In the Jan. 29 issue of The News a student named Mohammad Junaid Alam made some harsh accusations in his piece “Freedom for Palestine” against my country, Israel, and its people.
Alam’s piece is a shameless collection of lies and distortions designed to demonize Jews while ignoring the culture of hatred and destruction promoted by Arab leaders for the past 100 years. Alam conveniently ignores Arab aggression and massacre of Jews in the Middle East. Arabs massacred Jews in the 1920s in the 1930s in the 1940s and continue to do so today. The intense anti-Semitism in Arab countries today is exceeding the manufacture of hate by the Nazis. Hatred based on lies and demonization is a regular feature of Arab journalism and sermons in Mosques.
Alam also ignores the root cause of Palestinian suffering, namely Arab aggression and refusal to accept peaceful co-existence and Jewish self-determination. Palestinian refugees suffering is the result of the intentional policy of Arab countries to keep them in detention camps for the past 54 years, denying them the ability to resettle.
It was Arab aggression that caused over one million Jews to be ethnically cleansed from Arab countries. Those who were not massacred, robbed or raped were forced into exile, their property confiscated, their houses of worship destroyed. For example, 3,000 years of Jewish community existence in Iraq has come to a tragic end.
Alam blames Israel of ethnic cleansing to the Palestinian Arab society. Well I would like to tell Alam a little story about ethnic cleansing.
My father was born in Iraq in 1946 and lived in Baghdad with his parents and six older siblings until 1951. As Jews in a Muslim country my father and his family suffered for most of their life from Muslim discrimination and violence. They were not able to vote, testify in a court against a Muslim and above all every once in a while a FARHUD (Muslim version of lynch) against Jews would take place. After losing family and friends and living as second-class citizens all their life the Iraqi government decides it had enough of the Jews in its country so in an organized operation all Jews were expelled from Iraq. My grandfather’s passport (which I have a copy of at home and recently got translated since I can only read Arabic if it has vowels) literally says “one way ticket, not allowed back to the country.” This is ethnic cleansing. Similar stories and passports can be found when talking to any Jew and many Christians who lived in a Muslim country such as Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Jordan, and the list goes on. While Alam can hardly support his claim of ethnic cleansing with half-truths from CNN my proof in shape of a passport lies at home on the shelf with my organic chemistry textbook.
I am not with a total disagreement with you Alam. I am willing to stand in broad daylight in the middle of the Curry Student Center and say my country has made many mistakes during the course of its history. In addition I will be glad to say the Palestinians deserve freedom and Israel should recognize them and respect their existence, the only question is if the Arab world is willing to do the same.
– Yaron Ivan is a middler biotech major.
