History Is Being Destroyed, Take 2

A few days ago, we posted a PRIMER Comment & Analysis entitled History is Being Destroyed, critiquing a malicious commentary written by Mark Braverman.

As expected, his commentary inspired further malicious and misleading attacks on Israel. The following letter, written by Ellen Cantarow of Medford, Massachusetts, was published in The Day of New London on Friday, January 4.

It is annotated with bracketed comments, but the letter also illustrates the phenomenon of the self-hating Jews. (Of course, the self-hating Jews hate being reminded of their malady.) Both Braverman and the letter-writer claim to be Jewish. In Connecticut, many of the most vicious haters of Israel are self-hating Jews. One wonders what traumatic experiences in their childhoods turned them into haters of their own people, so much so that not only do they ally themselves with people trying to destroy them, but often and without apparent shame lie, distort and misrepresent in order to defame the only country in the world that would welcome them home if what happened in Germany happened in their country of residence.

Israel Not The Beautiful Land That It Once Was

[The writer clearly doesn't think Israel ever was beautiful.]

I appreciated Mark Braverman's op-ed piece. ("Palestine is being destroyed," Dec. 30.) I am also Jewish,

[It seems to be important for self-hating Jews to establish their bona fides to maximize the damage they cause.]

born during World War II, but even when I first traveled to Israel and the West Bank as a reporter in 1979, I became convinced that Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights was immoral and would wreak devastation on both peoples.

[At that time, the PLO wasn't even pretending to be interested in anything other than the destruction of Israel.]

In the 1980s the West Bank was a beautiful, austere Mediterranean landscape where there was occupation, but where Palestinians could travel freely and where almost everyone survived well through agricultural employment or work in Israel.

[None of which was possible when the disputed territories were illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan. At that time, it wasn't Israel that was restricting travel, but the Arab states which refused to have anything to do with Israel other than send fedayeen across the border to murder innocent civilians.]

It is now an open-air prison scarred by the hideous, massive, separation wall; hundreds of barriers and obstacles, militarized terminals replete with watchtowers, electronic sensors and the most sophisticated weaponry U.S. tax dollars can buy.

[All the barriers and restrictions are a result of three major factors:

1. The first intifada which began in the late 1980s.
2. The corrupt maladministration of the Palestinian Authority, which after it took over administration of the major portions of the disputed territories as part of the failed Oslo Process used the massive amounts of foreign assistance to build up a terrorist infrastructure and line the pockets of Yassir Arafat and his cronies.
3. The terrorist war the Palestinian Arabs launched after rejecting peace in 2000.

The writer blames everything on Israel, but it was the Palestinian Arabs who caused the worsening of their situation.

Gaza, where I haven't traveled for 25 years, is indescribably worse.

[It's worse because it's totally under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Israel completely left years ago. Unfortunately, rather than taking the opportunity to build a civil society, the Palestinian Arabs turned it into Hamastan.]

"My-Israel-right-or-wrong" defenders

[This is another example of haters of Israel falsely labeling either Israel or its supporters with that which Israel's enemies are guilty of.

Israel's supporters generally recognize Israel about as normal a country as possible, given that it's surrounded by enemies who wish to destroy it and at war with enemies who revel not only in murdering innocent civilians but teach their children there is no greater glory than blowing themselves up in the cause of murdering Israeli civilians. Israel has the faults of other normal countries.

In contrast, the Israel-haters are "Israel-is-always-wrong" fanatics who refuse to admit the possibility that sixty years of Arab war against Israel, the refusal to let the descendants of Arab refugees live in normal communities rather than refugee camps and the corruption of their own officials might have something to do with the misery of the Palestinian Arabs.]

do not open themselves to meeting Palestinians in the West Bank - let alone staying in their homes, accepting their hospitality, interviewing them and hearing their stories of excruciating travail.

[The Palestinian Arabs have made it rather dangerous for ordinary Jews to move around the predominately Arab areas of the disputed territories.

There is no question the Palestinian Arabs are in a horrible mess, but it's the height of chutzpah to expect the very people you are trying to destroy to help you out of the mess you created for yourselves.]

One way of doing this is through a trip with Birthright Unplugged, an organization with which this writer is not associated but which she admires. For more information, consult the Internet.

[Birthright Unplugged is indeed an excellent vehicle for honing important skills such as the ability to lie, distort and defame without shame. It certainly won't give anyone a reasonable perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Birthright Unplugged is also an excellent example of what the Arab-Israeli conflict is about. It's a totally negative effort to eliminate Israel, a country which just wants to live in peace with its neighbors.]