Part Two: The case for Israel

By Stanley Zir

As soon as Israel announced her independence on May 14, 1948, five Arab countries attacked her, even though she had the legal right to her land as guaranteed by the United Nations, and, even though Israel had been reduced by more than three-fourths from its original size. The Arab-Israeli conflict has never been about land for peace. For the Arabs, it has always been about the destruction of Israel.

In August, 2005, Israel gave up Gaza, expelling all 9,000 of her Jewish citizens living there, from their homes, schools, synagogues and communities in the name of peace. (Point to the screen and show from 1 min. 28 sec. to 2 min. 28 sec.: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=mdWZ8raKk2E&feature=related.) So, what happened? In the nearly 3½ years since all of our soldiers and civilians left Gaza, thousands of missiles have been fired onto our civilian population from Gaza, sometimes from the very places from which Israelis had lived. The rocket attacks have caused death, destruction and thousands of cases of trauma in our youth: Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggKOjY_daiM&feature=related. Scenes like this happened more than 10,000 times during the past 3½ years in southern Israel. In addition, about a year and a half after we left Gaza completely, its Arab population knowingly voted Hamas, an internationally-recognized terrorist organization which has performed and sponsored dozens of deadly terrorist acts against Israelis, into power. Instead of focusing its efforts on improving the welfare of its people and devoting some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid it has received from the Palestinian Authority in the past several years to building schools and roads and improving the economy, Hamas has spent almost all of its energy and resources on building one huge military base, with the expressed purpose of destroying the Jewish State. Hamas has smuggled literally tons of advanced weaponry into Gaza from Egypt through hundreds of tunnels it had constructed. It also smuggled in terrorists from Lebanon, Syria and Iran to help it accomplish its goal – the destruction of Israel.

A couple of months ago, Israel was forced to defend the more than 1,000,000 Israelis who were within range of the deadly rockets from Gaza, and to eliminate the growing threat posed by the massive number of weapons being smuggled into Gaza. Israeli military forces remained in Gaza for three weeks, destroying some of the many tunnels used for smuggling, killing many Hamas terrorists and destroying a substantial amount of weaponry that was to be fired into Israel, while effectively limiting the civilian casualties, despite the fact that many civilians were forcibly used as human shields by the ruthless terrorists, and that a large portion of Hamas's weapons was stored in and/or fired from residential and community buildings. Please watch the following short clip of a Hamas murderer grabbing and dragging a boy and using him as a human shield: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zQc-vUL-58. Also, please read this Jerusalem Post headline from January 20, 2009: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1232292917012.

In the article, Lt.-Gen. Thomas McInerney, a 35-year veteran of the US Air Force and a Fox News military analyst, stated: "I think you achieved what one Israeli general called 'changing the reality' in which Hamas operates, but I think you were too restrained and could have gone deeper into Gaza." Later in the article, he stated, "Your leadership is too sensitive about world opinion. I know why Israel didn't [drive deeper into Gaza] – you have an election coming up and a new [US] president taking office, but you need to gain the freedom of operation in Gaza that you have in the West Bank." Commenting on the unilateral cease-fire announced on Saturday, the American Lt.-Gen. suggested that "Israel did not want to destroy Hamas. I believe you should have."

To recap so far: Israel left Gaza completely in 2005; since then, thousands of deadly rockets had been fired, and, are still being fired, into Israel from Gaza; during which time, Hamas, an international terrorist group, was elected to govern Gaza and used its power and resources to build a huge military complex. The Hamas constitution still calls for the destruction of Israel. And, an American military expert says we did not go far enough to protect our citizens. Yet, many in the international media criticize and condemn Israel for defending herself.

Israel had done everything possible to prevent the need to return to Gaza. No matter what we did or offered, however, Hamas rockets kept coming into Israel and killing and injuring our citizens. Many in the international community claim that Israel does not want peace. If that is so, why did we make peace with Egypt and Jordan? The reason we did is because in each case, we had a legitimate peace partner. Both the Egyptians and the Jordanians were sincere in their desire to end armed hostilities. So, we returned to Egypt a huge parcel of land and expelled our own citizens from their homes in return for peace. The Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, on the other hand, obviously do not want peace. They teach their children from a very early age to hate Israel and Jews. They encourage them to be martyrs – suicide bombers. (Point to screen as this video starts to play on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jPeBRuu7rI.) Also, visit www.pmw.org.il for hundreds of graphic examples of this education of hate.

