RESPONCE TO AN ARTICLE

This article was a response to one reader who asked a very legitimate and intelligent question based on my previous article titled “Creation of Palestine State in Saudi Arabia” Such a question deserves a lengthy answer. Read my response below. Click here to see the previous Article.

This is what the reader wrote
“To whom it may concern:
Even as a pro-Israeli, I found the article titled "Creation of a Palestine State in Saudi Arabia" to be extremely condescending, poorly written and researched, and offensive to nearly all groups involved in the political issues surrounding Israel, including Israelis. I would expect a JEWISH magazine to be a little more sensitive than to suggest that an entire population of people move across the Middle East in search of a homeland.
"That's what my old friend was trying to convince me that it is ok to speak about Palestine State and the flexibility of Jewish people that makes them not only politically correct but more humane."

The above quotation pulled from the article almost seems like a joke considering the content of the rest of the article. I work in Holocaust education, and find the suggestion that an entire population be removed from a nation disturbingly reminiscent of the Shoah. Please enlighten me if you have argument to the contrary.

-Kathleen Bergin
Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center”

Response to the reader

By Gennadiy Baruch Faybyshenko

Shalom Kathleen Bergin
 
Thank you for raising a very important comment in regards to my article. The concern you are raising is very important and deserves a very intelligent answer. However, there are many people who share my view as you may be surprised.
 
The bottom line is that I offer a solution to a stagnant Arab Israeli conflict. You may disagree on it but so far no one ever provided one. Yes, there has been tons of conferences with enormous money spent and millions of periodicals commented on it, but at the end of the day, the situation is where it started. There has been no move in any direction. This is a fact that you have to agree with me.
 
I am offering a solution, (though it was offered long before), as not to make someone suffer but in order to make things better. Indeed, if Jews and Arab will remain inside Israel, there will be more bloodshed. Believe me, most of the world wants to see bloodshed, that’s the nature of humankind, which is normal and we have to accept that fact. In my view, I do not see any reason for continued death. It is so much better to be alive than dead. You should especially understand where I am coming from. What is the point of returning to Israel if people would be killed there? Why do you want to live in State where you would have to fear every day? That’s not a dream of Zion, that’s a nightmare. Did we survive the Holocaust to be persecuted in our own state? Just to let you know, it would never happen in any other country because that problem would long been take care of. So the result becomes very simple, an Arab terrorist goes and blows up dozen of Jews, then Jews soldiers retaliate and kill dozen of Arabs, and then those Arab get angry and go for revenge and the cycle follows. The only result is more bloodshed, which is something I am very against. I am a religious Jew, and I was taught to cherish life irrelevant whether it is Jewish or not. I want the bloodshed to end. During the World War II, the German minorities who lived in Poland and Czechoslovakia rose up when Nazis came to power and after the war Poland and Czechoslovakia realized the threat and expelled 12 million ethnic Germans without any negotiations or compensations.
 
The other main misconception of your uncomfortable feelings with the article is the understanding of the conflict. The struggle between Jews and Arabs is not a territorial one but rather a religious one. Looking at the map of the Middle East there are plenty of empty lands available while the concentration falls on Israel. The Islam teaches whatever belonged to Islam once shall always belong to it. If you cannot see that Arabs want entire Israel than you are truly blind. The conflict is not with the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza because before 1967 the Arabs had them, so why they could not establish Palestine back then. What bothered the Arabs to turn down the U.N. partition plan in 1947 that would make two states where not only Arabs get a chance to keep the Samaria, Gaza, the entire Judea with Western Negev and almost entire Galilee instead of waging war and drive Jews into the sea to finish Hitler’s job (may his name and memory be obliterated). If they truly want to create Palestine, they could have made it long before with much more territory. What answers do you have for me regarding that? Why did the Arabs committed atrocities against the Jews from 1936 to 38 where 510 Jews were killed in pogroms. What about massacres in 1921 in Jerusalem, 1928 in Safed, 1929 in Hebron? What bothered Arabs back then? There was no such thing as occupied territories, indeed there was no such thing as Israel. The fact is that the Arabs will never accept a Jewish State of any shape or size, that is a reality that we have to accept, but for some reason we try to delude ourselves.
 
