opinion
I The good news
Israel Must Remain a about America’s
abandonment of
Jewish Majority
its Afghan allies
“[PHOTOGRAPHER NAME]/[COLLECTION NAME]/GETTY IMAGES.

BY HERBERT CHUBIN
n her essay published in the March 8
issue of the Jewish Daily Forward, Sari
Bashi, a Jewish human rights lawyer and
the research director at Democracy for the
Arab World Now (DAWN), faults Israel for not
granting citizenship to Palestinian residents of
Gaza and the West Bank. She says Israel “grants
citizenship to Jews and their descendants,
including millions of Arab Jews like me,
descended from Arabic-speaking families in
Iraq, Morocco and other Arab countries. But it
denies the rights of citizenship to Palestinian
residents of Gaza and the West Bank, even
though nearly half of them descend from
refugees from what is now internationally
recognized as the State of Israel, and all of
them live under Israeli rule.”
What kind of logic must a person use to reach
such an illogical conclusion? Tens of thousands
of Jews have given their lives in the past 100-
plus years to create a Jewish majority country
— the only one in the world — and hundreds of
thousands of Jews have sought refuge in that
Jewish majority country during the same time
period. Yet Bashi asserts that Democracy for
Palestinians can only be achieved once Israel
ceases to be a Jewish majority country.

How does one respond? By reminding
her, and others who think like her, of the
consequences that befell Jews when Israel did
not exist, and based on history, will happen
to Jews if Israel ceases to exist as a Jewish
majority nation.

In 1948, Israel was established with the help
of the United Nations in a portion of the Jews
historic homeland. Since then, hundreds of
thousands of Jews have found safety in Israel.

Bashi conveniently forgets to mention that
most Jews were forced to flee to Israel from the
Arab Muslim majority countries that she refers
to above, with only the cloths on their backs.

Hatred for Jews has existed for millennia, but
intensified with the beginning of Christianity.

For almost 2,000 years, generation after
generation of Christians sought revenge
against Jews for the alleged murder of Jesus
Christ. This desire for revenge has taken on a
life of its own.

World War II laid bare this phenomenon.

Despite being persecuted themselves by Nazi
Germany, many of the citizens of the conquered
European countries assisted the Nazis in
murdering their Jewish inhabitants. Some were
so committed that, even after the war ended,
many surviving Jews were murdered by their
fellow countrymen when they tried to return to
their homes.

Should Israel cease to exist, will any country
or group of countries offer sanctuary to the
seven million Jews that live in Israel? One
only has to look back at 2,000 years of history
and to World War II for the answer. All the
leading nations of the world, including the
United States, found reasons to keep us out
during World War II, directly contributing to the
deaths of millions of Jews.

There have been three mass extinctions
of Jews by Christians: first during the
Crusades, followed by the Spanish Inquisition
and, in the past century, the Holocaust. In
between those events there was, and still is,
ongoing persecution of Jews. According to
the Pew Research Center, Jews, now largely
concentrated in Israel and the United States,
number only one fifth of one percent (0.2%) of
the world’s population.

Contrary to popular belief, there has not
been a reemergence of antisemitism; it never
went away. Antisemites again feel that they can
openly express and carry out their hatred for
Jews without fear of retaliation. For example,
according to the ADL, in the United States
there were 2,100 incidents of antisemitism
in 2019, a 12% increase, the most in any
year since the ADL began tracking them four
decades ago.

The continued existence of the Jewish
majority State of Israel must be ensured
for future generations of Jews both living
in Israel and living in the diaspora. As
such, Palestinians must never be allowed to
achieve through diplomacy what they have
been prevented from achieving through the
force of arms: the end of Israel as a Jewish
majority nation. l
J BY HAROLD RHODE
ust as America abandoned the Shah of Iran in 1978-79, it
has now abandoned its Afghan allies. Other U.S. allies —
such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan
and Israel — must ask themselves whether America can be
trusted to come to their aid in times of need. Sadly, the answer
is a resounding no.

This undoubtedly will lead to a further tightening of the ties
between the Sunni-Arab Gulf states and Israel. To paraphrase
former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer: “If you can’t
rely on the 250-lb gorilla (America) to protect you, then the 100-
lb gorilla (Israel) is your next best alternative.”
This is not the only silver lining, however.

The apparent winners in the debacles — the Taliban, ISIS
and other terrorist groups — hate one another. And, due to the
eternal battle between militant Sunni forces and the fanatic
leaders of the Shi’ite Islamic Republic, Iran hates them. Fears
that Tehran and the Taliban are about to engage in serious
cooperation, thus, are overblown.

As a result, the task at hand is to encourage all of the above
enemies to fight against one another. Given their inability to
overcome their historical enmity and put the past behind them,
this shouldn’t be too difficult.

One could argue that sometimes enemies cooperate when
they consider it in their interest to do so. One example is the
CIA and KGB. The same applies to Muslims, such as when the
Iranian leadership protected the children of the anti-Shi’ite
heads of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

This was a sophisticated strategy on the part of Tehran: to
treat the families of potential enemies very well and keep an
eye on them — like hostages. Its Sunni enemies understood
that if they were to attack the Shi’ite regime, it would kill their
sons living in Iran.

America should never take sides when its enemies battle among
themselves. The U.S. must only attack when an enemy strikes it,
and do so mercilessly, conveying the message that it’s not worth it
to attack Americans or U.S. interests.

This is what Israel has been doing to Iran and its proxy
Hezbollah in Syria, without deploying troops on the ground. The
U.S. needs to emulate the Israeli model of protecting interests
from the air. l
Harold Rhode received in Ph.D. in Islamic history and later served
Longtime business executive Herbert Chubin, as an adviser on Islamic Culture for 28 years in the Office of the U.S.

Department of Defense. He is now a distinguished senior fellow at
a Philadelphia native, moved from Yardley to
the Gatestone Institute.

Bethesda, Maryland, eight years ago. He is now
retired. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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