I understand those who yearn for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. I do, too.
I understand those who fear a bi-national Jewish-Palestinian state. I do, too.
I understand those who wish Israel never came to rule over millions of Palestinians. I do, too.
But there is something wrong with the moral compass of anyone who sides with the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel.
While every nation has good individuals, as a collective, the Palestinians are among the world’s most morally unimpressive national groups.
• Palestinian immorality was manifest before there was even a distinct Palestinian national identity. The Palestinians’ leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (1897-1974), was an ally of Hitler who pushed for the annihilation of Jewish people in Europe. As Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote in the Jewish Journal:
“The Grand Mufti will be remembered as one the 20th century’s most virulent Jew haters and a key cheerleader for Hitler’s genocidal Final Solution. … [He] helped organize a Muslim Waffen SS Battalion, known as the Hanjars, that slaughtered 90 percent of Bosnia’s Jews, and were dispatched to Croatia and Hungary.”
• The next Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, another Jew-hater, responded to Israel’s offers of a Palestinian state with two “intifadas,” a fancy name for what was nothing more than the terror-slaughter of Israelis on buses, in restaurants and at schools.
• Palestinians adore those who murder Jews. According to a Palestinian poll conducted in December 2015, two-thirds of Palestinians support the recent wave of knife attacks on Israeli Jews.
• Every Palestinian who murders Jews is deemed a national hero of the Palestinian people by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is celebrated among the majority of Palestinians. Squares and schools are named after Palestinians who murder Jews.
• The Palestinians have been the single greatest reason the United Nations has become the moral cesspool it now is. Instead of combating the world’s most horrific evils, the U.N., under relentless pressure from the Palestinians and their Muslim allies, have made Israel almost its sole concern.
Recently, for example, Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, reported:
“On March 24, 2016, the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) wrapped up its annual meeting in New York by condemning only one country for violating women’s rights anywhere on the planet — Israel, for violating the rights of Palestinian women.
“On the same day, the U.N. Human Rights Council concluded its monthlong session in Geneva by condemning Israel five times more than any other of the 192 U.N. member states.”
• The Palestinians living in Gaza voted Hamas into power. Unlike the PA, Hamas makes it clear that its one agenda is to exterminate Israel. Thus every Palestinian murder of a Jew —whether a baby or a 90-year-old or an entire family – is hailed by Hamas.
• Palestinians routinely engage in libels as wild and toxic as the medieval blood libel.
Most recently, even The New York Times reported:
“Echoing anti-Semitic claims that led to the mass killings of European Jews in medieval times, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accused rabbis in Israel of calling on their government to poison the water used by Palestinians. He made the unsubstantiated allegation during a speech to the European Parliament. … ”
Under international pressure, Abbas later retracted the lie. But, of course, the retraction meant nothing. Palestinians probably don’t even know it was retracted. It was done for gullible Westerners.
And, as the Times further reported:
“Anadolu, the Turkish state-run news agency, repeated the claim on Sunday. It was echoed in the Gulf News, a daily newspaper in Dubai. The Anadolu article said that a Rabbi Shlomo Mlma, whom it called the ‘chairman of the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank settlements,’ had issued an ‘advisory opinion in which he allowed Jewish settlers to poison water in Palestinian villages and cities in the West Bank.’ ”
The rabbi, the council of rabbis and the call to poison the water were all made up by the Palestinians.
Palestinians spread lies about Israel on a regular basis. Lying is a Palestinian art form.
• In what many consider the finest history of the 20th century, “Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Nineties,” English historian Paul Johnson wrote this about the African dictator Idi Amin, the cannibal-murderer of hundreds of thousands of his fellow Ugandans:
“Idi Amin’s terror was a Muslim-Arab phenomenon … run by Nubians, Palestinians and Libyans.”
• And, of course, there is the record of Palestinian suicide bombings, the form of mass murder of the innocent that violent Muslims have now spread around the world. The Palestinians did not invent it, but they can look with pride upon a practice that they made popular and respectable.
Despite all this, left-wing Jews and non-Jews speak about the Palestinians as if they are a moral people oppressed by an immoral one.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
Dennis Prager’s nationally syndicated radio talk show is heard in Los Angeles on KRLA (AM 870) 9 a.m. to noon. His latest project is the Internet-based Prager University (prageru.com).
