MORAL EQUIVALENCY RUN AMOK
Essay: The compensation option
By Hillel Halkin
(Jerusalem Post, February 6, 2006) There is no small hypocrisy in the argument
that the former Arab vegetable market in
Let us put aside for the moment the question of how a new government under Ehud
Olmert, whose apparent plan is to keep a part of Judea and Samaria for Israel
while unilaterally withdrawing from most of it, intends to include Jewish
Hebron, and its adjacent and much larger suburb of Kiryat Arba, within Israel's
borders -- a move that would involve annexing a far higher percentage of the
disputed territories than the 10% or 15% that has been spoken of. Why the
government should want the headache of an expanded Jewish presence in
And today's headache is: Do we really want to adopt the principle that all
property lost to its owners in this country in 1948 should revert to them now?
Of course, we are told, there is a legal difference between the relatively
small amount of Jewish property that was taken over by Arabs in 1948 and the
very large amount of Arab property that was taken over by Jews. The latter was
officially nationalized by the government of
But this is legal casuistry. If resorting to it in the past was condonable in
such cases as Gush Etzion, or the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem,
where there was an overriding Jewish interest, resorting to it on behalf of the
Hebron settlers, who belong to the settler movement's meanest and most
fanatical elements, is not -- unless, that is, we really want to re-think the
whole question of what was lost on both sides in 1948.
And perhaps we should.
FROM A Jewish point of view, of course, there can be no question of returning
even a small part of the land and houses (the great majority of which are no
longer standing anyway) that belonged to the Palestinians who fled in 1948.
It's all ours now and has to remain ours.
But that doesn't mean we can't say to the Palestinians: "Yes, it's all
ours, but it was once yours and we took it from you. That's not something we
have to apologize for; we took it because we needed it and wouldn't have had a
country to live in without it. Yet it's still only fair that you should be paid
for what we took. There's a difference between expropriation and theft, and
while we have no qualms about having been expropriators, we don't want to be
thieves."
In a word, compensation. No return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, much less
any return of their property, but a willingness to pay for that property as any
government guided by law pays for what it expropriates for the public good.
Many reasons have been given to explain why compensation for Palestinian
property is not a practical idea. This country was ours by right anyway. And
besides,
THESE ARE all sensible objections. But there are sensible answers to them, too.
There is a difference between the national right to a country, which we Jews
have, and the human rights of a property owner, which the Palestinians have.
And if
But our consciences already are at rest, you say? Perhaps, but they shouldn't
be. "Thou shalt not steal," after all, was not someone else's idea.
It was our own.
And lastly, there would be one other advantage to such an arrangement. The
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MORAL EQUIVALENCY RUN AMOK
Open Letter to Hillel Halkin in response to The Compensation Option, published on February 2, 2006 (updated February 4, 2006) in the Internet Edition and on February 6, 2006 in the Email Edition of the Jerusalem Post:
You have posited that the Jewish people stole Arab properties located in what became the State of Israel (within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines) as a result of the Jewish State's 1948 War of Independence. Consequently, you have declared that reclamation of Jewish properties in Judea and Samaria (and, perchance, Gaza?), such as Hebron's downtown market area in Judea, is morally justifiable only if, after ruling out -- due to impracticality -- the return of former Arab properties situated in Israel (within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines), the Jewish State pays compensation to their former Arab owners.
However, for purposes of eliminating any hint of hypocrisy from your moral posture, let us suppose that the doomed Jews of Germany had somehow defeated the Nazi onslaught, in the process not only reclaiming their own confiscated properties but also confiscating the properties of those who had tried to annihilate them, and driving their oppressors out of those areas which were newly under Jewish control, thereby carving out an independent Jewish Germany from their own and their enemies' lands. Would these triumphant, but battle-scarred, Jews really be thieves? And if so, in order to morally justify its successful reclamation of Jewish properties, would a Jewish Germany have to return confiscated Nazi properties to their former Nazi owners if such restoration were practical (thereby recognizing and implementing a Nazi right of return to Jewish Germany) or, if not practical, at least compensate irredentist Nazi refugees for their former properties' values? I assume that your answer would be "No"; but if your answer would, instead, be "Yes", then you would certainly not be a hypocrite, but you would be, by any measure, without a moral compass.
Protesting that the Nazi and the Arab wars against the Jewish people are not to be viewed in the same light rings true only if one willingly ignores the aggressors' equivalent genocidal intentions in favor of their differential success rates.
