Eyes Closed by Hatred

by: Paula R. Stern

First comes a feeling of incredulity that anyone could be stupid enough to believe it. Then comes a feeling of anger that they would dare to write and send it to me. Then there is the feeling that maybe, just this once, if I try to explain it just one more time, piece by piece, line by line, truth by truth, historical fact after historical fact, they may really believe, may really be enlightened, may really open their eyes.

Nobody is doubting that the holocaust was a terrible terrible tragedy! However you can not use one tragedy to justify another!

Why is this one different than the others I have received over the years? It’s the same lies. The same ignorance. Why does it bother me more? Maybe because it came on Holocaust Remembrance Day when we are so concentrated on mourning the more than six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. I know the “tragedy” of which she speaks is about the Palestinians and their quest for a state – the one they pursue with rockets and suicide bombs. Of course, I could point out that there are many, too many, who DO deny the Holocaust, but let’s talk of this other “tragedy.”

Denying them “their” state, Amma is saying, and the security restrictions, the closures, etc. it all equals the ghettoes and the concentration camps and the final solution. What matter that Gaza has been under Palestinian control for years and no one is rounding up innocent Palestinians and carting them off to labor and death camps. No one lives in darkness (except when Hamas refuses to deliver the massive quantities of fuel Israel sends to Gaza regularly).

What matter that the only gas used in Gaza is for cooking or running their cars. Minor point that there is food in Gaza, no one is starving there. There are no starved-to-death bodies lying in the streets; as happened in the ghettos. Thousands of Jews were not taken to German hospitals for medical care. There is no cold to kill the Gazans as there was in Europe where people were forced to live, and die, in the frozen winter months.

By contrast, Palestinian children are often photographed playing on the miles of beaches. Journalists complain that Israeli cities are filled with beautiful parks for children, while Gazan children play in the streets. But where did the children of the ghetto play? And why don’t the Gazans use international funds for parks instead of rockets, build schools and educate their children to peace?

There is a tragedy in Gaza – yet another generation raised on Mickey Mouse television characters who instruct them to kill Jews; religious leaders who tell them murder and suicide is holy; and political leaders who encourage terrorists to shoot rockets and mortars at Israeli cities while hiding among the population. There is poison in the minds of Palestinian mothers, enough that they take their children to surround the homes of terrorists, to protect them from the Israeli army and even worse. There is such hatred in the hearts of these women that they celebrate when their sons die as “martyrs.”

The Israeli army is responsible for killing young children, kicking millions of Palestinians out of their country, and raping thousands of young women!

No, Amma, Israeli soldiers do not rape “thousands of young women.” The single greatest threat to young Palestinian women likely comes from their own fathers and brothers taking part in the traditional honor killings that are rampant in the Middle East and even happens in Israel and Western countries.

No, Israel did not kick out “millions of Palestinians”.  Your numbers are as inflated and inaccurate as most of your letter, Amma. The truth is that in 1948, there was a war – a war started when five Arab nations decided they could get more land by going to war than by accepting the United Nation’s solution to split the land between Arab and Jew. They promised to push the Jews into the sea and warned local Arab populations to get out of the way. No one knows the exact numbers, but hundreds of thousands of Arabs listened (not millions, Amma – not even one million). They fled to their brothers’ lands, only to be pushed into refugee camps and never, even decades later, made home. That is a tragedy of Arab creation, not Israel.

Nothing in Ms Ahmed’s letter refers to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were born in Arab countries, whose families had lived there for centuries, who were also made homeless by the war. These Jewish refugees were made welcome in Israel, given homes and  today, you cannot know who once lived in the tent cities. They are our brothers, not political pawns.

Perhaps this letter bothered me more because my son is a soldier and I know the army in which he fights is an honorable one. It does not target young children, as the Palestinian terrorists and snipers do. What of the four young Hatuel girls who were murdered at almost point-blank range by Palestinian terrorists who had just shot and killed their pregnant mother? What of 15-year-old Malki Roth, murdered in the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem? What of 13-year-old Kobi Mandel, bludgeoned to death when he went hiking near his home and was caught by a Palestinian shepherd? If anyone is guilty of targeting children, it is the Palestinians.

What of little Afik, only four-years-old when he was killed by a rocket shot into Sderot, and little five-month-old Yehuda who was killed by a rock thrown at his parents car, and little Shalhevet, shot in the head by a Palestinian sniper who carefully aimed, focused, and fired on the ten-month-old baby?

Yes, the Palestinians have names of dead children too. Too many, too often. But the difference, the incredible difference, is that their dead children were not the target. They were indeed innocents caught in a tragic war that will only end when their parents want peace more than war. Our children WERE the targets. Does it matter, in the end, why you bury a child? I can only say that sadly, we must make it matter. We must explain that when the Palestinians stop aiming at our Kobis and Malkis and Afiks and Yehudas and Shalhevets, then we will be able to stop aiming at those trying to kill them. And when we stop aiming at the terrorists who all too often surround themselves with innocents, including Palestinian children, as happened just last week, these children won’t die.

THE HOLOCAUST SHOULD NOT BE USED AS AN EXCUSE FOR ISRAEL TO COMMIT GENOCIDE! It is not fair to the memories of those who were slaughtered because of Hitler's lunatic crusade!

And in this one sentence, we agree. The Holocaust should not be used as an excuse for anything, and so aren’t we lucky that we aren’t using it. All we are trying to do, all we are asking the world to do is remember so that it never happens again; so that we and our children and grandchildren are safe the next time an evil man rises to save the world by destroying an entire part of it. The letter continues, begging me not to be blinded because I am Jewish, and finally encourages me to learn more about the true teachings of the “Palestinian peoples and the true teachings of Islam.”

I want to write to Amma and tell her that the true teachings of the Palestinian peoples are well documented by organizations such as Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI, who record Palestinian television and gather newspaper clippings filled with such hatred and anti-Semitism they could even teach Hitler a thing or two.

Be Just Paula, Be truthful with yourself. Perpetuate sentiments of peace instead of one sided claims to war.

I try, Amma. I really try and I will continue to try, but I really suggest you might want to better educate yourself about your own people. You can’t go very far back in history because the truth is that the history of Palestinians in Israel is a very short one, in comparison to the thousands of years my people have called this land home.

Go back to the attacks in 1929 against the Jews in Hebron – the innocent mothers and fathers and children. Go back to the time the Arabs turned down the Partition Plan that would have given them more land than even the Palestinians dream of today, and the tens of thousands on both sides that have died because of that stupid decision. Go back to the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 – all started as a result of this endless quest to take what could have been in peace. Go back to all the terrorist attacks, here in Israel and around the world – Munich, Entebbe, Maalot, all over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Netanya and Afula.

Be just, Amma – and encourage your people to stop murdering and attacking and kidnapping…and your children and your young women, and mine, will be safer, at least from the Israeli soldiers if not their own brothers and fathers.

After the incredulity, the anger, and the hope, finally, there is the acceptance, the bitterest of truths. Eyes closed by hatred will never open; hearts poisoned by hatred will never love, and wills dedicated to war will never make peace.