Israel Matzav

'Palestinian refugees' benefited from Israel more than anyone

LOPEZ: Can evangelicals save Israel?

GILDER: I believe that facing the most critical Israel Test are my fellow evangelicals, who are inclined to support Israel as the heart of their religion but who also can be gullible about the so-called oppression of the Palestinian Arabs. This is just stupid, because the Palestinian Arabs have benefited more from Israel than any other people — by far.

LOPEZ: What do you mean these wretched refugees benefited from Israel?

GILDER: The key period was between 1967 and 1987 when the Israelis administered the territories after Arabs refused all negotiations with their famous three “nos.” The Arabs were adamant against trading “land for peace” following their defeat in the ’67 war, so Israel inherited the territories.

During this 20-year period under Israeli rule, some 250,000 Israelis settled in the Territories. These were the supposedly predatory settlers. They supplied the infrastructure of power, water, education, and medical care that attracted nearly ten Arab settlers for every one Israeli. During this period, the economy in the territories grew some 25 percent per year, nearly the fastest in the world, and far faster than that of Israel itself, which was still bogged down in socialism. Arab life expectancy rose from 40 to around 70. Their incomes tripled while their population soared. Seven universities and 2,500 factories were established. It was the golden age for Palestinian Arabs.

Then, in the early 1990s, the U.N. and the West sold out the country to Yasser Arafat and his terrorist forces. The Palestine Liberation Organization became the world’s leading per capita recipients of foreign aid as international organizations squandered billions on them and thus transformed the Palestinians from entrepreneurs and workers into terrorists, welfare queens, and political poseurs of victimization and violence.

LOPEZ: You talk a lot about Israel’s enemies. Is anti-Semitism enough of a reason itself to defend Israel?

GILDER: Perhaps it is. Anti-Semitism is essentially hatred of capitalism and excellence. It epitomizes all the most reactionary and destructive forces in the world economy and culture. It should be opposed wherever it arises, from U.S. campuses to Middle Eastern regimes. But it is the achievements of Israel, not the animus of its enemies, that make its defense both possible and imperative. Israel is a bastion of Western culture and achievement and military technology at a time when other Western countries have fallen into socialist and pacifist doldrums.

LOPEZ: Can you really call the PLO Nazis and supporters of a Palestinian state essentially Nazi supporters?

GILDER: They may not know it, but Palestinian nationalism began with the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who was a fanatical Nazi, friend of Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann, and critic of the Holocaust as moving too slowly and inefficiently. Arafat was an ardent reader and promoter of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The current leader, Mahmoud Abbas, a so-called moderate, devoted his university thesis to denying the Holocaust. Hamas and Hezbollah are worse. You can’t create a civilized country out of a Nazi movement. The only hope for the Palestinians is for Israel to help civilized Palestinians retrieve their country and throw out the terrorist thugs that currently define their national socialist identity.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:57 PM