Morally, the Arabs are simply not entitled to recover, or to be compensated for, lands which they lost in their war of annihilation against the Jewish people. Morally, the Jewish people are entitled to recover lands which they lost in the Arabs' war of annihilation against them. Morally, one does not treat the Aggressor and the Victim as equals.
Unfortunately, we live in a World of Moral Equivalency Run Amok. As the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) so eloquently puts it:
"There is a futility that takes place on the Earth -- there are righteous ones who are treated as [if they had performed] the actions of the evil ones; and there are evil ones who are treated as [if they had performed] the actions of the righteous ones -- I declared that, also, this is a futility." (Ecclesiastes 8:14)
As for the Torah's prohibition against theft, it might be instructive to remember that the Arabs are, themselves, part and parcel of a long chain of national thieves who have, over the past several millennia, invaded, conquered and plundered our Land. Reclaiming our Land from them is not Theft -- it is prophetic, historical, moral and legal Justice.
Regards
Mark Rosenblit
ph. 860-236-4421
[Note: Below is another sad example of Moral Equivalency Run Amok. This survivor of the Holocaust, journalist, former Member of Knesset and former Israeli Justice Minister compares the Jews of Hebron to embryonic Nazis. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit]
Stop the Jewish barbarians in
By Yosef (Tommy) Lapid
(Jerusalem Post, January 19, 2007) That woman, the one who it turns out is
named Yifat Alkobi, the Jewish woman that confronted, cursed, spat on and
threatened her Arab neighbor in Hebron, she who is imprisoned in her own home,
seemed somehow familiar to me.
Gradually, from the cobwebs of my childhood memories, I dredged up the image of
a Hungarian neighbor in
When we decide, and rightly so, to never under any circumstances compare the
behavior of Jews to that of Nazis, we are forgetting that anti-Semitism only
reached its height at
It is unthinkable that the memory of
I am not referring to crematoria or pogroms, but rather to the persecution,
hounding, stone-throwing, undermining of livelihood, scare tactics, spitting
and contempt.
It was all of these things that made our lives in the Diaspora so bitter and
harrowing, even before they began the wholesale killing of Jews. I was afraid
to go to school because little anti-Semites lay in wait on the way and beat us.
In what way is a Palestinian child in
EVEN THOSE that justify the occupation for ideological or religious reasons --
or perhaps especially those that seek to justify the Occupation -- should be
ashamed, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of himself, when seeing these
pictures. We all bear responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians, but
it would not have been possible to establish a Jewish state without causing
them some harm.
But there is no reason or justification for the thuggery of the kind
demonstrated time after time by the residents of the Jewish settlement in
The settlement of Jews in
We forget that this hounding of the Palestinian neighbors in
We are familiar with the excuse of "We didn't know." So, for the
record: We do know.
We will never be able to forgive ourselves -- our consciences won't let us --
and neither will our children if we do not make our army and police put an end
to the Jewish barbarism in
The writer is a former MK.
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[Note: If the Arabs
of
if the minority Arab populations of the Jewish Middle East were merely trying to peacefully coexist with, if not seamlessly assimilate into, Jewish society, and
if, despite all of this, the enormous Jewish majority had, from time to time, massacred its peaceful Arab minority populations due to, inter alia:
jealousy over Arab industriousness,
certitude that Arabs intended to (or already did) control the governments and economies of the Jewish Middle East (as well as the entire World), and
faith in the truth of a vicious blood libel that Arabs celebrated Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) by murdering Jewish children as a symbolic substitute for Ismail (Ishmael) who, according to the Koran, was almost sacrificed by his father Ibrahim (Abraham) at the command of Allah,
then the rudeness exhibited by that
Jewish woman in
However, given that the true state
of affairs is actually the converse of the foregoing, equating the outburst
of one of the 500 ghettoized Jews who live among the 150,000
hostile Arabs of Hebron with proto-Nazism is obscene. In fact, it is contextually relevant to point
out that, in August 1929, it was the Arabs of
Given this history, why would these
500 Jews want to force themselves upon an Arab-dominated city which hates and
demonizes them? The answer is HaMa’arat
HaMachpela (Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs) -- the burial place of
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah (and, by tradition, Adam and
