Editorial
Jewish Resistance at Gaza
by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor
The dominant scene at Gaza as the Israeli soldiers
were evacuating the Jewish communities was the
resistance of many of the Israeli residents.
Teenagers who were born and raised and lived all their
lives in Gaza cried and refused to leave on their own.
Many residents had to be dragged out, although there
was fortunately little violence.
by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor
Some Palestinians viewed this forced expulsion from Gaza on television. They must have been astonished. The propaganda that Arab youths grow up in is that the Israeli Jews are foreign intruders, colonizers, crusaders. Many Arabs have been taught that there was no ancient Jewish presence in Israel. Arafat had believed that there had never been any Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Arabs tend to think that the Zionists are European imperialists who seek to colonize Palestine just as the British and French colonized Africa.
So it must have been a shock to witness Jewish residents of Gaza claiming that this was their homeland, given to them by God, and that the Israeli government was betraying them. How can colonizers claim to be in their homeland? Why would colonizers be so obviously attached to the land they intrude upon? This logical contradiction must have boggled the Arab mind.
Arab youths are not only taught to hate Zionism, the right of Jews to live in the land of ancient Israel, but to hate Jews and Judaism. They oppose the right of Jews to live in Palestine not only because they think it should be exclusively Muslim land, but because they think Jews and Judaism are intrinsically evil. Nazi books have been translated into Arabic, and widely distributed to Arab youth. The ideology of Palestinians is now not just Islam, but also Nazi ideology translated into a Levantine context.
It must have been astonishing for an Arab to witness Jews in Gaza grasping the scrolls of the Torah as they protested their forced Exodus from Gaza. How can a people that they have been taught are not human, but descended from monkeys, be so devout in their belief in God? The contradictions must have left some Arabs in deep confusion.
The Exodus from Gaza has a beneficial aspect which may counteract the negative aspect. The negative aspect is that the Palestinian terrorists are claiming that the Israeli evacuation of Gaza was an outcome of their terror, and so they are encouraged to continue their murder so that Israelis will also leave Samaria and Judea, the West Bank, and eventually, all of Israel.
There have been waves of enemies who have attacked the Jewish people, going back to the tribe of Amalek which attacked the Israelites just after their exit from Egypt. “Amalek” became a symbol of the evil tyrants who have sought to persecute and exterminate the Jewish people. The ancient Assyrians were Amalek, as were the Romans, the Russian pogroms, the Nazis, and now, the Palestinian Arab terrorists who bomb and murder Israeli civilians.
The beneficial aspect of the Gaza exodus is that the sight of Jews resisting being expelled may shatter the Amalek propaganda that Arabs have believed, that Jews are not human beings, that Zionism is but a colonialist front for European imperialism, and that there was never an ancient Jewish presence in Israel. This may undermine this intellectual foundation of the Palestinian Amalek opposition to Jews living in what was British Palestine.
Most of all, the Jewish resistance to expulsion from their homes shows how much more difficult would be the evacuation of all Israeli Jews from the Samaria-Judea West Bank. It would be several hundred times more difficult to force all Jews from Judea and Samaria, both because of the greater population, and because there is even greater historical and religious attachment to that land. Many modern Judeans would defend their communities and homes to the death. No Israeli government will commit another Masada.
This territorial point surely has to be grasped by some Palestinian Arabs, and the impression this Jewish resistance is making will surely influence the fate of the Israelis and Palestinians in their future dance of life and death.
Copyright 2005 by Fred E. Foldvary. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, which includes but is not limited to facsimile transmission, photocopying, recording, rekeying, or using any information storage or retrieval system, without giving full credit to Fred Foldvary and The Progress Report.
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