By Major (Rtd) Musibi Patrick and Okotch Mondoh (WBZ Kenya)
Israel has just been to war to defend her citizens and sovereignty. The villain of the piece (for 8 years running) is Hamas… or are we dreaming?
Whenever there is a flare-up in the Middle East involving Israel, there are bound to be acres of news columns and commentaries, and a huge din on the airwaves.
Predictable reactions….
There are very predictable reactions from certain quarters that have made the Middle East Conflict a growth industry. In our country Kenya as in many other parts of the world, demonstrations will be expected from, not Arabs, rather from a religious grouping: Moslems. When you consider that there are 300 million Arabs with strong ties to 1.4 billion Moslems worldwide, you can be sure 5 million Jews in Israel and about another 8 million elsewhere can hardly put in an audible voice of self-justification. Very predictably there will hardly be a voice on behalf of Israel no matter how the conflict was precipitated. And many are the conflicts that have been forced on Israel, even on occasions when the aggressors knew Israel was on serious religious observances, and therefore was not inclined to resist and defend herself!
Where are the demos for Darfur, or for Chad, Zimbabwe? Who is demonstrating about Somalia, its failed state and piracy menace?
It was Napoleon Bonaparte, who declared,
“History is a myth agreed upon.”
Harry S. Truman echoed him,
“No two historians ever agree on what happened, and the damn thing is they both think they’re telling the truth.”
In the historical Arab-Israel conflict three things seem to stand out stark like day and night.
One is propaganda. The Arab propaganda on the origin, nature and extent of the Middle East conflict and their claims have been so effective we have met Jews who doubt they have any roots in Eretz Yisroel. On a recent trip to Israel a friend was so shocked to discover that Israel now no longer has a claim on the historical birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem, she screamed, ‘how dare!’ The audacity of the Arab claim that has won them the bulk of Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza enclave is unparalleled. Politically correct lingua refers to this area as the ‘occupied territories’ of the ‘West bank’. But really, ‘occupied’ from whom when Jordan renounced all claims to this area in 1988, and ‘west’ of what or where?
 Whenever Israel reacts to Arab provocation within her borders as she did on Dec 27th 2008 to January 18th 2009, the Arabs quickly fall back to an emotive script that dupes us all. We are shown pictures of dead children and bleeding women. We are never shown pictures of how children are taught to hate and turned into child soldiers, all in schools supported by international funds, the UN included.
The mainstream media for all it is worth seeks to isolate Israel 
as the aggressor that uses ‘excessive force’ and has no regard for women and children, yes even human life itself. The media never apologises on the front page even when we discover their front-page Photoshop engineered bomb-outs, massacres that never were (Jenin Refugee camp 2002) and fake ambulances destroyed on the  frontline.
It cannot be denied that the wars between Israel and the Arabs cause a lot of untold suffering, on both sides. War is not a picnic. It is not a walk in the park. You have to prepare for this outcome. What is more, when you go to war against your enemies you go to win.
If you know you cant win, seek peace. Hamas should not whine. The firepower that went to Germany, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kuwait, Iraq and many other places sought to bring a successful military campaign, period. Much was the suffering there.
Passion
Hard on the heels of propaganda is the emotional outbursts all around. More darkness than light; more confusion than clarity, a lot of passion more than reason seems to go up everywhere and attend every perceived Israel injustice. It is all right for Hamas to rain rockets on Israel. It is ok for Hamas to shoot its way into power in Gaza, maim and execute Fatah followers until they seek refuge with their ‘enemies’ Israel than allow themselves to fall into the hands of Hamas. It is fine for Dr. Yunis al-Astal, a Hamas member of the Arab Parliament to declare,
“We will conquer Rome and then all Europe. When we are done with Europe we will conquer both Americas, and we will not give up Eastern Europe either.”
Even the president of Iran is only joking when he calls for the annihilation of Israel. Just make sure you scream when Israel so much as sneezes. 13 million Jews could easily shallow up 300 million Arabs. In that case Israel’s response will always be ‘disproportionate’.
The world is busy revising Middle East history
It may be easier to live with propaganda and emotions. What is scary is our third observation. In less than 60 years since 1948, most of the world has chosen, deliberately, a revisionist approach to the history of the Middle East. A discourse whose intellectual honesty is suspect is taking place and is becoming entrenched. Lies and more lies are being circulated and repeated until new ‘truth’ has been manufactured.
Israel became a state in 1312 B.C. and after a series of wars of conquest in 1272 B.C. the land was continuously under her rule for 3300 years. Many nations and powers that ever dominated Israel at different times for brief spells had to content themselves with indirect rule most of the time until the fall of Jerusalem in about 70A.D. Many civilisations have waxed and waned, come and gone but the Jews have survived all of them and more. If this history does not give Jews a claim over the whole of Israel as their undisputed homeland, what does? May be this history is too far back and Israel’s claims are now tenuous and have been invalidated. Are there any acknowledgements by anyone else in more recent times of Jewish claim to their current homeland before 1948 and the invention of ‘Palestinians’? Plenty, but here are two.