It is extremely important to understand the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I encourage you to read "From Time Immemorial," by Joan Peters, and "Battleground," by Samuel Katz. (The names of the books and their author will be displayed on the screen next to you.)

Palestine/Israel and the world have been continuously subjected to insidious Arab propaganda for the past 89+ years. This propaganda has been very successful in redefining the "Palestinians" as the victims, or King David, and Israel, as the aggressor, intimidator and occupying force, or Goliath. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Most of the following comes from Francisco Gil White's excellent work, http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm. (The historical information, below, was taken from Gil White's writing and is referenced in the above linked article. Again, Francisco's name and website will be displayed on the screen.) It describes the roots of the 'Palestinian" Arab movement and makes its objectives more than clear.

In April 1920, Hajj Amin al Husseini, an Arab terrorist leader, was the prime instigator of Arab riots against the Jews – the "Jerusalem pogrom." A year later, he was appointed the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by the British, despite Hajj Amin's role in the violent riots, and even though he was not one of the three candidates for the office. In 1929, he orchestrated large- scale assaults against the Jews that began in Jerusalem and soon spread throughout the country. They included the Hebron massacre, in which more than 60 Jews were killed and the rest of the community was forced to flee.

In 1936, Hajj Amin unleashed another wave of Arab massacres of Jews, part of the "Arab Revolt." It was at this time that the Arabs began to ally themselves with Hitler and the Nazis; the Arabs were reminded by visiting German journalists and diplomats about the enemies they shared with the Nazis.

In the wake of the Arab Revolt, a British commission proposed punishing the Jews and rewarding the Arab terrorists with a partition plan that would give the Jews just 4 percent of the original British Mandate territory for a Jewish State. Hajj Amin led the Arabs in a total refusal, revealing that the Arabs were never interested in an Arab state, but merely in preventing the Jews from having any state – even if it was just 4% of the original Mandate territory. Instead of accepting the commission's proposal, the Arabs, under the Grand Mufti and with Nazi encouragement, initiated open rebellion in the Mandate. [Sound familiar?] Once again, the British punished the Jews sharply by restricting immigration to "Palestine" and committing to creating an independent Arab state in "Palestine" within ten years. This 1939 Chamberlain White Paper constituted a death warrant for much of European Jewry.

The British moved against Hajj Amin for his role in the "Arab Revolt," and he became a fugitive. Eventually arriving in Iraq, he organized a pogrom against the Iraqi Jewish community, which ended some 2600 years of Jewish life in Iraq.

In late 1941, Hajj Amin al Husseini arrived in Berlin and was received by Hitler on the 28th of November. In his interview with Hitler, which is preserved in a Nazi document, Hajj Amin was "fully reassured and satisfied" that Hitler would help him carry out the destruction of all Jews living in the Arab sphere and, based on that Final Solution, make him "the most authoritative spokesman in the Arab World." (The following photo, from: http://photospalestine.free.fr/, may be shown while the above paragraph is read.)


Dieter Wisliceny, one of Adolf Eichmann's most important deputies, confirmed the following about Hajj Amin:

"The Mufti [Hajj Amin] is a sworn enemy of the Jews and has always fought for the idea of annihilating the Jews. He sticks to this idea always, also in his talks with [Adolf] Eichmann ... The Mufti is one of the originators of the systematic destruction of European Jewry by the Germans, and he has become a permanent colleague, partner and adviser to Eichmann...in the implementation of this programme." (the author's emphasis)

According to scholars Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, "until the autumn of 1941... no one defined the final solution with precision, but all signs pointed toward some vast and as yet unspecified project of mass emigration." So what happened in the autumn of 1941? As mentioned earlier, "in November, 1941, [Hajj Amin al Husseini] arrived in Berlin and was received by Hitler." According to the documentation presented at the Eichmann trial, the decision to exterminate the European Jews was taken at the Wannsee Conference that took place January 20, 1942, which is less than two months after Hitler met Hajj Amin.

