The Wolf Remains of a Different Opinion

“It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”



— W.R. Inge, 1919


Journalists report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as though both sides are belligerent and, hence, the world interprets this issue as though both sides are equally responsible for numerous peace initiatives that have failed to produce any sort of denouement.



It’s not that Israel and her Jews do not want peace. The land for peace idea, although an imprudent betrayal of Zionism’s impassive ideal of Jewish nationhood, is an example of just how far Israelis will go to achieve peace. Their counterparts have not proven themselves to be so eager for “peace in the Middle East” and, as far as I’m concerned, are solely responsible for the decades-old stalemate that has now incensed the entire world, not against those Islamists and terrorist entities perpetuating this stalemate but, rather, against Israel and the Jewish people—as though the Jews of Israel are even more malefic and remorseless than their Muslim enemies. George Jonas writes in a recent article in the National Post that, “Hatred against Israel, kept on a low boil, is the organizing principle of the Middle East. It’s the region’s main fuel of governance; often its only fuel.”



And who exculpates the Jews from this false accusation of bellicosity the Western media has twined into a modern day canard? Many Christian evangelicals have been bravely outspoken about this injudicious label, but who will take these Christian religious seriously? The Western media brands all such evangelicals as “neo-conservative” and so, consequently, any argument they present in favor of the State of Israel and her Jews is disregarded as “fundamentalist” blather, regardless how factual or fair-minded.



The term “Christian Zionist” has now become to the minds of many Western journalists an indicator of what they regard as overzealous, “religious” rhetoric and not worth the time it takes to hear it out. These are the same journalists who obdurately refuse to listen to the Jews of Israel, the genuine article of Zionism, so how should we expect them to give any credence to those Christians who have invented for themselves an ersatz form of Zionism, a Zionism without precedent in the Jewish Torah, a subsidiary Zionism erroneously warranted on an exclusively Jewish right to the land of Israel? In this sense, the so-called Christian Zionists—no matter how noble and sincere their intentions—are doing more harm than good to the cause of Jewish Zionism.



The journalist Richard Cohen has written, “The Arab world is the last bastion of unbridled, unashamed, unhidden and unbelievable anti-Semitism. Hitlerian myths get published in the popular press as incontrovertible truths. The Holocaust either gets minimized or denied....How the Arab world will ever come to terms with Israel when Israelis are portrayed as the devil incarnate is hard to figure out.” This anti-Jewish hatred intoxicating the Muslim Middle East today, however, did not begin with the Third Reich shrilling it into the Arab air waves from radio stations in Berlin but from the pages of the Koran and the many “hadiths” following afterward.



Just as the Jews of Israel today are in no way deserving of the countless lies bandied about by their Arab enemies, so were the Jews of ancient times undeserving of the many libelous characterizations given them by both Muslim citizen and ruler alike. No other people or ideology, not even Nazism and Hitler, is more culpable of perpetuating the ugly misconceptions and suspicions the non-Jewish world have of the Jewish people than the Arab Muslim and Islam. The Arab Muslim is unmatched, both in his ardor and his cunning, in dreaming up all manner of calumny against the Jews and, since 1948, especially against the Jews of the State of Israel. This is a Muslim ideology uninterested in peace with the Jews of Israel, no matter how many Oslo accords constructed, no matter how many billions of friendly Western dollars poured into despotic coffers.



For the Arab Muslim, this show must go on, if only to prove the Prophet Mohammed correct for his hatred of the Jews. There are no two sides to this quarrel between the Jews of Israel and their Arab Muslim neighbors; there are no two parties equal in belligerence and intolerance. There is only Islam and the Arab Muslim belief that no Jewish state should be allowed to exist anywhere in or near the Middle East. It’s just as Yossef Bodansky has written: “Anti-Jewishness and anti-Judaism constitute a major political instrument in the hands of both state governments and Islamist terrorist organizations to mobilize the entire region for the destruction of Israel -- irrespective of diplomatic treaties, including the current peace process. Both governments and terrorist leaders are using anti-Semitic incitement as a most effective instrument of populist agitation in order to reach to the grassroots -- the Arab street -- and get results. This instrument is most effective particularly when state governments need to ignore and reverse declared policies (imposed by international conditions). Therefore, with the spread and expansion of militant radical Islam, anti-Jewishness and anti-Judaism will continue to intensify in the Muslim World. Anti-Jewishness and anti-Judaism will thus continue to be a most potent instrument of governments throughout the Muslim World.”



When viewed honestly and objectively, the reality of the Arab Muslim versus the Jewish people and the State of Israel is that it takes only one to quarrel, and the purely contentious party in this quarrel is the contumacious Arab Muslim and his culture of anti-Jewish hatred. The Jews of Israel and the IDF, no matter the blunders they may have committed combating this enemy, whether real or invented, are to this day guiltless by virtue of the centuries of hatred arrayed against them. How should the State of Israel have dealt otherwise, or even “proportionately”, with an enemy religiously and umbrageously determined to remain an enemy proportionate to his goal of destroying every last vestige of Jewish life in the land of Israel?



There is no denouement to this stalemate except for Israel to continue fighting her Arab Muslim enemies—a necessity solely and unilaterally created by her Arab Muslim enemies. The non-Jewish world demands of Israel that she make peace with this enemy, but the Arab Muslim is a wolf of an entirely different opinion.



Written by Michael Devolin











The author is from Canada, and is not Jewish.


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