By Mitchell Bard, Algemeiner—
In movies involving fraternities, there is usually a hazing scene where pledges are repeatedly — and willingly — paddled from behind. Listening to people who routinely claim that Israel is solely responsible for the absence of peace and could solve the problem by being nice to the Palestinians reminds me of those pledges.
I am not referring in this article to blatant antisemites. I’m talking about the Tom Friedmans, Roger Cohens, and Peter Beinarts of the world, who proclaim their love for Israel while myopically casting blame for the conflict there solely on Israel. I am not sure if the blame-Israel-first crowd is terminally naïve, ignorant of history, oblivious — or all three.
When people talk, for example, about how the Palestinians are so committed to the land they claim as their own, you never hear them mention the fact that most gave up their land rather than fight for it in 1948. Apologists speciously claim that the Jews drove the Palestinians out and turned them into refugees; however, the handful of Palestinians who were expelled pales in comparison to the tens of thousands who left on their own accord, many believing that they would return after the Jews were driven into the sea.
We hear ad nauseum how the Palestinians are suffering under Israeli “occupation,” yet neither the Palestinians nor their supporters were concerned with the treatment of the Palestinians during the 19 years that Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians did not fight for “their” land during those years; they also never demanded statehood. Instead, they engaged in terror in the hope of seizing the Jews’ land. Continue Reading….