Crybabies

Israelis are often accused of being crybabies about the Holocaust. It’s “Holocaust this” and “Holocaust that.” Enough already, they say. Of course, every foreign dignitary visiting Israel makes an obligatory trip to Yad Vashem, Israel’s premier Holocaust resource center. Israel is also the epicenter for many legal battles against genocide and has adopted the motto, “Never Again!” In addition, Israel jealously guards its title as the primary home of Holocaust survivors. The Holocaust is at least partially responsible for the United Nations’ acceptance of Israel into its membership. Inevitably, Israelis are accused of trading on the Holocaust.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out in his address to the General Assembly at the United Nations in September, “Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. In Berlin, a day before I was in Wannsee, I was given the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.” Was Netanyahu trading on the Holocaust or pointing out the real danger that Israel faces from Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons?

Is the Holocaust the first and foremost genocidal tragedy of modern times? The Armenians have made a case that the Turkish massacres against them during the First World War make that tragedy the archetype for genocide. But their claim is problematic: 1– the Ottoman Turks didn’t have a leader like Hitler who built his whole career on the annihilation of the Jews; 2 – the Turks didn’t plan and carry out an Armenian genocide to the same extent as the Nazis, who developed a blueprint for genocide. The Nazis went so far as to continue exterminating Jews even when it detracted from their military efforts towards the end of WWII.

Today, in fact, there’s no consensus on whether there was an Armenian genocide, and Armenia is even considering giving in on the issue to cement a diplomatic deal with Turkey. The Armenians, nor any other people for that matter, have never been subjected to such a premeditated plan of genocide as the Holocaust. Regardless, genocide continues to be a huge problem, especially in Africa.

So, with genocide being such an important issue and with the Holocaust its most compelling example, surely the Israelis aren’t crybabies.

The Palestinians are the biggest crybabies on earth. What are they crying about? The so-called usurpation of their country, Palestine. Day in and day out, the Palestinians

cry: at the United Nations, at Arab congresses, on television, anywhere and to anyone. But the facts are

that there never has been a country called Palestine.

There weren’t any “Palestinians” in 1922, when the League of Nations gave the British the Mandate for Palestine, using the ancient name for the former Ottoman province. (The term became common usage to describe Jews born in the Mandatory Palestine.) The name “Palestine” refers to the Philistines, an ancient sea people from Asia Minor who inhabited the southern coast of Israel. “Philistine Syria” (Greek) and “Provincia Syria Palaestina” (Roman) were names used to suppress the Jewish influence there.

(www.palestinefacts.org)

The 1947 U.N. Partition Plan divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas. The Arabs rejected the plan and skirmishes against Jews began immediately. Israel was declared a state by the U.N. after the ensuing War of Independence. The West Bank and Gazan Arabs failed to declare their own state or even agitate for one. Instead, Jordan occupied and then annexed the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. According to the Arabs, all of Palestine-Israel is disputed territory, “Arab land,” that they claim for themselves. (Technically, Jordan and Egypt, which each have a treaty with Israel, accept Israel’s sovereignty within the 1949 armistice lines.)

Something happened after WWII which should have changed the status of the Palestinians; it was “population transfer.” The most prominent example of this phenomenon happened in 1947 during the partition of British India into India and Pakistan. In the largest and most rapid population transfer in history, about 18 million Muslims and Hindus left their homes to relocate with their co-religionists. Had the Arabs accepted the U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, Israel would have fewer Arab citizens today.The Arabs could have grouped themselves in the West Bank and Gaza, either as citizens of Jordan and Egypt or as citizens of their own state.

Emphasizing the pragmatism of population transfer is the exodus of Jews from Arab countries in North Africa and Arabia, which happened throughout the decade following Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Up to 800,000 Jews left their homes, almost all unwillingly, when the hostility of their Arab neighbors forced them to flee – usually with little but what they could carry with them. Since the number of Jewish refugees is roughly equivalent to the number of Palestinian refugees in 1948, population transfer of the Palestinians would have been a pragmatic solution to their problem. (It wasn’t that any of the transferred populations chose to be exiled ... it was a necessary evil.)

Instead of accepting the U.N. Partition Plan or later peace offers, the Palestinians have wallowed in their self-induced misery, complaining bitterly about their conditions. They have made a habit of turning down every peace overture from Israeli leaders, and later complaining that the Israelis won’t begin new negotiations starting with the terms that were summarily refused.

The Palestinians even managed to set up a unique U.N. agency, UNRWA, to prolong their refugee status until such time as they could usurp the Jewish state. Instead of building lives for themselves in their own negotiated state or in neighboring Arab countries, they have concentrated on trying to destroy Israel. Palestinians are the

crybabies, not Israelis.

Stephen Kramer resided and worked in the Atlantic City area until 1991, when he moved to Israel with his wife, Michal Langweiler, and two sons. He can be reached at Sjk1@jhu.edu.