Jews' minority rights under Arab rule

October 25, 9:51 AMNY Israel Conflict ExaminerRichard Shulman

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A.P. Photo/ Tara Todras-Whitehill

State Dept. proposals describe Jewish towns in Judea-Samaria, and only Jewish ones, as “settlements,” as if alien.  Calling “settlements” an obstacle to peace, the State Dept. asserts that peace starts when the Jews are expelled from them. 

An issue suppressed from State Dept. proposals -- Jews’ minority rights under Arab rule -- was raised by a letter to the Wall St. Journal (10/24, Alan E. Scholnick, Bart Teush).  Instead of portraying the issue as territorial, the letter frames it as one of minority rights that test the western Palestinian Arabs’ commitment to peace and their moral legitimacy for statehood.   

Let international policy makers hold those Arabs accountable for the minority rights and security of Jewish inhabitants!  Why should a group of Arabs who won’t protect minorities get statehood? 

I think the letter makes valid points, but for Zionism, it is a fall-back position.  Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, embraces the Jewish people’s right to recover its homeland, including the Territories.  That is the broader, fundamental issue of minority rights.  I contacted one of the letter’s authors, who does not mean that negotiations need grant statehood, but that if it did, he had laid out minimal qualifications for it not usually raised.

The Arabs already have given their answer to the letter’s question.  The Arabs continue their centuries-long oppression of minorities -- religious, racial, and national.  They still squeeze Christians from countries to which the Muslims were the alien invaders.  The Palestinian Authority (P.A.) authorizes capital punishment for Arabs who sell land to Jews.  P.A. doctrine: use any land they gain to seize Israel.  They cannot be entrusted with the war-making power of sovereignty.

The letter challenges us to measure the Palestinian Arabs in this modern age as if they were enlightened, too.  But Scholnick and Teush acknowledge that the anti-Zionist media proposes ethnic cleansing of innocent Jews as the way to peace with those who war on them.  That proposal give the lie to the image of modern statecraft as enlightened.  It reflects a double standard typical of anti-Zionism, by not also proposing to ethnically cleanse the Arab fifth column of Israel, generally subversive in intent, committing acts of war, and electing representatives who endorse those acts.  That double standard impugns the anti-Zionists’ ethics and vitiates their case.

Why are Jewish towns in Judea-Samara more alien than Arab ones?  All the Arab towns are built on or named after Hebrew towns.  As between Jews and Arabs, Jews were the original inhabitants.  Arabs conquered, but within a couple of hundred years, themselves were conquered by Turks.  Some Jews remained.  Under Turkish rule, both populations had dwindled to almost nothing.  Zionism revived the area, so that Arabs followed Jews in.  WWI cost the Turks control; the victors designated 99 ½% of the Mideast for the Arabs and ½% for the Jews.  The Arabs complained that was not enough.  Britain then gave them 79% of the Palestine Mandate, now called Jordan.  The Arabs complained that that was not enough, either.  They tried to expel and murder the Jews.  And now they want still another state, from which, as Arafat taught and the rest of them understand, they would fight, again, to destroy the Jewish sovereignty and people.  Is their proposed genocide the opportunity that is in President Obama’s “vision?”

(For what to expect of the Arabs, click here )