by Gerald A. Honigman
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 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. Two Jewish preschoolers were
recently killed in such a volley, helping to set into motion Israel's
latest assault on Gaza's terror apparatus.
Now, when
choosing this 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 Commission 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...
Old
Yasir himself was born in Cairo. And tens of thousands of other
Egyptian Arabs had preceded his own migration and settlement in
Palestine somewhat earlier in the wake of Muhammad Ali and son Ibrahim
Pasha's military excursions in the 19th century.