Re: Rafi Hoult's Criticism of  Caroline  Glick

The Issue is Jihad: 

Caroline Glick proposed expanding Israel to include Judea-Samaria; Rafi Hoult disagreed.  The issue is more complicated than both present it.  Hardly a territorial or nationalist conflict, the issue primarily is a religious conflict.  When it is realized to be a front in international jihad, successful policies can be formed.

I’ve had brief correspondence with Ms. Glick, so I asked her why she suddenly proposed Israeli unification with Judea-Samaria Arabs.  I’m still wondering.

Unfair To Glick:  Let’s cut Mr. Hoult some slack for his youth and his demand for sources on what is public knowledge about the Arabs.  But though he criticizes Ms. Glick for “ad hominem” remarks, he makes one, himself.  He states that a couple of public figures have criticized embedded reporters as tending toward bias, and Ms. Glick was an embedded reporter in Iraq.  Don’t imply that Ms. Glick is biased, without citing evidence about her reporting on the Arab-Israel conflict.          

Let’s do Caroline Glick justice.  Ms. Glick has been a renowned Israeli reporter, whose weekly columns always made clear and sound points against popular misimpression. 

P.A. Inflates Population Figures:  Perhaps Ms. Glick‘s speech did not cite the source for her statistics that the Arab population in Judea-Samaria is much lower than the P.A. states.  However, for the past few years, demographers have explained that assertion.  They found that the P.A. counted hundreds of thousands of emigrants as residents, and counted the few hundred thousand Jerusalem Arabs twice.  Remember that Islamic doctrine permits deceit to advance the faith.

Mr. Hoult leaves his point dangling.  Apparently he thinks the larger number of Arabs, whom he believes present, would endanger Israel.  I think that the smaller number of Arabs nevertheless is significant enough to endanger Israel.

Why Arabs Are Hostile:  The speech cited a survey that Israeli Arabs are almost as anti-Israel as P.A. Arabs.  I’ve seen such surveys.  They make sense.  Polls back them up.  Basic Islamic doctrine considers itself superior to people of other religions and Jews to be inherently evil (which is racism). Israel has let radical imams preach in Israel.  Israeli Arabs have become more radicalized.  The Islamist movement in Israel has grown.  Appeasement of the Arabs encourages them to believe that Israelis lack the will to win. 

According to Mr. Hoult, Ms. Glick’s speech claimed that the only reason Israeli Arabs are not committing terrorism against Israel is that they are under Israeli law.  However, an increasing number do commit terrorism.  Augment their numbers with hundreds of thousands of P.A. Muslims, whose society indoctrinates in bigotry, violence, and revenge, and one can expect more terrorism within Israel.

Jihad Has Other Methods, Too:  Islamic take-over depends on more than war and terrorism.  Jihad also proceeds by proselytizing, propagandizing, demanding privileges, intimidating even accurate criticism of Islamic excesses, usurping land, and rioting.  Jihad has leftist enablers, who support Arab squatting on houses and land owned by Jews.  The academic Left propagandizes against Zionism and in favor of the Arabs, and represses dissent.  Israeli security forces often side with Muslims against Jews or get punished if they enforce the law against Arab rioters.   

What P.A. Statehood Means:  Ms. Glick declares that, on the one hand, Israeli Arabs are dangerous, and on the other hand, it would be safe to harbor P.A. Arabs.  If so, Mr. Hoult’s criticism of that is valid.

Set up a new Arab state, Ms. Glick purportedly said, and the P.A. would let foreign Arabs in and terrorists would slip into Israel.  Certainly the P.A. would gain the sovereignty to let them in and put pressure on Israel and its water supply. From what would be a failing state, terrorists would slip into Israel along with workers or medical patients.  That’s why Israel keeps many foreign Arabs from immigrating to the Territories. 

They wouldn’t need to slip in.  They could use rockets, as do the Muslims in Gaza.  They could bombard Ben-Gurion airport and close it down.  They would deprive Israel of the mountain barriers to invasion.  The P.A. legally could invite Arab armies in, regardless of what they promised PM Netanyahu, before getting the sovereign right to disregard pre-state promises.  When foreign Arabs are ready to attack Israel, a swift P.A. ground attack could obstruct Israeli mobilization long enough for invaders to do serious damage.  

Ad Hominem Or Descriptive?:  Mr. Hoult accuses Ms. Glick of making ad hominem attacks against Abbas with only some merit, as in calling him a terrorist and is like Amin al-Husseibi.  Abbas was master terrorist Arafat’s #2 man for 40 years!  He still praises, rewards, and gets terrorists released and touts their case.  His reneging on agreements follows Islamic doctrine that he and Arafat cited.  That’s whom the two-staters would depend on to make peace! 

The problem with analogies is that they partly fit and partly don’t.  Amin al-Husseini was a terrorist, like Abbas.  That analogy fits.  Al-Husseini helped perpetrate the Holocaust, Abbas denied the Holocaust.  The common element there is antisemitism.

The Two-State Distraction:  If Ms. Glick blamed the proposal for P.A. independence for some problems in the Arab-Israel conflict, she is right, Mr. Hoult’s undefined sarcasm about it notwithstanding.  The proposal distracts attention from the real problem, jihad, and from constructive defense.  It insinuates Israeli guilt about the Arabs and stimulates anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism.  

Phony Self-Determination Issue:  Mr. Hoult defends a “Palestinian right to self-determination.”  There is no such right; it’s a fuzzy area.  There is no “Palestinian” nationality.  They are Muslim Arabs having the same religion, written language, and culture as the countries from which most of them followed Zionist economic growth into the Palestine Mandate for a Jewish national home.  They fabricated a nationality to give cover for taking the land from the Jewish people.  The purpose of the P.A. is to squelch Jewish self-determination.  Mr. Hoult calls the area “their land.”  On what basis?  They never had a country there.  The Jewish people did.   

Why feel sorry for a people who attempted genocide against the Jews and are filled with religious hatreds.  They still want to destroy Israel.  They victimized Jews and Arabs.

My Proposal:  End “affirmative” discrimination favoring Arab college and civil service applicants and Arab exemption from national civilian service, enforce the laws on land ownership, house building, taxation, and rioting, stop subsidizing the P.A., and annex areas populated almost entirely by Israelis or that are vacant.  Many Arabs would move out; terrorism would decline (for full proposal http://www.think-israel.org/shulman.newplanarabisraeliconflict.html ).