Emir Feisal Ibn al-Hussein al-Hashemi, representing and  acting on behalf of the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz did acknowledge Israel in his historic agreement with Zionist Dr. Chaim Weizmann on January 3rd, 1919. A little later on at the Paris Peace conference/ congress, His Royal Highness Emir Feisal referred to the proposed Israel borders and national aspirations as ‘ proper and modest’. He considered that Arabs and Jews had both suffered under colonialism and needed to help one another to establish their independent states. That was before Arabs were taught ‘fitnah’.
In the modern history of Israel prior to 1948, let us be acquainted with the League of Nations Palestinian Mandate. It will drive our point home.
The 2nd Arab nation solution.
Instead of talking about a ‘2-nation solution’ today- one for Arabs and the other for Jews in Israel, let us call it what it is, a ‘second Arab nation solution’. The true 2-nation solution is Israel and Jordan, in Eastern Palestine (Transjordan), the creation of the powers 2 years before Israeli independence.
All Arabs who do not want to follow the example of the Druze in being loyal citizens of Israel can take a hike across the border instead of seeking to mutilate Israel. This is more a dream than reality since Egypt, Jordan and all the other Israel’s Arab neighbours have consistently refused to take in their nationals and others who wanted to escape all the fighting, thus creating an artificial refugee crisis. Even today as Hamas demands that Israel throws its borders open to Gaza no one mentions that Egypt has its own borders officially shut against Gaza.
Historically who are Palestinians and what is Palestine? There had never been a civilisation or a nation referred to as Palestine until some Roman cooked it up. The very notion of a ‘ Palestinian Arab’ nation is the most dishonest. This region for long was called either Judea or Canaan. If we must talk of Palestinians, both Israelis and Arabs are ‘Palestinian’.
Just like elsewhere in the world, many (Arab) migrant workers, merchants, Bedouins have come in and out of Israel over the centuries. The biggest influx of Arabs though, was 1920 to 1948 with the connivance of Britain to create a majority of them and thwart the Jewish aspirations to a homeland. Why else did someone think that Jews could be our neighbours over in Karamoja?
During the Ottoman Empire the population of Israel (Western Palestine) and Jordan (Eastern Palestine, also known as Transjoradan) was estimated at six hundred thousand. Even in the second decade of 1900s, the new masters of the region, Britain put it at about 700, 000. The world Jewry of about 12 million at that time was expected to fill both Eastern and Western Palestine (one country). The only condition they were required to uphold was take cognisance of the about 550,000 Arabs who at that time lived with about 50,000 Jews in Palestine (Israel and Jordan of today).
Suddenly in 1920 Britain slapped quotas on Jewish immigration into Palestine. In 1928 Eastern Palestine (Jordan) was closed to Jewish settlements. By 1945 five hundred thousand Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis and eastern Palestinian Arabs had been encouraged to move into western Palestine (Israel today).And the influx continued. The British army for good measure was not shy to bring in thirty thousand foreign Arabs to prosecute its war effort and after that allow them to finally settle in Israel. They brought Asians to Kenya too and no Asian is demanding a country. That is plain modern history very well documented and readily available.
Of course “Palestine” was a derogatory term invented by the Roman Empire to refer to the entire region of Judea (Samaria and Gaza) and the transjordan (today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ruled out of Amman). The Procurator thought that the label ‘Philistia’ (Palaistina) would teach the Jews not to revolt ever. Even then, the philistines, the original seafarers conquered by Israel in the days of antiquity were NOT Arabs.
The hunters are coming.
Must we give every minority in every country their own country within a country when they agitate? Then to be fair let us start with the big population of African-Americans, Hispanics and Latinos in USA today.
There seems to be only one inescapable conclusion about the current revision of Middle East history. Though the Jews survived Hitler in Europe, the hunters are coming again. They want to follow them into the only place they thought was home. The entire world is being prepared to accept another holocaust. We refuse to be so prepared, no never again. In the words of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
“In every generation, there are always a few who understand. Always understand… even if you remain among the few.”
Tragically there are some of the leadership and some of the citizenry in Israel who truly believe they can secure a peace by giving away land. This is extremely romantic when the stated aim of the Arab militant groups and some sovereign Arab countries is the destruction of the Zionist state.
* Patrick Musibi is a retired Air force Major and is involved in a lot of peace building in the War areas of Africa and demobilisation of combatant troops as a consultant. (patmusibi@yahoo.com)
* Okotch Mondoh works as an education officer and is involved in grassroots NGO work. He also leads WBZ Kenya chapter. (kotch_2001@yahoo.com)
* P.O. Box 10, postcode 50422 Matayos Kenya
+254 721 253 849. |