As explained by the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,

"[Hajj Amin al] Husseini made his contribution to the Axis war effort in his capacity as a Muslim, rather than as an Arab leader, by recruiting and organizing in record time [my emphasis], during the spring of 1943, Bosnian Muslim battalions in Croatia comprising some twenty thousand men. These Muslim volunteer units, called Hanjar (sword), were put in Waffen-SS units, fought [the mostly Serbian] Yugoslav partisans in Bosnia, and carried out police and security duties in Hungary."

Hajj Amin's Bosnian Muslim SS troops killed hundreds of thousands of people (mainly Serbs, Jews and Roma) in their homes or else sent them to die in the vast Croatian concentration camp system known as Jasenovac. (The following photos, from: http://photospalestine.free.fr/, may be shown during the reading of the above paragraphs.)





Shortly after the war, Haj Amin mysteriously "escaped" from France and ended up in Egypt. Nathan Weinstock explains what happened next:

"The reappearance of the Mufti [Hajj Amin] in Cairo in May 1946 considerably reinforced the Husseinis' prestige. As he was banned from Palestine, his cousin Jamal Al Husseini asserted himself in the country as the spiritual leader of Arab nationalism.

"By falling once more under the control of the Husseinis, Arab nationalism was led into the most extreme chauvinism. The Arab Higher Committee resorted to systematic terror to crush the last vestiges of Jewish-Arab cooperation in every area of social life. It rejected not merely the proposed partition of the country and all further immigration, but even the proposal that the Palestinian Jews should be given national minority status [in an Arab state]."

So once again Hajj Amin was attacking his fellow Arabs in order to advance his supreme goal: the extermination of the Jews.

In 1947 the UN voted to create a Jewish and an Arab state in 'Palestine.' In reaction, the Arabs in 'Palestine,' led by Hajj Amin al Husseini, and the Arabs living in Arab states, considered that it was much more important to kill the Jews in 'Palestine' than to get an Arab state, and they launched a war of extermination.

One of Hajj Amin's soldiers in this genocidal war was Yasser Arafat. According to David N. Bossie, writing in the Washington Times,

"The mufti [Hajj Amin] barely escaped trial for [war crimes] by fleeing to Egypt in 1946. There he made young Yasser Arafat, then living in Cairo, his protégé. The mufti secretly imported a former Nazi commando officer into Egypt to teach Mr. Arafat and other teenage recruits the fine points of guerrilla warfare [NOTE: In fact, these Nazis were sent to Egypt by the CIA]. Mr. Arafat learned his lessons well; the mufti was so proud of him he even pretended the two of them were blood relations."

In 2002, Yassar Arafat was quoted in the Arabic-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat (his comments were picked up by the leading Arab daily Al-Quds):

"We are the Mighty People. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? ...There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops."

Hajj Amin's Arab Higher Committee continued to be the sole representative of the so-called 'Palestinian' Arabs after 1948, until this role was taken over by Fatah. Historian Howard Sachar explains:

"...in February 1967 the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] leader [Ahmed Shukeiry] was wounded in an assassination attempt. For the while, as a result, the organization was at least partially immobilized by factional intrigues.

"Not so a rival, and even more radical Palestinian group in Syria, the Fatah (Arab Liberation Movement), organized several years earlier by veterans of the Mufti's [Hajj Amin's] former Arab Higher Committee.

"...From the outset... the Fatah's reputation depended largely upon the success of its Moslem traditionalist approach of jihad against Israel, and upon conventional infiltration methods." (my emphases)

Fatah, from the start, was run by Mahmoud Abbas (alias Abu Mazen), the current leader of the PLO, and Yasser Arafat. [end]

In the mind of Abbas, as it was with Arafat, World War II and the Holocaust have never ended. His insidious war of words and weapons against Israel is the continuation of Hitler's Final Solution – the campaign of annihilation of the Jews launched by Himmler and fought by Haj Amin al Husseini and his followers.

© Stanley Zir