You claim that removing a nation is reminiscent of the Shoah. I beg to differ. When Jews lived in Germany, all they wanted was to be good German citizens. Indeed Jews stopped even calling themselves Jewish and called themselves German of Mosaic Persuasion. German Jews never announced that when they will become majority they will take over Germany and call it Israel. They never engaged in any terrorists acts or murdering German citizens inside Germany. The Arabs on the other hand do exactly that and if you cannot find the difference between Arabs in Israel and Jews in Germany then you truly have a problem.
 
The quote you took from the article was a conversation I had with my friend few years ago. All he was saying that we should speak of peace with Arabs but in reality we should not. Indeed he is against Palestine State as well as majority of Jews, but his emphasis is that Arabs will never recognize Israel, therefore leaving conflict where it is right now. His theory is the same as the entire Jewish American Establishment of let us be nice guys who want peace making the Arabs be the bad ones. Since Arabs will never recognize Israel, there will never be Palestine. In my opinion, that is a pure hypocrisy, that is why there are many gentiles who despise the entire establishment and they are correct to some extent. I am an honest person and I say what I feel and believe. I hate to lie because lies will not get us anywhere.
 
Israel wants to pretend to be both democratic and Jewish State which is impossible. Israel can be only a democratic State or Jewish State and I am sure you and the rest of Jewry wants Israel to be a Jewish State because we would never support a State that would be run by Arabs. Let’s be honest here, at least for once. A democratic State means that whoever is a majority rules. Obviously Israel would never allow it. That is what bothers the Arabs and I understand them, indeed if I was an Arab, I would be bothered too. How a proud Arab can proudly sings his national anthem “HaTikva” which speaks only of Jews returning home. The anthem does not relate to Arabs at all. Yes it was a Jewish Hope but an Arab catastrophe. Do you truly expect Arabs to proudly take Israeli flags on Israel’s Independence Day to celebrate their defeat? How do you recognize what the Arabs feel that the law of return applies only to Jews and not to them? Indeed a Jew who never been to Israel can become citizen momentarily while an Arab who lived here for generations and decides to marry someone from another country cannot make his spouse citizen at all. That is just some spectrum of Israel and if you believe that an Arab enjoys those dubious benefits, you must have contempt for the Arabs. Yes you can give Arabs indoor toilets but not by bread alone does a man leave. I have a national pride and I respect someone who has it and that is why I am pushing for this solution.
 
Let us look at Egypt, you have people with same ethnicity but different religion and see how much struggle they have. Take a look at Iraq between Sunnis and Shiites. Syria, struggle emerges between people who share the same religion but being ethnically different. How do you expect us to coexist with Arabs who have everything different in religion, ethnicity, language, culture and ideas. There never will be coexistence. Once the Arabs will become a significant number they will take arms to drive us out. They have twenty one Arabs state to go to, we on the other hand have no where to go.
 
I am offering a very humane solution. Instead of the world to spend so much money to support the PLO, why not give that money to make a smooth transfer. I choose Saudi Arabia because it is a rich state and has a lot of unpopulated territory and it would be easier for the Arabs to live together with each other. Though it can be any other Arab state or the Arabs may enjoy living in multiple States. The Arab States have to absorb Arabs from Israel and make them equal citizens as such as we absorbed Jews from Arab countries and now they are fully fledged citizens. There is no other solution. Everything else will doom to fail. I am tired of seeing Jews killed. I do not want to see any more kadishes and yartzeits. I do not want to see infants and toddlers get killed as they did during the Holocaust era. Enough of Jews dying! Why do innocent Jews have to die, so to keep world politicians happy. And besides who cares what will the world say, the world always condemn us. It is not even physiologically normal to have U.N. condemn Israel so many times while not condemning the Peruvian government of killing 23,000 civilians in 1980, the Syrian government of killing 40,000 in 1982, the Russians killing 35,000 Chechens and so many other regimes. Indeed Jews never deliberately go and kill innocent Arabs, the only go after terrorists and indeed risk their lives to save Arab civilians. I understand that and that is why I do not care what the world will say. I would rather have a strong Israel hated by the entire world, than Auschwitz that would be loved by.