Sunday, March 05, 2006

Echoes from the Past

Following the shameful attack on a church in Nazareth over the weekend, the Arab community has reacted in a tried and true style: let's see how much propaganda and nonsense we can get into the press, as well as blaming Israel to boot.
The individuals responsible for the attack were a Jewish Israeli man and his Christian wife and daughter. It should be noted that this individual personally requested asylum from Yasser Arafat a few years ago. In a number of statements released since the attack, the perpetrator has repeatedly stated his motives for the attack were to draw attention to his family's economic situation. In not one of the statements has he claimed that his motives were nationalistic or racial. It would suffice to say that we are not talking about a right wing fanatic in this circumstance.

Not so, according to MK Ahmed Tibi, who had the gall and audacity to make a statement to the media claiming" …In the State of Israel there's a unique disease that hurts only right-wingers and causes them to attack mosques, churches, and the Arab public," he said. "The disease is not known in the world and I, as a doctor, haven't encountered throughout my history."

Excuse me? Is this not the representative of a people who routinely have been blowing themselves up across the world in the name of their god and a bevy of other causes? I should think that Tibi should be more concerned with trying to discover the disease which causes thousands of young men and women to willingly blow themselves up and murder thousands of innocents, not just in Israel but in Iraq, America, England, Spain and Jordan, to name a few. This comment is problematic not only in the case of the pot calling the kettle black, but for the distinct racial overtones it contains. Not that long ago, a man accused the Jews of being a disease. His name was Adolf Hitler. Need I say more? These sorts of comments are so incredibly dangerous, as they needlesly draw up antiquated and anti-semitic images, which flourished in a Nazi Germany and have unfortunately found a breeding ground amonst the Palestinians. These remarks also connect to the cartoon incident. Iran chose to react by hosting a Holocaust cartoon competition, the obvious choice to deal with the Mohammed cartoons (ahh, how I love sarcasm). Once again, a regrettable incident occurs, but instead of dealing with in in the appropriate fashion, the reaction has been a vitriolic condemnation and attack of Israel, instead of focusing on the actual cause of the event.

Who really has the disease here?

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