Another article by David French is
triggering memories that go back more than half a century. He wrote: “The Real
Reasons American Evangelicals Support Israel,” an article that also came under
the subtitle: “Faith in ancient promises, wonder at modern miracles, and a deep
conviction that evil forces must not prevail against the Middle East's most
vibrant democracy.” It was published on March 22, 2019 in National Review
Online.
The time frame was between 1965 and 1967
when I was new in the country and had mastered enough of the English language
to get by comfortably. There came a war in the Middle East that fundamentally
altered the course of my life. I was in my early to mid-twenties at the time,
working as estimator in a company that made upscale signs for mega
corporations. Some parts were made for us by subcontractors, one of whom I
dealt with extensively, and remained friends with even after I left the
company. Thus, I knew the man before and after the 1967 war. Being older than
me, and not a hyphenated Canadian, he treated me like a junior that needed to
be educated about life in North America.
Before 1967, the obsession he never ceased
to talk about, was the Allen Expressway (later renamed Allen Road.) It is a
highway that was being constructed to facilitate travel between downtown and
uptown Toronto. His objections to going ahead with the project were numerous.
But the reason why it was undertaken anyway, according to him, was that the
Jews wanted it. He explained that it will be a convenient way for them to
travel between their offices in downtown Toronto, and their residences in the
Bathurst Street area.
I was surprised to hear such extreme views
before 1967, which was a time when I corresponded with two Jewish friends, I
had spent many good years with in Egypt, going to a private school and spending
time together outside of school. By the time I came to Canada, one friend was
already in New York where I visited him, and he returned the visit. The other
was still in Egypt, asking me to send him evidence that will convince his
parents life will be good for them if they came to Canada. In short, I had no
idea that Jews could be hated by someone like I saw that contractor hate them.
In fact, I had never before witnessed the expression of this kind of visceral
hatred for anyone, be that in Egypt or any other place where I lived.
And then, the war happened in 1967, and it
was like walking into an empty field surrounded by buildings in which thousands
of sharpshooters were hiding. They relentlessly emptied, reloaded and emptied
again and again their high-powered magazines into me and my kind. They seemed
to have consumed an unlimited quantity of the Kool-Aid that speaks of a messiah
who will soon come and reward them for exhibiting deep, visceral hatred for the
Arabs, especially the Egyptians. But while this was happening among the media
and political types, it was the talk about Israel being an exemplary democracy
practicing the rule of law that amplified the hatred which ordinary people had
for the Jews despite all of what the media was blaring.
In fact, the subcontractor that used to
complain about the Expressway, now expressed his disgust like this: “I don't
care what shit democracy they practice in Israel, I care about the democracy
they robbed me of here in Canada.” At times he used another 4-letter word
instead of shit.
Now, more than half a century later, I
read David French's words that tell of “a deep conviction that evil forces must
not prevail against the Middle East's most vibrant democracy.” By that, he
means the evil Arabs who wish to harm Israel, a democracy that practices the
rule of law … the one protected by America, that other democracy which also
practices the rule of law. And so, I hear my old acquaintance, the
subcontractor that's no longer with us, scream in his grave: Jewish democracy
my ass. American rule of law, my ass.
There is also the following in the David
French article: “There is basic morality. From the very moment of its founding,
Israel has been subject to repeated, genocidal threats to its existence.” For
this to make sense, you have to think of a vast piece of land where nothing
exists. Then God or the devil or whatever snaps his fingers, and two entities
come into existence at the same moment. One is evil and called Arabs. The other
is good and called Jews. And the Arabs immediately pounce on the Jews trying to
wipe them out.
But that's garbage. The truth is that when
our story began to take shape, Planet Earth had been around for nearly five
billion years. Semi-intelligent beings had been around for almost six million
years, and intelligent homo sapiens for at least a hundred thousand years. Many
of the latter lived in a place called Palestine, and they are now called Arabs.
No God or devil snapped their fingers, or maybe it was that guy they call
Hitler who did. And all of a sudden, Jews appeared in Palestine armed with the
same weapons that Hitler used to conquer large pieces of Europe and North
Africa.
Like him whose army murdered everyone on
sight, the Jews murdered the indigenous Arab population that was totally
unarmed, living as it did at a minimum subsistence level under occupation for
several generations before that.
Thus, for David French to suggest that if
you sit quietly in your home minding your own business, and out of the blue, an
armed invader attacks you, it means that you are evil, making genocidal threats
to the invader's existence. Well, my friend, there is only one thing that can
be said about that passage: It exposes the extent of David French's criminal
insanity for the whole world to see and beware. The man is a danger to himself
and to society.
As to the religious arguments that he and
those like him are peddling, I don't have a better way to explain what I think
and feel, than to tell of an incident which forced me to express myself
spontaneously, perhaps even by a Freudian slip of the tongue.
It happened when a man and a woman knocked
at my door one day, coming to tell me how I can save my soul when the ancient
promises will be fulfilled, which will happen soon as they put it. I made the
foolish mistake of letting them in. The truth is that at the time, I was
beginning to question the religious precepts with which I grew up, and thought
that maybe the two strangers might answer some of my questions.
What the strangers did not know, however,
was that to my surprise, every word they uttered sounded so nonsensical to me,
they came out like puffs of compressed air being pumped into a balloon.
I regretted letting them in. It then
happened, after a short while, that the words exploded out of my mouth: “You
know what, you two! Let me tell you something. I cannot have any respect for a
God that needs you to tell me about him or his promises … You better get out of
here before I start swearing religious profanities”.