Israel Matzav

'Delivering' Israel

The little rump king, whose 'nation' was artificially carved out of the League of Nations' Palestine Mandate, called on the United States on Friday to 'influence' Israel to surrender to the 'Palestinians.'

Jordan's King Abdullah II said Friday that Israel must choose between the mentality of "Israel the fortress" or "living in peace and security with its neighbors."

Interviewed on state television before his departure for the United States, the king said the United States was the country most capable of influencing Israel.

"It is time that the [US] employ this influence to prove its transparency to the people of the region, and that it is not biased," Abdullah said.

I suppose that the little rump king anticipates that if Israel gives away all of Judea and Samaria to the 'Palestinians' and then allows millions of 'refugees' to 'return' to 'their homes' in Israel, we will then have the kind of 'security' that existed before 1967:

More importantly, however, the basic premise of the Palestinian claim - that the 'occupation' causes terrorism - is historically flawed. Arab and Palestinian terrorism against Israel existed prior to the beginning of Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the Six Day War of June 1967, and even prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948.

For example, Arab terrorism was rampant during wave of anti-Jewish riots in 1920-21 (which was characterized by the brutal murder in Jaffa of the prominent Jewish author Y. Brenner), during the 'Disturbances' of 1929 (which included the massacre of the Jewish community in Hebron), during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, and in many other recorded incidents of wholesale anti-Jewish Arab violence throughout the pre-state period.

The Palestinian terrorism campaign was stepped-up on the eve of the UN Partition Resolution of November 1947, and led to the joint Arab invasion of 1948-49 which delineated the boundaries of the newly established State of Israel.

Indeed, this deplorable violence can be traced back to the beginning of the renewed Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel over a century ago.

After the War of Independence, Arab terrorism expanded in scope. In 1952, when 'fedayeen' terrorist border incursions reached their height, there were about 3,000 incidents of cross-border violence, extending from the malicious destruction of property to the brutal murder of civilians. This anti-Israeli violence encompassed both frontier settlements and population centers, and was perpetrated, for the most part, against innocent civilians, most of them new immigrants.

In conclusion, the oft-repeated Arab claim that the Israeli 'occupation' is somehow to blame for the Palestinian terrorism is nothing more than an empty retort, repudiated by the facts, and disproved by a century of historical reality.

But the little rump king is going to speak to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday and tell the Congress that solving the 'Palestinian' problem is the key to keeping him in power solving all of the Middle East's the World's problems.

Abdullah said that he realized that Washington was preoccupied with Iraq, and said Jordan too wanted to see reconciliation and stability in Iraq.

But, the king added, "the principle problem in the region is the Palestinian issue and, if it is not solved, it will be impossible to solve the other problems."

Who among the 435 members of the House and the 100 Senators will stand up to point out the fallacies in Abdullah's blaming Israel? We wait with baited breath to see.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:27 AM