Posted on 11/03/2005 3:05:38 PM PST by SJackson
When James Wolfensohn and Mort Zuckerman raised $14 million to buy the Gush Katif hothouses from Israeli farmers to give to the Palestinians, many people were surprised. "We thought it was a chance to show the Palestinians that there were more benefits from cooperation than confrontation," Zuckerman explained.
Zuckerman's New York Daily News reported on September 22 that "a week after they [Palestinians] descended like locusts on the greenhouses... looters continue to pillage what should be a prize asset for a fledgling Palestinian state." In response to this wanton destruction, Zuckerman said, "I'm just sad that they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. ...It's almost inexplicable."
Later in the same article, 29-year-old Samir Al-Najar explained why he and eight of his men destroyed a half-acre greenhouse at the N'vei Dekalim settlement. He would probably rebuild the greenhouses, he said, "but I want the greenhouses to be our own, not Jewish ones."
Attempts to convince the Arabs that they have more to gain materially by embracing the Jewish State than by trying to destroy it is not a new phenomenon. Yosef Gorny notes that in 1907, Yitzchak Epstein, an intellectual and teacher, declared that the Arab population "must, for its own good let the Jews into the country, for it is powerless to improve its situation and to extricate itself from its poverty and ignorance by its own efforts; only our people can provide for their needs." It was to be a win-win situation. The Jews would reclaim their homeland and the Arabs would be able to improve their lives.
In 1921,Winston Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, echoed the same theme of "economic blessing" on a visit to Palestine. He urged the Arabs to give Zionism a "fair chance," since Zionism would be "accompanied by a general diffusion of wealth and well-being... and by an advance in the social, scientific and cultural life of the people as a whole."
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, said he shared the view of many early Zionists that Jews would be welcomed back once the economic progress they brought with them "would convey a blessing to the Arab people." Years later, he admitted that he was "naive then to imagine... that the Arabs think like us." In 1936, for example, he acknowledged that "the economic blessing" had no impact on Arab leaders: "Even if they admit - and not all of them do - that our immigration brings material blessing to the land, [t]hey say - and from the Arab viewpoint, I think rightly so - 'None of your honey and none of your sting.'"
Al-Najar's rejection of the Jewish hothouses was the same sentiment expressed to Ben-Gurion by a leading Arab intellectual in the 1960s. The Arab leader acknowledged the achievements the Jews had created in Israel, but it was irrelevant to him. He wanted the land to remain desolate until the Arabs themselves were capable of achieving these same feats. Even if this would take a hundred years, he was prepared to wait.
Disregarding the experiences of previous Israeli leaders, Shimon Peres continued to espouse this failed approach in the early 1990s when he said, "A higher standard of living is a precondition for mitigating the tensions among the Middle Eastern countries." He wanted to fight poverty in the region "as if it were a military threat." That the Arabs have never renounced their desire to destroy Israel, that they persist in teaching hatred of Jews in their schools under Mahmoud Abbas, and in assailing Jews in their mosques, is either ignored or replied to with only perfunctory demands that it be stopped.
In light of the Wolfensohn-Zucker fiasco, perhaps we should finally understand that the Arabs will not be bought off. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionist Zionists, appreciated this fact in 1925 when he wrote, "I do not believe that we can reconcile them [the Arabs] to the possibility of a Jewish Palestine by offering them the bribe of economic amelioration...."
The destruction of the hothouses and of the synagogues in Gush Katif raises fundamental questions about the nature of Israel's "peace partners". What type of people delights in destroying synagogues, continues to live in squalor out of a sense of pride - yet takes handouts from the United Nations - and when given a thriving business opportunity, levels the site because they want to build their own someday? The British, the US, the European Union and Israel have enabled Arab leaders to engage in this self-destructive behavior for decades, by giving in to their endless, whiny and unjustified demands, by providing them with money that is rarely used for the welfare of their people and by not holding them accountable for agreements they make.
As long as the West and Israel continue this pathological response, the Arabs will wallow in their own self-pity, glory in their victimhood, and focus their energy on ways to destroy Israel and the West.
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Welcome to Palestine.....
Beasts of the field.
Jesus had a saying about casting pearls before swine. The pearls would be trampled.
Only if you're a liberal.
(steely)
The only good Mort Zuckerman did was to compensate Jews for the greenhouses. It was a cockamamee idea to think the Palistinians would do anything but ruin the gift.
This not only applies to Palestine but to other nations as well. We do the same thing in Africa making a traditionally proud people welfare tramps.
re: The pearls would be trampled.
I think he said YOU would be trampled. But I could be wrong. Either way though, it certainly describes this situation very well!
My family was stationed in (French) Morocco in the 50s.
The Moroccans kicked the French out, welcomed the son of their last sultan back, we Americans left as well, and in doing so, we left a large, modern AFB (Nouasseur AFB) with an intact infrastructure, flight lines, base housing, cinema, swimming pools.
Within a short time, the arab women were washing their clothes in the stagnant swimming pool water and herding their livestock thru the remains of the homes and office buildings, returning to their tents to sleep at night.
That mentality has not changed in thousands of years.
They throw away or p--- on anything that is given to them.
I see no change in that attitude any time in the future. They enjoy wallowing in their self-pity. And the wealthy arabs enjoy the status quo - and the majority of the others will never know anything but poverty and dreams of a perverted heaven after they blow themselves to smithereens.
We should be prepared for something like that on a national level from Iran - and it is not going to be pretty,
Matthew 7:6 - "Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you. [KJV]
I stand corrected! A million thanks!
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