Ayoon Wa Azan (“Financing Terror”)

Can Israel ever be compared to Iran? No, of course not, but let me explain. The above was the controversial title of an editorial in the Los Angeles Times this week, with ensuing replies from Jewish American readers and others to the newspaper’s criticism of the overreaction of the Israeli government and the media to Gunter Grass’s poem – which said that Israel is a threat to world peace, while Iran is not, because it is not yet established that it possesses nuclear weapons. Iran occupies three islands of the UAE, and we will continue to call for their liberation and condemn their occupation. However, Iran is inhabited by Iranians, and while its stances are hostile against the UAE and all Arab Gulf states, they are nothing compared to the criminality of the Israeli occupation, the theft of an entire country from its people, and the killing of women, children and the elderly, along with the men. Compared to Israel, Iran is Mother Teresa. I move on to the issue of ‘Financing Terror’. This title makes me think of Israeli terrorism and its annual $3 billion financing from declared U.S. aid, as well as the indirect and tax exempt aid of around $10 billion it is getting from a country that is on the brink of bankruptcy. The editorial in The National Interest was protesting the emphasis on, and the persecution and harassment of, Islamic charities in the United States, while the supporters of Israeli settlers are allowed to raise money to fund construction in Hebron, in contravention of international resolutions supposedly upheld by the U.S. administration. Israel is the mother and father of all terrorism. The first terrorists in our region went on to become prime ministers in Israel, beginning with David Ben-Gurion and not ending with Benjamin Netanyahu. In truth, it was Israeli terrorism that spawned national liberation movements such as Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, while also giving a pretext for criminal terrorists such as al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. Were it not for Israel, there would be no terrorism in our countries. The Crime continues. According to the news, the Israelis expropriated cemeteries in Jerusalem, and are trying to invent a fake history for them there. They also uprooted 30 thousand Bedouins from the Negev and deprived them of their livelihoods. The Israelis prevented pro-Palestinian sympathizers to board airplanes abroad, and from leaving the airport in Israel. They also imposed a lockdown on the West Bank. Our newspaper followed up the matter adequately and consistently. But I want to add one thing here: To be sure, the war criminal and charlatan Benjamin Netanyahu outdid even himself, when he spoke about ‘duplicity’, and said that peace advocates must look into human rights violations in Gaza, Syria and Iran instead. In other words, Netanyahu is saying that if human rights are lacking or are being violated in Gaza, Syria and Iran, then it is Israel’s right to deny the Palestinians, the sole legitimate owners of the land, these rights and murder them. Following the same logic, since Hitler killed the Jews in Europe, then why can the Jewish refugees in Palestine not carry out massacres, from Deir Yassin to Gaza today, and every massacre in between? Not all Jews around the world are neo-Nazis like the members of the Israeli cabinet. In fact, the majority is pro-peace, and some of the most active peace advocates happen to be in Israel itself. I follow up their activities regularly, and I admit that some of them are better and more committed than Arab peace advocates. Nonetheless, the problem with the Jewish pro-peace majority is that a majority within it does not want to believe that Israel is a racist criminal state. One example is enough here. An Israeli theater group called Habima was invited to take part in the Globe to Globe festival in London’s Globe Theatre. 27 celebrities objected to this invitation, because Habima had performed in settlements, then I read that three other celebrities, who are Howard Jacobson, Maureen Lipman and Simon Callow voiced their support for Habima’s participation. The first two are British Jews, and I have always taken them to be moderate. But they belong to that segment that refuses to believe that Israel is as bad as it is being portrayed.