Why do Arabs ONLY understand the language of force? Post Your Comment (1 comment)

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Posted on August 2, 2001

It's really astonishing how such a small racist remark could affect all sectors of the Israeli society, especially its effect in the Israeli Army where most of Israel's policy makers graduate. It's also astonishing how often Israelis, Zionists, and many Jews repeat this racist question without comprehending its racist and dangerous ramification. For example, if the question was slightly changed, but instead of saying Arabs, let us use Israelis or Jews instead, the statement would become:

"Why Israelis or Jews do not understand but the language of force?"

If any person dares to publish such a racist statement, he or she will be automatically Black Listed and tagged for being an anti-Semite.

The hard truth is that all people, regardless of their color or religious backgrounds, understand the language of force. It's true that Arabs, like many others in the past, submitted to the language of force. On the other hand, many other people submitted to the Arabs force as well, i.e. the Crusaders, Persian, Byzantium, and Mongols to name a few. Similarly, the French, Russian, Greek, Polish Jews during the famous Warsaw uprising or Intifada, ... etc. submitted to the Nazi might during WW II. In other words, force does not and will not discriminate between an Arab nor a Jew.

For the moment, let's assume that this racist question is TRUE, and you are in charge of the Israeli Occupation Force (I.O.F.), do you believe that:

• Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon was a mistake?
• Israel should reinvade Lebanon again to prove a point to all Arabs?
• Israel should cancel the peace treaties it has signed with both Egypt and Jordan? After all Egyptians and Jordanians are also Arabs too!

To demonstrated to the reader how this belligerent attitude toward the Arab population was deeply rooted among early Zionists, let's contemplate the following Zionists quotes:

• Ahad Ha'Am, the leading Eastern European Jewish essayist, wrote after his three months visit to Palestine in 1891:
  
  " ....[the Zionists pioneers believed that] the only language the Arabs understand is that of force ..... [They] behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly upon their boundaries, beat them shamefully without reason and even brag about it, and nobody stands to check this contemptible and dangerous tendency." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.7)
  
  

• Ben-Gurion concluded that no people on earth determined its relations with other peoples by abstract moral calculations of justice:

  "There is only one thing that everyone accepts, Arabs and non-Arabs alike: facts." The Arabs would not make peace with the Jews "out of sentiment for justice," but because such a peace at some point would become worthwhile and advantageous. A Jewish state would encourage peace, because with it the Jew would "become a force, and the Arabs respect force." Ben-Gurion explained to the Mapai party "these days it is not right but might which prevails. It is more important to have force than justice on one's side." In a period of "power politics , the powers that become hard of hearing, and respond only to the roar of cannons. And the Jews in the Diaspora have no cannons." In order to survive in this evil world, the Jewish people needed cannons more than justice. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 191)
  

• Moshe Dayan, one of the early founders of the Haganah and the Israeli Defense Force, wrote in 1955:
  
  "The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side [in retaliation]. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has no value. But if we harass the nearby village . . . then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators] . . . and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordan Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents because their prestige is [assailed], as the Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war . . . the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective." (Righteous Victims, p. 275-276)
  
  
• Israel's leaders drew the wrong lessons from the War of Attrition with Egypt in 1969. Mordachai Gur, who became chief of staff in 1974, wrote in the IDF monthly (July-1987 edition):
  
  "There is no doubt that our victory in the War of Attrition was very important, but did only one conclusion follow from it---to sit and do nothing? That we are strong and if the Arabs want peace, they have to come to us on their knees and accept out terms? . . . This was the great political and strategic mistake---the reliance on force as the almost exclusive factor in the formulation of policy." (Iron Wall, p. 297)
  
  
• As Nahum Goldmann wrote, once president of the World Zionist Congress, in his autobiography, that Israel's reliance on force is becoming the center of its political problems for many years to come, he stated:
  
  " . . . The [1948 war] victory offered such a glorious contrast to the centuries of persecution and humiliation, of adaptation and compromise, that it seemed to indicate the only direction that could possibly be taken from then on. To brook through nothing, tolerate no attack, but cut through Gordain knots, and to shape history by creating facts seemed so simple, so compelling, so satisfying that it became Israel's policy in its conflict with the Arab world." (Simha Flapan, p. 186)

It's unfortunate that many Israelis and Zionists often justify their TERROR and RACISM, which sadly generates Arab terror and racism in response. It's even more tragic that an increasing number of Palestinians and Arabs have started to believe that "Israelis and Zionists understand the language of force" as well. In general, all civilized people, regardless of their backgrounds, should deplore such racist remarks regardless who says it. As long Israelis and Zionists continue to look at the barrel of the gun as a communication tool with their Arab neighbors, Palestinians' version of Zionism will continue be on the rise. Not among Palestinians only, but also all over the Middle East. It is very sad, but often true:

Racism breeds racism, and terror breeds terror.

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