Jews and Palestinians Hate Each Other, Yadda-Yadda-Yadda
On Wednesday, May 8, 2002, a group of San Francisco State University students held a prayer rally for peace. A small group of pro-Palestinians, many of whom were not even SFSU students, marched on them in a “counter-rally” and then pinned the pro-Israelis against a wall and shouted abuse at them for 40 minutes, including phrases like “Death to Jews” and “Go to Germany, they know how to handle you” among the usual “Zionism Equals Racism” and “F**k Israel” slogans. Police were dispatched and surrounded the whole scene until order could be restored.
The entire event was captured on videotape by security cameras.
The president of SFSU was so appalled by what the counter-rally people were shouting that he has asked the city DA to investigate the counter-protestors for hate speech crimes.
Tensions are high on the SFSU campus between those who support Israel and those who do not, and has been for some time. A friend who up until recently attended classes there told me that the university’s Jewish population has dwindled dramatically in recent years because of the tense atmosphere. He told me the story of the mural in Malcolm X Plaza, which is a large, colorful thing showing scenes from Malcolm’s life, and which also had a giant black fist smashing the Star of David. Protests were lodged and that part of the mural was eventually painted over, yet the feeling seem to linger, like the smell of spoiled food. Many Jewish students have simply transferred to other schools.
A couple of weeks before the May 8th event, posters were put up around campus showing Jews eating Christian babies.
Oddly enough, none of this got any press coverage for almost a week, and then it was in both city newspapers and all over the radio talk shows. The police have been interviewed, as has the university president, and the pro-Israeli participants, and all confirm the events as described above. The story changes, however, when anyone even remotely associated with the pro-Palestinian side is asked to comment.
They maintain that “the Jews” provoked them with their “offensive” chant of “2-4-6-8, don’t teach your kids to hate” and that some of the pro-Israeli students called them “camel jockeys” justified their actions, which were of course entirely peaceful in intent and only got heated when the pro-Israelis provoked the pro-Palestinian non-students.
A spokeswoman for the main Palestinian student group on campus maintains that “all of the problems” at the university “come from the Jews – they started it by invading the land of Palestine.” I think I need not comment on that statement, since to the best of my knowledge, no group at SFSU was involved in the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 (nor would they still be students today) nor do any SFSU students currently hold positions in the Knesset or the Israeli military.
Frankly, I am sick of the inability of people of the Palestinian side of the issues to tell the truth. I am tired of their constant exaggerations, annoyed by their childish approach to the issues, sickened by their blatant anti-Jewish racism, and bored beyond belief by their constant posturing and casting themselves in the role of the victims, even when they are obviously in the wrong. The sympathies that I have for the cause of the Palestinian State is being eroded more with each passing headline. (In the case of the May 8th mishap, the spokeswoman for the Palestinian group claims that everyone who was there was a student, though we know that this is not true, claims that their original intent was to hold a silent protest, though we know that is not true, and claims that the presence of police before the unpleasantness also provoked them, though we KNOW for a fact that there were no police there before the university called them in. The strategy seems to be that if “the Jews” say they were victims of anti-Semitism, then the Palestinians claim likewise, if “the Jews” claim they were provoked, then so were the Palestinians. If a Jewish student got food poisoning at the cafeteria, a bunch of Palestinian students would not only claim worse food poisoning, but would say that the Jew poisoned them.)
Not that the Israelis are doing a much better job. Likud – the right-wing party that PM Sharon is part of – has just come out saying that they absolutely reject the idea of Palestinian Statehood, which is just about the stupidest thing that has been done in Israel since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. I am furious with their refusal to deal with or even address the issue of the settlers, and am nauseated by their treatment of the Palestinians in general.
Here’s my solution, which several friends agree with – 1. Israel withdraws completely from the Occupied Territories, back to pre-1967 borders. This must include all Israeli settlements built after the 1967 war, and those settlements are razed to the ground – let the Palestinians start from scratch. 2. The new territories of the Palestinian State are cordoned off, possibly with a huge wall as some have suggested, and traffic in an out of Israel is strictly controlled, with pilgrimage rights to sacred sites reciprocal (Jews can go the ones in Palestine and Palestinians can go to ones in Israel – both with military escorts from both nations, if need be). 3. Jerusalem is internationalized and can be the capital of both countries, if they choose that to be the case. But any violence in the city of Jerusalem, regardless of which side originates it, would be dealt with swiftly by an international peacekeeping force. 4. The Israelis wait.
Either everything will be better in a couple of generations, in which case a closer integration may be possible, or, and this is the far more likely case, there will be a bombing somewhere in Israel, at which time the Israelis can point out to the rest of the world that they were right and that Palestinian statehood was only the first step in a program to rid the area of Jews altogether, and then declare war upon the new nation of Palestine. With their far superior military, they will win very easily, with surgical military strikes and then can withdraw back to the borders agreed upon, even expel all Palestinians that are not Israeli-citizens if they like – in short, do what must be done to ensure the safety of their own citizens. The UN and others will have to get actively involved in a dispute between two internationally recognized sovereign nations and things can progress from there.
Decisive action needs to be taken before more innocent people, Israeli and Palestinian, are killed in the never-ending round robin of stupid violence that presently defines the Middle East. Give them a state and then deal with them as a state. Then this infantile caterwauling can stop and we can all go about our business.
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