On June 10, 2013 Richard Friedman had an article in the Wall
Street Journal that revived my interest in another article published four days
earlier, June 6, 2013 in National Review Online. This one was written by Daniel
Pipes under the title: “Happy Israel” and the subtitle: “Why time is on the
Jewish state's side.” I set it aside at the time because I got busy doing
something else. But then, I encountered the Friedman article which came under
the title: “Alicia Keys, Israel
and Civil Rights” and the subtitle: “The analogy between African-Americans in
the era of segregation and Palestinians today is a false one.” I saw a
connection between the two articles and decided it was time to write something
about it.
Even though the Pipes article purports to be on economics,
my interest here has more to do with culture than anything else. If you want to
know why I am neglecting the Pipes economic argument, look at the following
reason which is only one from among the many that exist: “Israel enjoyed a 14.5 percent
growth of gross domestic product during the 2008-12 recession. In contrast, the
advanced economies as a whole had a 2.3 percent growth rate, with the United States
weighing in at 2.9 percent and the euro zone at minus 0.4 percent.”
To begin with, you have to believe in fairy tales to accept
as fact any number cited by the folks at the Bank of Israel. But even they
would not make a mistake as stark and laughable as the one made by Daniel
Pipes. What they probably said was that Israel had an average growth rate
of 3.44 percent per year which, compounded over 4 years, comes to 14.5 percent
in total. Thus, for Pipes to contrast this number with the average yearly
growth rate in Europe or America
is to show that his intent has been to mislead the readers in addition to and
on top of the quackery issued by the Bank of Israel. But not knowing what he
was talking about, he committed inside his own lie a blunder that is big enough
to expose him as a fake too. This makes him a lying imposter. And I do not
bother with the economics of these types – their culture is stirring enough as
it is.
Back to the cultural argument. There was a time that a
French Canadian Governor General stirred up a controversy here in Canada when she commented on the subject of
boycotting apartheid South
Africa . I did not get involved in the debate
at the time even though I lived in sub-Saharan countries from when I was a
toddler to when I became a teenager. I stayed away from the Canadian debate
because Canadians of African descent were having a civilized discussion among
themselves and with members of the “two nations” that made the bulk of Canadian
society: the French and the English. Besides, we, Allophones, were told to stay
out of this debate.
The discussion unfolded normally in that it tried to weigh
the pros and cons of boycotting a country that is governed by people you want
to punish, but a country that is also populated by people you want to help. The
point being that you will be punishing these people too while punishing the
others. Given that the debate was a good one, I shall use it as a model against
which to compare the one that Richard Friedman has embroiled himself with. Of
course, he has every right to get involved – the debate being about Israel , and he
being a Jew. And I have the right to get involved because the debate is also
about Palestine
which is an Arab country and I am of Egyptian origin. Not only that, but
Friedman made disparaging remarks about all the Arab countries, and that includes
Egypt
where I was born.
The first thing that Richard Friedman does is attack the
messenger that brought the bad news. That would be Alice Walker who did not
even address him directly but wrote an open letter to Alicia Keys urging her to
cancel a performance in Israel .
Her point being that Israel 's
apartheid against the Palestinian people is more lethal than the American
apartheid which Alice Walker battled against – even before Alicia Keys was
born.
Friedman's reaction was to reject Walker 's
analogy, offering to amend it into the following: “Apartheid is a more apt
description for the systemic discrimination against women across the Arab world
than the only democracy in the Middle East .”
He writes this in the week during which an Israeli judge, presiding over a rape
case, said that women love to be raped. He said it in the courtroom where the
president of Israel
was convicted of serial rape – being the only national president in history to
be convicted of this crime. Israel
is also the country where the police arrest the women who dare to pray in
public the way that men do. Contrast this with Egypt where more women than men go
to college at this time, and you will realize that Jewish lies come in biblical
dimensions whether they are ancient lies or contemporary lies.
