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Guest Commentary Ever since Prime Minister Sharon announced plans for a unilateral disengagement from Gaza last April, adjacent towns in Israel proper have come under increasing attack. Qassam rockets have been frequently fired into communities such as the Negev's Sderot, deliberately aimed at terrorizing civilians. Whereas Israel tries its best to carefully target those responsible for the murder of its people, the Arab targets of choice are the most innocent. Not only is greater shock value derived from this, the reality is that, in Arab eyes, there are no Jewish innocents. Not long ago, two Jewish preschoolers were killed in such a volley. Recently, many others have been wounded. Just a thought...Is Israel's predictability in the careful nature of its response (despite what the world's hypocrites say) costing the lives of Jews? Perhaps if Arabs in Gaza and elsewhere thought that the admonition, "those who harbor terrorists will share in their fate," a la George W. Bush, would be applicable to them also, they might think a little bit more before allowing these deliberate assaults on innocents to occur. American bombers--not just helicopters--over Fallujah and elsewhere come to mind. And the Geneva Convention itself states that terrorists cannot use their own populations as human shields, and that the presence of such non-combatants does not prevent assaults on those who hide behind their own women and children. Furthermore, blame for any potential harm to the latter is to be placed on the shoulders of the rats, not those who go after them in their dens. Again, just a thought... A little less predictability on Israel's part might be beneficial to all in the long run. Now, returning to the rockets themselves, when choosing this new Arab weapon of terror, Hamas (which, like most other Arabs, denies Israel's right to exist with or without the disputed territories) gave careful thought to the name that it should go by. Since the "militant wing" of the organization (the folks that actually blow up the buses, teen night clubs, pizzerias, and such) was named after Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, it made sense to name the weapon after him as well. Surely such a man must have had some great credentials in the "Palestinian" Arab movement...don't you think? Of course. Izz ad-Din made his name by butchering and disemboweling "Zionist invaders" during the early mandatory period after World War I. So, what else do we know about this legendary leader of the "Palestinians?" Well, for starters, hold on to your seats... Hamas' hero--like most other "native Palestinians"--was born elsewhere. In his case, Ladeqiya, Syria. In just one three month period alone, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commissions documented scores of thousands of other Syrian Arabs pouring into the British Mandate of Palestine. Like numerous other Arabs moving in from elsewhere, they came to take advantage of the economic boom going on because of the influx of Jewish capital. And for every Arab newcomer--i.e. settler--that was documented, many more slipped in under cover of darkness and were never recorded. Add to this the fact that, for a number of reasons, the Brits were more concerned about entering Jews than entering Arabs. Despite this, lots of evidence exists which shows that--like the murderous Sheikh--most "Palestinian" Arabs were no more native than most of the returning, forcibly exiled, Diaspora Jews. Now think about this for a moment... So many Arabs were recent arrivals into the Mandate that when UNRWA was created to deal with the Arab refugee situation, created as a result of the invasion by a half dozen Arab states of a reborn Israel in 1948, it adjusted the definition of "refugee" from the prior meaning of persons normally and traditionally resident to those who lived in the Mandate for a minimum of only two years prior to 1948. Also keep in mind that for every Arab who was forced to flee the fighting that the Arabs started in their attempt to nip a nascent Israel in the bud, a Jewish refugee was forced to flee Arab lands...but with no UNRWA set up to help them. Indeed, scores of thousands of Jews fled the same Syria that the Sheikh immigrated to Palestine from. Greater New York City alone now has some tens of thousands of these folks. Many others moved to Israel and elsewhere. But, while Arabs see it as their natural right to settle anywhere in the Dar ul-Islam and what they claim as purely Arab patrimony (despite the fact that scores of millions of non-Arabs also live in the area and have been conquered and forcibly Arabized by them), when Jews moved into their sole, reborn state (as opposed to some two dozen for Arabs), Arabs declared this to be al nakba...the catastrophe. Hundreds of millions of Hindus and Muslims could arrive at a less-than-perfect modus vivendi in the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent--at virtually the same moment Arabs were rejecting a similar offer over what was left of the Palestine Mandate after Arabs had already been awarded the lion's share in 1922 with the separation of Transjordan--yet the mere thought of anyone else gaining a mere sliver of the very same political rights that Arabs demand for themselves (be they Kurds, Berbers, Black Africans, Jews, or whomever) was out of the question. The conflict we have in the Middle East today is largely all about this mindset. The next time you hear about those "Qassam" rockets, consider the irony here. And, oh yes, I almost forgot... The late murderous ghoul himself was born in Cairo. And tens of thousands of other Egyptian Arabs, besides Arafat, had preceded his own migration and settlement in Palestine just somewhat earlier in the wake of Muhammad Ali and son Ibrahim Pasha's military excursions in the latter 19th century. Copyright by Gerald A. Honigman Copyright © MichNews.com. All Rights Reserved.
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