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Published: april 11, 2010; Arutz Sheva.

by Patrick Wilmot,

A clueless anti Semite attacked the Jewish State on the web in an article with the above title, reviewing a book called Israeli Occupation. INN staff rebutted. Read our answers and add your own. Note Jamaican Jews response in first paragraph.

INN Editor: Patrick Wilmot is a Jamaican born writer living in London. He decided that the most suitable time for writing a false, vituperative vilification of Israel is right before Holocaust Memorial Day, so he entitled it, insensitively and insultingly, by the above title. INN wrote a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal.

This was received today. Although the article in no way is attributable to the author’s birthplace, Jamaican Jews wanted to tell us that. It is good to know we have Jamaican readers!

Dear Sirs,

We in Jamaica are shocked and dismayed at the appearance of the article entitled “the Germanization of Israel”. Jamaica has not been known for its antisemitism, and has generally speaking been supportive of Israel.

The kind of book that has generated such gross antisemitism should be countered by a similar book,with a summary of the History of the Jewish state that average people (with limited educarion) can readily understand. I feel that such a book would be widely acceptable in many countries of the world where those who hate Israel are gaining a foothold.

Yours sincerely,

Marilyn Delevante

web-site: www.thejewsofjamaica.com

And now for the article and our rebuttals:

Wilmot:

The State of Israel was ostensibly established to save the Jewish people from centuries of European anti-Semitism, which culminated in the holocaust against Jews, Slavs, gypsies, communists, disabled people and homosexuals executed by German Nazis. But the state was not located in Europe, and the people who paid the price and suffered loss were not Germans but Palestinians and other Arabs, with whom Jews had lived peacefully in the Middle East for the past 2000 years.

INN Staff: The State of Israel is located on the land of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. That is why the Jewish State, including Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, belongs exactly where it is.

The efforts to reestablish the Jewish state began long before the Holocaust. For example, Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, convened the Zionist Congress in 1897. Israel was never without Jews.

Israel was established not because of the Holocaust, but despite it. Had the Holocaust succeeded, it would have made a Jewish State unnecessary as there would have been no Jews left.

Some of the UN member states’ guilt for not helping the Jews survive or letting them in made them vote for the creation of the state after the Holocaust.

It would be nice if Israel’s existence was able to save the Jewish people from anti Semitism. Herzl hoped it would . However, this premise is unfounded. The existence of anti Semitic articles such as the one we are analyzing here shows the futility of that hope. Israel’s existence has focused anti-Semitism upon it, under the guise of anti-Zionism.

There was no people claiming to be Palestinian before Israel’s establishment.

“Jews had lived peacefully in the Middle East for the past 2000 years”? The 1929 Hebron massacres of 67 innocent Jews whose families had been living side by side with Arabs for years is but one example of that ‘peace’. “2000 years?”  Mohammed, who founded Islam about 1300 years ago waged  war on the Jews.

“2000 years?” Jews prayed to return to sovereignty in Israel for 2000 years, from the time their Holy Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 (see the Arch of Titus in Rome).

Wilmot:

Israeli Occupation and the Law of Belligerency by Dr Jamal Nasir is a brilliant account of the laws established by the international community to prevent recurrence of the worst features of Nazi conquest and occupation, and the systematic manner in which Israel, backed by the United States of America, has subverted these laws, treating the conquered peoples with the brutality and contempt of Hitler’s Germany.

INN Staff: One tries to fathom the ignorance and/or blind hatred that could equate the systematic murder of 6 million Jewish people (1.5 million of them children, altogether a third of the 18 million Jews alive at the time), people who had done nothing but good for Germany and the rest of the world, loyal citizens of their host countries who never lobbed a grenade or rocket on their neighbors, who didn’t blow themselves up in pizza parlors or on buses teeming with civilians, crush baby’s heads against the wall in Nahariya or shoot a sniper’s bullet to kill a ten month old baby in Hevron (just some examples of Arab terrorist acts in Israel) — with the lifesaving measures against barbaric terrorist actions that Israel is forced by them to take.

Wilmot:

Having suffered Nazi degradation, Israel seems determined to take revenge on another oppressed people.

INN Staff: Let’s see now. Jews in Nazi Europe suffered mass execution in front of pits they were forced to dig, gas chambers, torture and medical experiments. The lucky ones lived in hiding unless betrayed or survived concentration and slave camps. Before that period they were fired from jobs, thrown out of schools.  Businesses and synagogues were destroyed, old men were forced to wash streets on hands and knees, their possessions were looted, they were forced to wear yellow stars, etc. etc. The world’s doors were closed to them. The Nazis went about extermination systematically and efficiently.