Eve). This is a Jewish holy site which
would not be accessible to Jews at all but for the permanent presence,
in its vicinity, of those 500 Jews. For,
due to those few Jews stubbornly residing among such a large and hostile Arab
population, the government of
Yet, notwithstanding the foregoing, isn’t it nonetheless true, as author Yosef Lapid insists, that by insulting and taunting an Arab, a Jew thereby emulates Nazi-like behavior? Of course not! The fact that the Nazis and their collaborators, inter alia, insulted and taunted those whom they declared to be their enemies does not, by itself, constitute such behavior any more Nazi-like than do any of the other, more mundane, activities of these evildoers -- such as eating their meals, sleeping in their beds and fighting with their spouses. For, otherwise, all contemporary human behavior would be deemed Nazi-like merely because the Nazis and their collaborators also engaged in such behavior. The revulsion which the author attempts to conjure against the Jews of Hebron by discussing his childhood experiences among proto-Nazis is surely misplaced. Consequently, it is worth repeating: While insulting and taunting another person is not, under normal circumstances, exemplary -- or even permissible -- behavior, it is not rendered Nazi-like merely because the Nazis were also prone to do it. So, let us be very clear: Taking steps preparatory to annihilating millions of innocent and peaceful people is Nazi-like behavior; but opining that a victimized Jew hurling insults at a hostile Arab is in that category is merely Moral Equivalency Run Amok. -- Mark Rosenblit]
[Below is the other side of the story. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit]
Why the orchestrated fuss?
By David Wilder
(Jerusalem Post, January 19, 2007) The Arabic word for whore -- sharmuta -- has
gained international notoriety. CNN, ABC and the BBC, among many others, have
featured
Israel Radio and
"Alkobi is presently being questioned in the Kiryat Arba police
station."
Of course, most news outlets didn't bother reporting that, after questioning by
the authorities, she was permitted to return home without any restrictions.
The fact that an Arab woman spat in Alkobi's face was also not too widely
noted. Neither were the complaints she issued against the Internet news
provider Ynet and a member of the Abu-Isha family.
Alas, cursing in
On February 2, 2002 Yediot Aharonot headlined a piece: "Curses exchanged in
the Knesset committee."
And on December 12, 2006, Internet news provider NRG reported: "Curses in
the Knesset? Forbidden to say but permitted to write." This following
several choice words used by Ramle Mayor Yoel Lavi in a newspaper interview. [Arab] MK Azmi Bashara, on December 5, 2006,
told fellow MK Gilad Erdan to "f... himself."
Did such outbursts lead to ministerial committees, police investigations, a
week of headlines and op-ed articles?
Of course not.
Only shouting and cursing between Jews and Arabs in
Mind you, Yifat Alkobi didn't threaten her neighbors. She didn't take up arms
against them, shoot anyone or stab anyone. She didn't enter anyone's home and
turn it upside down. She did no damage to property. All she did was raise her
voice and use some salty language.
WHY DID Yifat Alkobi yell at her Arab neighbor and call her a sharmuta? That's
not her usual choice of words.
Perhaps it was because Yifat's home was shot at - for two years - by Arab
snipers. Perhaps it was because a terrorist's bullet barely missed her
daughter's head by centimeters.
For the past year and a half, radical left-wing organizations, led by the
International Solidarity Movement, Christian Peacemaker Teams, B'tselem and
Machsom Watch have essentially staged numerous provocations at the entrance to
the Tel Rumeida Jewish neighborhood attempting to draw Jewish residents into
violent encounters which are filmed, edited and fed to an unsympathetic media.
Their goal is to dehumanize Hebron Jews.
In understanding what goes on in
Tel Rumeida is a pressure cooker, and as tends to occur throughout the world,
sometimes people lose control and use language not usually part of their
everyday vocabulary. A psychologist e-mailed me that last week he found himself
cursing an Arab who spit on him on a
Should "nice Jewish ladies" use coarse language? It's certainly not
polite, but I've heard worse.
Incidentally, how many people know that the Yifat video was filmed some six
months ago. Why was such a "devastating incident" kept secret all
this time before the film was publicized and a complaint issued?
There is one reason, and one reason alone for the fuss: The prime minister is
facing several criminal investigations. The defense minister is holding on to
his job by the skin of his teeth.
Both of them are looking for a good way to distract public attention from their
woes.
Together with a very left-wing media, they have found the solution: Yifat
Alkobi and the 'W' word.
The writer is spokesman for the Jewish community of
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