Dave Prado COM ’04 716-695-4205
Apologizing for Hatred Promotes Violence
It troubles me that two authors responded negatively to the excellent letter, “Stop Palestinian Hate Education,” written on January 14, 2003. Instead of taking a serious stand on human rights, all I hear is more excuses, rationalizations, and cop-outs for moral behavior that is absolutely reprehensible.
Education is the most basic step in the path towards peace. Figa and Saad pitifully attempt to obstruct this path by conjuring false claims, apologies, and excuses that ‘tolerate’ hatred and vindicate violence.
Fadwa tries to equate Israelis and Palestinians by falsely accusing Israel of teaching their children to hate. Israel does not engage in this activity. Period. To accuse Israel of inciting children to kill is an outright lie!
Israeli textbooks acknowledge the Palestinian people and strive towards understanding and reciprocity between Jews and Arabs. They teach that Christians, Muslims, and Jews all have ties to the land and encourage a vision of peaceful coexistence.
Palestinian textbooks, however, do not recognize the state of Israel. In fact, they deny Jewish ties to the land and stoke the flames of violence against Jews: A Palestinian textbook for 5th graders states that “the Jihad against the Jews is the religious duty of every Muslim man and woman.” The textbooks go on to depict Jews as master conspirators in a plot of world domination.
This problem, unfortunately, is not reserved to Palestinian society, but prevails throughout the Arab world. During the holy month of Ramadaan, Egyptian public television aired a mini-series based on the infamous anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” After considerable international pressure, Egypt’s Foreign Minister apologized and acknowledged that Arab anti-Semitism has reached intolerable heights similar to European society sixty years ago.
As recently as December 5, 2002 the Saudi Arabian Interior Minister, Prince Nayef, blamed the Jews for the September 11th terror attacks. “We still ask ourselves: Who has benefited from the September 11th attacks? I think the Jews were the protagonists of such attacks.”
These conspiracy theories run rampant across the Arab world and play a vital role in fueling the anti-Semitism that has thus far dictated Arab-Israeli relations. I find it appropriate to point out that the Arab population in Israel has prospered and multiplied while the over 3,000 year old Jewish presence in the Middle East, totaling almost one million, has virtually vanished over the past 50 years. Arab states, and their sympathizers, falsely accuse Israel of the religious intolerance that they themselves practice.
Interestingly enough, the extreme left seems to have united with the extreme right in the anti-Israel hate-fest. Michael Figa and Fadwa Saad may want to ask themselves why David Duke was invited to the “Discover Islam Centre” in Bahrain to deliver a lecture on “Israeli involvement in September 11”? The same way we attacked hate in the American South, we should attack it in the Arab world. Hatred in all contexts should be exposed for what it is, and should be eliminated for what it represents.