Can Arabs living in the areas under Israeli control: Attend university? Yes. Avoid national service? Yes. Have access to all medical facilities? Yes. Work in their various professions? Yes. Open businesses? Yes. Emigrate? Yes. Shop, travel, picnic, ride public transportation?. Yes. etc. etc.

What would happen if they called an end to terror? They and we would all be sitting under our fig trees and grapevines. What would happen if they put down their arms unilaterally? There would be no more war. What would happen if Israel would put down its arms unilaterally? There would be no Israel.

Wilmot:

Israeli Occupation demonstrates in graphic detail how the Jewish state continues to build settlements on occupied land, to annex East Jerusalem, and prevent the return of Palestinians driven from their country.

INN Staff: You mean Palestinians who left in 1948 hoping to return after the outnumbered fledgling state of Israel was destroyed. Even Benny Morris, the leftist revisionist historian, says that there were very few instances of Arabs being driven out.

Wilmot:

While many Jews who fled Nazi Germany have settled in their land of refuge, many, unlike the Palestinians, have been allowed to come back and settle in the land of their birth.

INN Staff: The Jews are loyal citizens who recognize the existence of the states of their birth and have no desire to destroy them. When will the arabs recognize Israel’s right to exist? And The Jews of North Africa, Iraq, Syria and Yemen settled in Israel as well, most after being stripped of their possessions by the countries where “they had lived in ‘peace’.”

Wilmot:

With the continued occupation and colonisation of his homeland, Palestinians such as Dr Nasir will never again be able to return.

INN Staff: After 60 years, how many are alive of those refugees? And how many of them want to become peaceful citizens of Israel?

Wilmot:

The Nazis were condemned for the massacres they committed all over Europe, but the Israeli killings at Deir Yassin and other Arab settlements replicate the horrors of the German destruction of the Polish village of Lidice and other European populations.

INN Staff: Try again? Deir Yassin was a hotbead of violence against Jews yet its destruction is a far from clearcut story. Those who believe it happened, apologize for it.

Other arab settlements? It didn’t happen. Do your homework.

Deir Yassin was an Arab-populated village (it was mono-ethnic; no Jews allowed) that participated in anti-Jewish violence in 1920 including gun-running, in 1929 with attacks on nearby Jewish neighborhoods of Givat Shaul and Bet HaKerem, in 1936-1939, especially aiding terror attacks on the Tel-Aviv – Jerusalem highway and in April 1948, participated in sniping attacks on Bayit VeGan and Bet HaKerem, allowing Iraqi irregulars as well as Arab guerrillas to reside in the village. For the true story of propoganda that backfired on its source, click here or here.  In a later BBC documentary, “The 50 Years War”, Arab residents of the village admitted that claims that a massacre took place were highly exaggerated.

Wilmot:

In the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and the Golan Heights, Israelis have committed massacres, or allowed them to occur, as in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chetila by right-wing Lebanese militia.

INN Staff: There were no massacres committed by Israelis. The right wing Lebanese militia’s hatred of the Palestinians was long standing and they massacred in Sabra and Chetila. Hamas threw PA sympathizers out of upper windows in Gaza when they fought one another.

Wilmot:

And in last year’s attack on Gaza the United Nations accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for targeting civilians.

INN Staff: Who targeted civilians? Just exactly on whom were Gazans aiming the 4000 rockets that rained down on Israel during an 8 year period, many of them after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza? We know who votes at the UN and its farcical Human Rights Commission.

Wilmot:

Collective punishment was carried out by European colonists against occupied populations in Africa, Asia and the Americas, but it was its wanton practice by the Nazis which led to its being outlawed by the United Nations and other international bodies. The Romans invented the practice of decimation, whereby the 10th member of each offending cohort was executed. But the Nazis exterminated whole populations for “offences” against the Reich.

INN Staff: America dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. Arab suicide bombers almost killed our editor’s daughter on a bus where 8 people did die, they killed her neighbors’ 15 year old daughter along with many other innocents while she ate pizza with a friend. If that’s not collective punishment, what is? Israel does not engage in it. Palestinians do.

Wilmot:

Although Israel destroys houses and imprisons families of those who resist its illegal occupation, it ignores international sanctions and is backed by the United States, which routinely vetoes resolutions condemning its actions.

INN Staff: How exactly do they “resist”? By maiming and killing people. We are not talking about Arab Mahatma Ghandis here. The condemning is routine.

Wilmot:

While the United States and the Soviet Union contributed most to the military defeat of Nazism, and used the Nuremberg Tribunal to call the violators of international law to account, the USA has stood solidly by Israel in its violations, negating its contribution to laws against genocide, illegal occupation, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Israeli Occupation details scores of United Nations Resolutions, Geneva Conventions, Hague Regulations and other international conventions governing the conduct of war, the laws of occupation, and the obligations of conquering powers to protect the human and civil rights of the vanquished. All these continue to be violated by Israel, which proceeds with its annexation of Palestinian land, suppression of the civil rights of the population, and collective punishments of those who resist its occupation.

