entire population, it was also through this extraordinary and courageous experience that she discovered the myths and lies of Zionism and the Zionist state.

The result of it all is Susan Nathan’s book, The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish Arab Divide (Harper Perennial, London,2006)

The Sunday Times of London calls the Book “An eye-opening account”. The Tablet describes it as “A powerful, readable and courageous book.”

British Journalist Jonathan Dimbleby says: “The Other Side of Israel is a deeply troubling book. It should be ready by anyone who wants to understand the reality of life for the Arab citizens of Israel……Her experiences transform her from an ardent Zionist into an eloquent but sorrowful critic of the state she had previously revered.”

Let’s read some of the things she has to say:

“…the extensive confiscation of Arab communities’ agricultural land by the Jewish state. Some Arab areas have lost all their farming lands…”(p.9)

“Many people in Tamara, like other Palestinians, have loved ones still living in refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria more than five decades after they were forced to flee during the war that founded the Jewish state.”(p.16)

“In the callous, Orwellian language of Israeli bureaucracy they and another quarter of a million Israeli Arabs are know as ‘present absentees’: present in Israel in 1948, but absent from their homes when the authorities registered all property in the new Jewish state. Everything these refugees owned, from their own land and homes to their possessions and bank accounts, has been confiscated and is now owned by the state.”(p.18)

More than four hundred Palestinian villages were destroyed by the Israeli army during and after the war in 1948, to prevent the refugees from returning. There was even a special government department created to plan the destruction.”(p.18)

“Arab politicians are considered hostile to the state unless they join a Zionist party, and Arab parties have been excluded from every government in Israel’s history.”(p.31)

“…my critical comments about Israel not having invested in any new housing schemes for the Arab minority in the state’s fifty-five years, despite the population having grown seven-fold.”(p.35)

“In Arab communities across Israel there are tens of thousands of homes judged illegal by the state, and under threat of demolition.”(p.51)

“In fact, it was clear they (left-wing Israelis) had no Arab friends at all. I was mortified. The revelation that I had stumbled across the same kind of master-servant relationship as exists in South Africa was something I was little prepared for. For a week I was racked by pains in my stomach and head. It was as if I was purging myself of all the lies I had been raised on.”(p.54)

And Susan Nathan’s book has about another 250 pages to go. She must have been demonized as a “self-hating Jew” by the Zionist establishment for telling the painful truth about racism in Israel, this former AIDS Counsellor in London in her fifties.

- The above is an excerpt from an article by Fan Yew Teng. Obviously, it is alright to be anti-Palestine but raise a word against Israel and one will immediately be branded anti-Semitic.

Israel is indeed the most cruel and racist regime in the world.