Israel's voice on al-Jazeera
Here's a fascinating video on and interview with Mordechai Keidar, a religious Jewish professor at Bar Ilan University, who is fluent in Arabic and appears regularly on the Arabic side of al-Jazeera (I believe I blogged all the excerpts from al-Jazzera that are in this video when they first came out through Professor Keidar's YouTube channel).Let's go to the videotape.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:11 AM
1 Comments:
Dr. Kedar speaks fluent Arabic and is conversant with Islamic culture and how the Arabs think. This is allows him to defend Israel in the Arab World by engaging them in their own language. I think he means well but Jew-hatred is so deep-rooted in the Arab mindset and Islam that we're not going to see real change happen in our lifetime.
They have to change and so does Iran and as long as they are on the path they're on, there is no question that a lot more people are going to suffer and die. As they see history, the Crusaders disappeared from the Land Of Israel after two centuries. The Jews have returned to Israel for only a fraction of that time and they perceive the Jews as a weak, exhausted, dispirited and beaten people.
With that view in mind, they are prepared to wait decades, centuries even for Israel to disappear. And they are for this reason, in no hurry to go to war with Israel today. The problem of what to do about the Jewish State is for them, one for another generation and maybe the generations after that to solve.
The challenge for Israel is demonstrate it has the will to survive as a nation and is not going to go the way of the ancient Crusader kingdoms that once ruled in the Land Of Israel. If it can do that, perhaps one day in the future, there can be peace. But as long as the other side sees Israel's existence not as a legitimate existential fact but rather as a temporary irritant to be accommodated for the time being, peace is not to be had waiting around the corner.
And given the way the Arabs think, there is little reason to believe that they think Israel has given them reason to believe it is going to survive another two decades let alone a century. Only if Israel can dispel that view among them, are there conditions going to be created to permanently end the conflict.
As long as life continues, the Arab-Israel conflict will be with us for a long time to come.
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