Joshua Prager: In search for the man who broke my neck
When Joshua Prager was 19, a devastating bus accident left him a
quadriplegic for several years. He returned to Israel twenty years later
to find the driver who turned his world upside down. In this
mesmerizing tale of their meeting, Prager probes deep questions of
nature, nurture, self-deception and destiny.
The questions now are: What was the real cost of these wars to the Arab world and its people. And the harder question that no Arab national wants to ask is: What was the real cost for not recognizing Israel in 1948 and why didn’t the Arab states spend their assets on education, health care and the infrastructures instead of wars? But, the hardest question that no Arab national wants to hear is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world and the Arab people.
I decided to write this article after I saw photos and reports about a starving child in Yemen, a burned ancient Aleppo souk in Syria, the under developed Sinai in Egypt, car bombs in Iraq and the destroyed buildings in Libya. The photos and the reports were shown on the Al-Arabiya network, which is the most watched and respected news outlet in the Middle East.
The common thing among all what I saw is that the destruction and the atrocities are not done by an outside enemy. The starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries are done by the same hands that are supposed to protect and build the unity of these countries and safeguard the people of these countries. So, the question now is that who is the real enemy of the Arab world?
The Arab world wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and lost tens of thousands of innocent lives fighting Israel, which they considered is their sworn enemy, an enemy whose existence they never recognized. The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.
These dictators’ atrocities against their own people are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars.
In the past, we have talked about why some Israeli soldiers attack and mistreat Palestinians. Also, we saw Israeli planes and tanks attack various Arab countries. But, do these attacks match the current atrocities being committed by some Arab states against their own people.
The Arabs' real enemy is not Israel. But unfortunately, the Arab spring has just replaced secular dictators with Islamic dictators (a point I'm not sure the author noticed). So long as the Arab world is ruled by Islamic dictators, it won't reconcile itself to Israel and it will continue to destroy itself from within.
According to YNet, a brawl between Jewish and Arab girls on the Jerusalem tram on Monday ended with the driver stopping the tram and letting all of the passengers off after one of the Jewish girls used a personal canister of tear gas on the Arabs.
The brawl erupted after dozens of Arab and Jewish girls clashed on one of the train cars. At one point, a Jewish girl at the site pulled out a personal canister of tear gas and sprayed it at the Arab girls.
The gas spread throughout the train and hurt other passengers uninvolved in the incident. Following the subsequent commotion, the driver was forced to stop the train and let passengers out, as the gas was bothering those onboard.
CityPass, which operates the Light Rail line in the capital, issued the following response after the incident: "We will not be accepting any act of violence. We call on all residents to show tolerance."
Good luck with that. For those of you who are wondering, the Arabs are on the tram mostly because it goes through the predominantly Arab neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina. That was done so that we could show that we are providing services to the Arabs in our united city (which of course drew worldwide condemnation).
Twenty years ago, when we made aliya, Jews and Arabs used to ride many of the same buses. That was before the days of the suicide bombers, who started in 1994. But it's been years since large numbers of Jews and Arabs shared public transportation. I would suggest that the tram company start using security guards in every car of every train. Otherwise, a much more serious incident is inevitable.
President Obama's Special Middle East envoy George Mitchell resigned on Friday, after making no discernible progress in more than two years of 'peace talks.' What happened? Here's an analysis from someone who gets it. His name is Tawfik Hamid, and when you see his background at the end, you will understand why he gets it.
Approaching the Arab-Israeli conflict from the perspective that it is about land, so that giving more land to the Palestinians will solve the problem, is a failed endeavor.
Israel has already given Egypt the whole of the Sinai, and got nothing in return except a cold peace and rising anti-Semitism in the country. Similarly the disengagement from Gaza did not magically lead to a decline in the wave of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.
Pro-Palestinian Muslim demonstrators across the world repeatedly use the chant “Khyber Khyber Ya Yahood... Gaish Muhammad Sawfa Yaood,” which reminds the Jews that the army of Muhammad is coming back for a repeat of what was done to the Jewish Khyber tribe.
According to authentic Islamic history books, the Islamic army, led by Muhammad, annihilated the Jewish tribe of Khyber, raping its women and killing all its men.
Such barbaric statements against the Jews have been used by many in the Muslim world, and even inside the US and Europe. Sadly the chant was also used on Friday by thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
...
Until US envoys to the Middle East realize that the problem in the eyes of the Palestinians and their supporters is not the borders of Israel but the very existence of the country, all future missions will similarly fail. Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict must be done initially at the theological rather than the political level, as the former is impeding the latter.
It is unfair to ask Israel to trust those who shamefully advocate the killing of Jews, and claim that Islamic annihilation of the Jews by an Islamic army is a model that must be emulated today.
The problem is not only in the existence of violent teachings in historical Islamic texts, but also in the dangerous desire of many Islamists and violent Islamic scholars to revive such violence in modern times. Violent texts exist in other religions as well, but we do not generally see such destructive desire to use the texts to justify killing others, and we rarely hear about modern scholars of other faiths who advocate using such texts literally.
Read the whole thing - he's spot on. And why does he get it?
The writer is an Islamic thinker and reformer, and a one-time Islamic extremist from Egypt. He was a member of the terrorist organization JI with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later became the second-in-command of al-Qaida. He is currently a senior fellow and chairman of the study of Islamic radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. www.tawfikhamid.com
Ignoring problems doesn't usually make them go away. And pretending that there's no religious dimension to the Arab-Israeli dispute because religious conflicts aren't solvable isn't going to make the conflict solvable.
Israel's attorney general has decided that it's okay to threaten to murder 'settlers.'
Makor Rishon correspondent Uri Yisrael Paz reports in the 24 January edition that Adv. Dan Eldad of the Office of the Attorney-General has decided not to investigate the remarks of Gideon Spiro, in his 4 September 2010 “Red Rag column” regarding settlers that “Nearly every male settler carries a gun, sometimes he is in uniform and sometimes he is not, and so attacking them is not the same as attacking a non-combatant civilian population….Armed struggle against occupation is internationally recognized as legitimate. … when it comes to the struggle against the Occupation, Hamas does not diverge from what is known and accepted throughout human history…As a member of the occupying people, it would be arrogant of me to presume to dictate to the Palestinians how they should conduct their struggle….” http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=42202
Eldad explained that there is nothing in Spiro’s remarks that has a “real possibility that its publication will lead to acts of violence or terror,” and that therefore “there is no place for criminal treatment of the matter and the holding of a court hearing.”
I wonder if Eldad would find it appropriate to prosecute someone who - God forbid - murdered a 'settler,' or whether he would say it's not up to us to tell the 'Palestinians' how to conduct their struggle.
By the way, this is not an idle question. This was a legal demonstration in the Jaffa area of southern Tel Aviv. Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: IMRA). At about 3:08, the Arab says in Hebrew, "next time this won't pass this way." And then it gets worse with cries of racism.
, Two weeks ago, the State's Attorney's office opened an investigation into a Facebook page that called for murdering Arabs. When a video was made calling for the murder of the attorney who was conducting the investigation, the video's maker was (rightfully) arrested. But people who threaten 'settlers' with death should also be arrested.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
