Jake Jacobs’ “Jake’s Take” article in Wednesday’s WHT requires a response.
Despite the headline, “Gabbard should reverse stance on Israel,” he writes not so much about Gabbard but about Israel’s right to exist. Yes, there are many reasons to find fault with how the present administration in Israel is conducting itself and is denying civil rights to many of its own citizens.
But to consider suspending U.S. military aid to the only democracy in the Middle East and our only trusted ally in a region filled with dictators, monsters, and countries run by political parties that are on the U.S. list of terror sponsors, is a bad idea.
Racism, prejudice and xenophobia are on the rise at this time throughout the world, including in the United States. Anti-Muslim rhetoric has become not only rampant but is now practically mainstream, thanks largely to the current Republican primary elections. It will get worse as the presidential campaign continues. The Middle-East refugee crisis, especially in Syria, is sending hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees to Europe, aggravating Europe’s xenophobia.
ISIS is one of Jacobs’ concerns, as it should be, although ISIS’ primary targets have been fellow Muslims. ISIS was not created by Israel. Israel did not create the Arab Spring or the civil war in Syria. But Israel gets blamed. Why is that? The British Labour Party has recently come to international attention in regard to blurring the lines between anti-Israel rhetoric and anti-Semitism. While liberal attitudes applaud nearly all minorities’ efforts to secure their rights to exist, many liberal institutions now seek to deny that right to Israel.
There are 1.6 billion Muslims, 2.2 billion Christians, 1 billion Hindus, 376 million Buddhists, and just 14 million Jews in the world. The population of Israel is 8,462,000, 1,757,000 are Arabs. The area occupied by the State of Israel is roughly the same as the area occupied by the Hawaiian Islands archipelago. Israel is surrounded by 22 hostile Arab/Islamic dictatorships, 640 times her size, 60 times her population and with all the oil. Most of those countries have at one time or another declared their intention to wipe Israel off the map. When Israel survived its War of Independence in 1948, many refugees were created. The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel’s independence was roughly equal to the number of Arabs leaving Palestine. Estimates of that number vary but it’s probably between 400,000 and 700,000 refugees for each.
Israel accepted over a half million Jewish refugees. Jordan was the only Arab country to welcome Palestinians and grant them citizenship (to this day Jordan is the only Arab country where Palestinians as a group can become citizens). How many of those refugees did the other surrounding Arab states accept into their borders? Essentially none.
Those unfortunate people have been kept in United Nations camps for generations where they were kept unemployed and taught to hate Israel, hate Jews, and hate the West. Those camps became terrorist breeding grounds. Arab governments have frequently offered jobs, housing, land and other benefits to Arabs and non-Arabs, except for Palestinian Arabs. Saudi Arabia chose to use thousands of South Koreans and other Asians rather than unemployed Palestinian refugees to alleviate its own labor shortages.
Yes, there has been a major ongoing refugee problem in and around Israel since 1948. Yes, there has been even more anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinianism as a result. To suggest that the U.S. reverse its support of Israel by allowing Israel to be destroyed by its Arab neighbors would not solve any Middle East problem. Would ISIS or Bashar al-Assad of Syria suddenly declare peace? I think not. This idea of destroying Israel is only thinly veiled anti-Semitism. Ignoring that fact means that my very existence will be at risk, as well as putting at risk many people whose last name is Jacobs (whether they’re Jewish or not).
I, too, hope that Tulsi Gabbard learns much more about Israel as she represents us in Congress, including effective ways to influence Israel’s present administration, but not that she succumb to the anti-Semitic urge to defund Israeli defenses against the all-too-real threats that surround that tiny nation.
Barry Blum, MD, is a resident of Kailua-Kona
