In Answer to Moshe Katz

Submitted by David Isecke (United States), Jun 9, 2005 at 00:30

Hello Moshe!

I will give a fuller answer to the Shoebat post than the peace-now post. The latter looks to the future ideal, but sometimes, you cannot get to the future without dealing with the present. Peace may be the end to cherish and desire with your heart, but how can there be peace in the face of the popular Palestinian view that Israel has no right to exist? Remember, they celebrate the day of Israel's creation as "the Great Catastrophe". Unless you have evidence to bring that the Palestinians are ready and willing to live peacefully alongside Israel, the discussion is a non-starter.

So. Shoebat. Let's look at your statements in turn:

>He claims to be Palestinian but nobody in the territories has ever heard of him.

Can it be that anyone in the Palestinian Authority might, emboldened by an absolute control over the local press, tell a fib?

>He says he was a former PLO fighter but strangely enough he doesn't have any
>documentation or proof to back up his claims.

If you had to guess, how many PLO terrorists do you think carry membership IDs? You might be interested to research just how many Palestinains DO have any proof of Palestinian identity. I think you will be startled by how few do.

>My cousin saw him at a college lecture and was shocked at his insistence that Palestinians
>are actually Nazis in disguise.

Before you grow -too- shocked, you may want to find out something about the role that the Palestinian-area Arabs played during World War II, and learn something of their spiritual leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. You might be interested to know precisely how close he was with Hitler in particular -- though he really only had one primary interest throughout their extensive correspondence and many state visits. He -only- cared about annihilating the Jews. By all accounts, he was actually even more single-minded on this point than even the Nazi inner circle, and did much to persuade them to make it their primary focus. This is not, in any way, to defend the Nazis. But when you consider that he was the undisputed leader and spokesperson of the Palestinians at the time, you should understand that the Palestinians were not friendlier to Jews than the Nazis in intent -- only in means. Since the area was still a British Mandate, the Mufti was reduced to writing letters to the British demanding that Jews not be allowed to flee into the area once the death camps that he so passionately advocated became operational in Poland.

>Have you ever heard the phrase "never trust a man who sells out his own people".

Looks like you would have hated Sophicles.

So... if a principled German during WWII came out and said that the Nazis were evil, would you say the same thing? A principled, decent human being will stand up for what is right, censuring even his or her own people if necessary.

>He claims to be a former Moslem who now embraces Christianity and loves Israel. Well, how
>can you love Israel if the only road to salvation is through Jesus Christ?

There are a lot of Christians in the United States who seem to manage it.

>I'm one who will plant a tree in Israel before I give this man a dime.

So, you are against planting trees in Israel? I merely ask because the statement makes no sense if you consider planting the tree to be a positive thing to do.

Given the amount of history, both recent and otherwise, you would have to ignore in order to maintain this position, I have little hope that I can possibly change your mind in this little space. But I believe that, in your case, you simply do not know the whole truth. Please do yourself and your people a favor. Read "From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters, a leftward leaning Christian who set out to write a history sympathetic to the Palestinian narrative. It took her many years of dedicated research to write it, and probably can be considered the definitive history of this conflict. Just make sure you are sitting or lying down when you do.

Shalom,
David

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