Calling for Israel’s Destruction Not Anti-Semitic

Superb article in the New University, the UCI campus newspaper, after Daniel Pipes visited the campus...

Calling for Israel’s Destruction Not Anti-Semitic

Controversy has surrounded the protest of Daniel Pipes’ recent speech at UC Irvine. On Feb. 6, FOX 11 News interviewed Daniel Pipes about the event and subsequent protest by members of the Muslim Student Union. The most controversial topic to arise resulted from words expressed by someone addressing the protesters outside: “It’s just a matter of time before the state of Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth.” Gasp!

At this point everyone watching FOX 11 News is supposed to be thinking about how wrong and cruel these words are, and how barbaric and “anti-Semitic” the people listening and agreeing to them are. As the FOX anchorperson put it, “That is a threat to all of us. … Wouldn’t that be someone that the FBI would maybe want to talk to?”

Let’s spend a minute examining these words and what they mean.

“The state of Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth.”

Is this statement anti-Semitic? Let’s forget for a moment that the term itself has been grossly redefined by Zionists to mean “anti-Jewish”—does the statement imply that all the Jews living in Israel need to be exterminated? Or even that all Jews must forcibly be ousted from the Holy Land? Of course not.

The words used are “The state of Israel,” not “Jews” or even “Israelis.” The statement is a less-than-diplomatic way of saying that the state of Israel will cease to exist on the map. That’s all.

What must happen for the state of Israel to cease to exist on the map is really quite simple: The right of return must be granted to the Palestinians, a people who were forcibly removed from their land, a people whose properties were seized at gunpoint so that the state of Israel—ironically founded as a Jewish state to provide refuge to Jews in light of a history of persecutions, starting, perhaps, with the Assyrians and continuing on to the Third Reich—could be born in 1948.

To rightfully allow all 9.5 million Palestinian-Arab refugees and their descendants to return home would mean that Israel, with a population of roughly 6.2 million Jews, would cease to exist as a Jewish state, giving way to a new system under which people can form a government that guarantees basic human rights and dignity to all humans, regardless of race, ethnicity or creed. Think of it: a state as democratic – at the very, very least – as Israel, but one where neither apartheid nor injustice is force-fed to the local populace with their daily butter and bread.

Still “wrong”? Still “cruel”? Barbaric? Maybe “anti-Semitic”? Hold that thought—let’s examine a different set of words, this time Daniel Pipes’, verbatim.

He laid out the conditions for the continued existence of Israel: “The Palestinians must have their will crushed. … [This] requires that they go through the bitter crucible of war, of loss, of despair.” No FOX 11-inspired controversy surrounding these words, no spin. Nobody dares to accuse Pipes of anti-Semitism (remember what we said about definitions? Palestinians happen to be a Semitic people, but you’re not supposed to know that).

Somehow nobody is even slightly disturbed by how such inhumane suggestions could be thought up, let alone proclaimed in public before a happily agreeing audience. Nobody is questioning the incitement of violence against a people who are standing up for simple human rights, which they do now after 50 years of loss and suffering. I leave it up to the reader to determine why and how such a double standard could possibly have manifested itself in the minds of the American people.

I have to admit though, to a certain degree, I agree with Daniel Pipes’ statement. The continued existence of the state of Israel clearly promises the suffering, poverty and destruction of the Palestinians. The continued existence of Israel means that Palestinian refugee camps will continue to be shelled with munitions only a madman could have thought up: bombs, missiles, tanks, helicopter gunships, not to mention depleted uranium and white phosphorus. So long as Israel draws breath, Palestinians’ homes will continue to be demolished and Palestinians will continue to have their lands unjustly seized. Palestinian men and women will continue to face discrimination and criminal violence paralleling that of apartheid South Africa, if not Germany’s Third Reich itself—all of this at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

In this light, I firmly believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong, and nothing to be ashamed of, from denouncing a racist state whose policies and practices have forever been – and in the foreseeable future will continue to be – terror, death and destruction. To have this system removed from our midst would only be doing humanity a favor and, thus, I have no qualms at all about calling for an end to the so-called State of Israel.

Sulaiman Arain

fifth-year civil engineering major