[Valigator]

As early as 1919 there were signs of the fighting between Muslim Arabs and Jews that was bound to ensue if the madcap scheme to plunk the Jews into the middle of people hostile to them was carried out. The leaders of the most strident opposition group, the Jaffa Muslim Organization, issued this statement: "We will push the Zionists into the sea or they will push us into the desert." [Quoted in Righteous Victims by Benny Morris (Knopf, 1999)]. With blind determination to avoid the predictable, on July 24, 1922, the League of Nations issued a Palestine Mandate approving the Jewish homeland promised in the Balfour Declaration, modifying the Declaration with clauses recognizing the rights of non-Jews in the region identified as Palestine.


Once persecuted European Jews and pogrom victims in Russia began their exodus to the area of Palestine where Israel was taking shape, Arabs began rioting and fighting what they construed as unacceptable incursions into their land. The violence was so alarming to the British government which controlled the region that its political leaders issued its 1939 "White Paper" drastically limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. The end result was that millions of European Jews were trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe.


Why the Jews Were Trapped


The reason why the Jews were trapped in countries occupied by the Nazis was that they were refused admission elsewhere. Acting on orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ironically depicted as "friend of the Jews," the U.S. Government turned away thousands of Jews on ships which had carried them to American shores. Nor would the governments of other nations accept them. They were forced either to return to the countries where they were to be imprisoned and slaughtered or to sail on to Israel. Jewish leaders kept begging the government of the U.S. to allow immigration. Had their pleadings been heeded, a far greater number of Jews than those who eventually settled in Israel would have become citizens of the U.S., and the picture in the Near East might be different than it is now.


Creation of an Israeli State


On November 29, 1947, ignoring the certainty of the forthcoming violence that was bound to occur, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. As was to be expected, leaders of Arab countries refused to cooperate. What was then the Arab League of Nations, consisting of 22 countries, in effect declared "war on the Jews," determined to "drive them into the sea." A small, vastly outnumbered army of Jews, displaying the first signs of their brilliant military skills and innovative technology, soundly thrashed the troops from 22 Arab nations that encompassed a combined population of several hundred million.


On May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was formally established. While the heads of Arab countries refused to recognize Israel's existence, neither were they of the mind to try any more wars against Jews. The fanatical leaders of Muslim organizations and Islamist sects, however, were of a different mindset. "Death to the Jews" became their motto, and it was clear immediately that they would never accept co-existence with Jews in the region that ceased to be Palestine because it was carved by the British who had controlled it into separate states.


The Creation of Islamic Fanatics


While the madness of plunking Jews into the middle of hostile Arabs was taking its inevitable course, oppression of people in oil sheikdoms, and U.S. recognition of and cooperation with the brutal regimes of the Near East, were causing more and more people in that part of the world to turn to religion for succor and, indeed, what seemed to them to be their only hope to escape wretched poverty. U.S. political leaders, and Americans in general concerned mostly with how cheap the gasoline for their cars would be, blindly refused to recognize the buildup of a new force in the world based on quasi-religious fanaticism.


The end result of decades of horrendous mistakes is now exploding in the Near East and other parts of the world where millions of human beings believe that Islam in one form or another should rule the world, that anyone who does not believe in whatever Islamic clerics preach is an "infidel", and that Americans and Jews wherever they may be are the enemy and deserve to be conquered if not destroyed.


Just as the non-German world failed to heed the threat of Hitler and the Nazis to wipe out the Jews and to create a Nazi-run empire, so has the non-Arab Muslim world failed to take seriously the public announcements of leaders and followers of Islamic quasi-religious organizations that they intend to destroy Jews and Americans and to create an Islamic theocracy across the globe. Instead of crushing the genocidal maniacs before they can acquire the technology and weaponry to achieve their goal - eventually through biological and nuclear weapons if they are allowed to advance that far - the rest of the world has allowed them to grow, unchecked, into a force of armed hatred.


Long before the attack on the World Trade Center, plans of Islamic fanatics to attack areas of the U.S. were known. It has been known for years that Hezbollah, this Islamic militia that wiped out a U.S. Marine contingent and that has wreaked other kinds of havoc, was acquiring the means to rain missiles on Israel. Nothing was done to stop them.


Thus, the Monster created by a series of madcap mistakes has been allowed to grow and gain strength. It should be evident to anyone who has any sense at all that this Monster will allow peace to be arranged neither between the occupants of Israel and the occupants of other Near East countries nor between the Israelis and the people living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Any time it appears that some kind of peace negotiations are advancing, the Monster will engender an incident to disrupt it, whether by genocidal bombings preposterously called "suicide bombings" or by kidnappings or by whatever kind of method may be necessary.


This is the lesson of the war now in progress. Those who have eyes but remain blind, because they refuse to see, now blame "the Jews" for the violence that has erupted in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. But the Jews did not create the Monster. We Americans and our British allies created it. Now it is too late to feel sorry for the oppressed people of the Near East who have become willing followers of the Monster. Now it is too late to try to reason with the Monster, to make peace with it. The Monster is attempting to develop biological and nuclear weapons that it will use for genocidal attacks on whole populations just as readily as its alleged "martyrs" will turn themselves into bombs to kill and maim. Consequently, as terrible as the prospect may seem, unless there is some sort of miraculous turn of events, destruction of the Monster appears to be the only way to secure peace in the Near East. And if the present relatively limited war there is not stopped, it could lead to a conflagration that would make World War II appear to have been a minor military excursion by comparison.