INN Staff: The facts: In 1947, we accepted the UN’s ‘two-state’ resolution on the partition of Palestine, despite the fact that we would not have had any control of Jerusalem or the surrounding neighborhoods; The Arabs rejected it, and instead 6 Arab nations declared war on our fledgling state. In 1979 we gave up a piece of land greater than the size of the state of Israel, the Sinai, for peace with Egyptians. In 1999, we unilaterally withdrew from South Lebanon, allowing Hezbollah to set up its bases in our stead. A year later, Israeli PM Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians ‘the deal of the century’ – 97% of the West Bank, 100% of the Gaza strip, the dismantling of 63 settlements and agreeing that the East Jerusalem neighborhoods would become the capital of their new state. This too, was rejected by the Palestinians. In 2005, Israeli PM Sharon, without negotiations or demanding of concessions, unilaterally pushed through his disengagement plan that led to the dismantling of 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank .

Wilmot:

The wall built by Israel, much of it on Palestinian territory, effectively fragments the land meant for a Palestinian state, and violates many provisions of international statutes governing the nature of occupation. The wall separates people’s houses from their farmlands and other places of occupation, making it impossible to earn a living, thus putting further pressures on them to migrate.

INN Staff: We would love to have no need of that wall, but since it is up terrorists have found it more difficult to kill us, which must be frustrating. The Supreme Court made Israel move the wall whenever  it encroached on Arab fields. but the places of work you are writing about are in Israel. You don’t want Palestinians working in our terrible country anyway, do you?

We have an idea: Tell the PA to use the 12 billion dollars they got from the UN (and all the other EU etc. funds) to create jobs instead of padding their pockets.

Wilmot:

While apartheid South Africa was condemned by the international community for segregating its population along racial lines, Israel is allowed to restrict the residence and movements of its occupied population. It supported and armed the apartheid regime, because it shared white South Africa’s belief in a “Chosen People” and a “Master Race”, despite the fact that Jews and Palestinians are Semitic peoples.

INN Staff: See fig tree, grapevine, suicide bombers (above) for way to end restrictions.

And–check your facts here as well. The Master Race was Hitler’s term for the Aryan people. G-d called the Jews the “Chosen People” when He chose them to keep His 613 Biblical commandments. C’est tout.

Wilmot:

Israeli Occupation is not anti-Jewish or even anti-Israel, and Dr Nasir is at pains to record the attempts of the Palestinians and other Arab nations to come to a settlement which acknowledges Israel’s right to exist, and to relate to its neighbours in conditions of normality. He quotes prominent Jewish scholars who condemn the nature of Israel’s occupation and its violations of international law.

INN Staff: What attempts to come to a settlement? See “gimme a break” above. They won’t even sit at the same table for talks.

Yes, there are Jewish scholars and leftists who criticize Israel. Where are the Palestinians (live ones) who criticize the PA and Hamas? Where is the Palestinian Peace Now group? They don’t exist and if they did, they wouldn’t last long in brutal Palestinian/Arab dictatorships.

Wilmot:

One of the objectives of the book is to educate Palestinians to their rights, so they too, in their territories as well as in the diaspora, can mobilise the international community to support their cause. Despite its violation of international law, and the brutality of its occupation, Israel, through its far-flung lobbies, is able to manipulate public opinion to regard it as a victim. By publicising the facts of occupied Palestine and the oppression of its people, Israeli Occupation hopes to educate people all over the world to help end injustice, the violations of international morality, and denial of human rights.

INNStaff: We are all for Palestinian civil rights in the PA, where they have a long way to go.

And what about the human rights of Israelis who might want to live in Arab areas?

Finally–How we wish you were right and Israel could make world public opinion realize that it is a victim of Islamofascism and blind hatred–and that the rest of the free world is next.

About Patrick Wilmot:
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Patrick Wilmot obtained a bachelor’s degree from Yale and later an MA and Ph.D in philosophy from Vanderbilt, all in the United States. He taught sociology at Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria for 18 years. In 1988, the military government of Ibrahim Babangida deported him from the country for taking more than a passing interest in the way the country was being (mis) ruled by the military despite the fact that he has a Nigerian wife. Patrick has written more than 10 books including In Search of Nationhood (Lantern Books); Sociology: a New Introduction (Collins), and Apartheid and African Liberation (Ife University Press). Patrick now lives in London assessing manuscripts for the African writers series and the Caribbean writers series published by Heinemann. He is a member of council of the African Centre, London and Transparency International.

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