As to the claim that Israel is a democracy, look what
else Friedman says to buttress his argument: “this comparison is also an insult
to the courageous civil-rights activists who risked their lives to attain full
rights for Black Americans.” He does not deny that America was a democracy at the
time, nor does he deny that it practiced apartheid. So where is the insult, you
ask. Aha! Here it is according to Friedman: “What characterized the
civil-rights movement was its strict adherence to the philosophy of
nonviolence. Even when attacked with fire hoses and police dogs, civil-rights
demonstrators courageously refused to retaliate.”
So this is what he wants the Palestinians to do. When
attacked by Jews, they should “courageously” refuse to retaliate, adhering
instead to the philosophy of nonviolence. Well, like he says, America
attacked with fire hoses and police dogs which is savage enough. But how did
the Israeli savages attack the Palestinians? You don't have to go far to find
out because in the immortal words of Israel's most prominent spokesman at the
time, Alan Dershowitz, the Jewish regime had the right to do to the
Palestinians anything that anyone, anywhere, anytime on the Planet did to
someone else. That is, Israel
had the right to do to the Palestinians what the Nazis, the Fascists, the
Communists and every depraved regime did to someone else. And the Palestinians
were supposed to do what, Alan? To do what, Richard? Were they supposed to say
thank you, Jewish savages? Were they supposed to kiss them too? Speak up, men.
Say what it is that you mean.
No, the Palestinians never accepted that deal; they never
said thank you. Instead, they confronted the Israeli settlers who came into
their villages to demolish their homes armed with machine guns, and protected
by the armored vehicles and the tanks of the regular Israeli army. This is when
Palestinian men, women and children, having nothing but their bare hands and
their bodies to protect them, stood in front of the tanks and pelted them with
stones. Instead of turning around and leaving these people alone, the Jews went
to America
where they howled, wailed and whined: “They throw stones at our soldiers, oh
pity me, pity me.” And guess what happened, my friend, they got the nod and the
wherewithal from the American officials to retaliate against the unarmed
Palestinians using American-made warplanes, helicopters and smart bombs. What
happened was that the fire hoses and police dogs of Birmingham
and Montgomery became the weapons of mass destruction
that the Jews unleashed against the unarmed Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank .
But why does the regime in Israel want the Palestinians to
respond to Jewish atrocities with stoic and non-violent protest? Because they
want to keep demolishing Palestinian homes, and keep ruining Palestinian
farmlands to build Jewish settlements on them. In effect, they want to keep
raping the Palestinian motherland, and want the Palestinians to thank them for
the rape. Well, my friend, nothing can be more Jewish than this, and nothing
can stir the bile of every normal human being than this mentality. This is why
the Jews and only the Jews were pogrommed and holocausted over and over again
every time they left the ghetto, everywhere they went on this planet. They are
simply an incorrigible and hopeless lot.
You now see that same mentality guiding Richard Friedman and
causing him to amend Alice Walker's comparison to formulate a new one. Look how
he does that: “The comparison is false in other ways. Unlike America where local governments enacted laws and
policies to prevent US citizens from attaining full rights, Israel has
tried to reach an agreement with the Palestinians that would grant them
sovereignty.” This is the agreement that has been peddled for three generations
now, containing predicates to the effect that the Palestinians must give their
blessings to the continued rape of their motherland while negotiating with the
Jews what else they are willing to give up to be recognized – at long last – as
a sovereign people living in a plot of land that remains unarmed, unprotected
and encircled by the regular army of Israel and the would-be settlers of the
future. No is the answer. It is a thousand times no.
Toward the end of his article, Friedman writes that after Ms.
Walker's open letter to Ms. Keys appeared, the latter publicly “rebuffed” Walker when she said the following: “I look forward to my
first visit to Israel .
Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace, love,
and that is the spirit of the show.”
Well, let me tell you something Richard Friedman, what went
on between these two women is a dialogue of the civilized. One says your visit
to Israel
will be used to legitimize a regime that is doing horrible things. The other
says she has the formula that can unify the audiences in peace and love. This
is civilized in the eyes of the civilized; it is rebuff in the eyes of the
savages.
If Alicia Keys goes to Israel