Tuesday, February 27, 2007
At Arabs for Israel by Ismail Khald, an Israeli Bedoin and Muslim recounts his shock at the hatred he encountered touring American and Canadian universities on behalf of his country:
In Milwaukee, I was asked, "How many Palestinian old men and women have you humiliated while serving in the Israeli police?" How can such a question be asked? Only if the truth were known, that Israeli soldiers have on many occasions helped Palestinians.
The situation I encountered on many of the campuses in North America and Canada was horrifying. I was not as shocked by the Arab questioners as I was with the personal threats, and the severe apathy of the majority of Jewish students.
In my years of speaking to people, I've never received threats or personal attacks like I did speaking on campuses. There were threatening incidents at both the University of Florida and at California State University. Both were chilling. The crowd in Florida was one full of anger and hatred, yet I had to stand before them unsure of the enemy who had sent threats earlier that day. In California I spoke facing a young student who wore a T-shirt with a swastika on it, chewing on a piece of paper as some sort of protest against my talk...
[h/t: Miss K]
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This is, of course, heartening and while it reflects a voice that is too seldom heard (in large part out of fear of tribal, familial and ideological reprisals), it is not at all a nascent formation as these voices have always been present in Israel and the M.E. in general, even though fear of murderous reprisals tends to rein in or entirely mute these pro-Israel Arab and Arab/Muslim voices. Roughly 22% of Israel's population is Arab and the surpassing majority of that is Arab/Muslim (a minority is Arab Christian and other affiliations).
Too, these pro-Israel Arabs and Arab/Muslims serve to reflect upon and emphasize the ideological foundations of the war against Islamofascism or militant Islamicist (pace any racialist, ethnic, etc. basis), and that fact needs to be kept front and center.
Other reflections of these same, general sympathies among Israeli Arabs can be found in the fact that Israeli Arabs, when they've been given the choice to vote with their feet, have preferred Israeli forms of governance rather than the governance of the PLO, the PA, etc. Another representation is the fact that Israeli Arabs have positively approved of the security barrier still being constructed in the West Bank, as it has not only greatly mitigated homicide/suicide attacks, sniper attacks, etc., it has also served to reduce petty crimes such as vandalism, theft, etc. in neighborhoods in the vicinity of the security barriers.
So this sentiment has always been present among Arabs, but due to severe forms of repression, including summary executions and reprisals against family members, it has long been bridled and muted by the Amin el-Husseinis, the Arafats, et al.
Similar words, from the Druze side.
At UF? I am ashamed to be an alum if that is true - which I don't doubt for a second. There was never that outward Jew hatred when I was a student there and it was only a few years ago. As a matter of fact, there seemed to be a large Jewish community at the school - I even attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Hillel center. So much for my alumni contributions.