Friday, December 20, 2002
 A Thought On Israel Bashers In Israel

 By Steven Plaut

 For many years, it has been obvious to us that anti-Israel propaganda  and  Israel bashing around the world are little more than disguised  anti-Semitism. No one on earth really cares about the Palestinians,  least of  all Palestinian leaders. People pretend to care about the
Palestinians  because this helps them delegitimize Israel.

 When King Hussein of Jordan murdered 10,000 Palestinians in September  1970,  no one cared about the Palestinians, no one noticed they were having  their  "rights violated" no one thought they needed "self-determination". 
  More  generally, the world does not care about Arabs being killed unless it  is  Israel doing the killing in self-defense. 
When 100,000 Algerian  civilians  are murdered, no one notices. 
When far more are murdered in Sudan, no  one  notices.
When Saddam Hussein gasses his own people, when Asad  massacres  10,000 in Hama in Syria, no one cares or notices. 

But when Israel  kills  20  people in Jenin while hunting down mass murderers who have murdered  hundreds  of Jews (many of them children), that is genocide and a war crime.
And  when  Palestinians murder 1200 Israelis after signing the Oslo accords, that  is
 protest against occupation.

 Israel-bashing is naked anti-Semitism. The bulk of Israeli "critics"  are   motivated not by a desire to see this or that specific policy of  Israel  altered, a camp to which I myself would belong in spades, but rather  who  seek to see Israel destroyed. They object to Israeli military
actions  because they do not think Israel should employ its military to defend  itself  at all. They believe that the only legitimate response to Arab  atrocities is  Israeli capitulation and self-annihilation.

 Now none of this is particularly new. What is new is the following.

 Why  on  earth should we consider people in Israel who espouse the same  anti-Israel
 rhetoric as any different from these overseas anti-Semites? Why should  we  believe that people whose every waking hour is devoted to "defending  Palestinian rights" are anti-Semites when they are overseas, but  simply  caring liberals when they are in Israel? Why should we regard those  who  insist that Israel must never use its military to defend itself to be  anti-Semites when they are in Europe but compassionate peace seekers  when  they are in Israel? We regard those people who insist that the only  permissible response by Israel to terrorist atrocities is capitulation to be  in reality those seeking Israel's destruction when they are NOT in  Israel.
 Why should we regard them otherwise when they happen to be Israelis?
 (Sent by Avigdor Bar-Hai       30.12.2002 )