Israel Matzav: The New York Times should read its own editorial page

Monday, January 21, 2013

The New York Times should read its own editorial page

Incredibly, the New York Times published an op-ed on Friday by Ayaan Hirsi Ali that should be read by the likes of Tom Friedman, Nick Kristof and Roger Cohen, as well as by the Times editorial board, before the next time they sit down to write about Israel. For that matter, it should be read by the Obama administration as well, because if they read it, they might finally understand why their 'peace process' between Israel and the 'Palestinians' is failing.

Hirsi Ali, who grew up a Muslim in Egypt, had this to say about why there is no peace.

Here is an opportunity to acknowledge the breadth and depth of the attitude toward Jews in the Middle East, and how that affects the much desired but elusive peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
So many explanations have been offered for the failure of successive U.S. administrations to achieve that peace, but the answer is in Morsi’s words. Why would one make peace with bloodsuckers and descendants of apes and monkeys?

Millions of Muslims have been conditioned to regard Jews not only as the enemies of Palestine but as the enemies of all Muslims, of God and of all humanity. Arab leaders far more prominent and influential than Morsi have been tireless in “educating” or “nursing” generations to believe that Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.” (These are the words of the Saudi sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, imam at the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca.)

In 2011, a Pew survey found that in Turkey, just 4 percent of those surveyed held a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” view of Jews; in Indonesia, 10 percent; in Pakistan 2 percent. In addition, 95 percent of Jordanians, 94 percent of Egyptians and 95 percent of Lebanese hold a “very unfavorable” view of Jews [pdf].

In recent decades Israeli and American administrations negotiated with unelected Arab despots, who played a double game. They honored the formal peace treaties by not conducting military attacks against Israel. But they condoned the Islamists’ dissemination of hatred against Israel, Zionism and Jews.

As the Islamists spread their influence through civil institutions, young people were nursed on hatred.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, as the people take a chance on democracy, they and their new leadership want to see their ideals turned into policy.

For too many of those who fought for their own liberation, one of those ideals is the end of peace with Israel.

It would take several generations to undo this sort of pathological hatred. But no one has started - or even suggested to the Muslim world - that it be undone. I would not hold my breath waiting for that to happen - certainly not so long as the West continues to pursue policies of bowing to Islam.

Labels: Egypt, Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Islamic anti-Semitism, Mohammed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Jew hatred