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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

June 2016

The Mystery of Defunding Israel


When one surveys nasty governance, horrible cultures, and rampant injustice in the world, Israel would not appear on any rational list of offenders. Despite this, the campaign to boycott and defund Israel is mindlessly persistent in universities and among far-left radicals. A few people, one of them an "independent" running for Congress, still embrace the conspiracy theory that 9-11 was not perpetrated by Arabs. They insist that the buildings fell because they had been pre-wired and then detonated by the CIA and, of course, Israelis. We cannot overestimate a global underbelly of stupidity.

Those advocates of the notion that Israel is the worst violator of human rights in the world ought to look around Israel?s neighborhood. On one day and one page in the San Francisco Chronicle (May 4, page A3), a snapshot of the Muslim neighborhood appeared in three articles. The first was about Syria, where two hospitals were deliberately bombed by the Syrian government, with the help of Russia, perhaps? First they bombed a neighborhood and then, when the wounded were rushed to a hospital, they bombed the hospital. Bombing the funerals would be the next step.

The second was about the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian-ruled region that, years after the Israeli "occupation" ended, should be thriving. Instead, Hamas, the Islamist party that held one election only one time, even hunting down and lynching political rivals They have done everything to ruin what could have been a flourishing partner to the Israelis. The latest horror is that millions of gallons of raw sewage pour into the Gaza Strips? Mediterranean beachfront, killing miles of seacoast (no fish, no life) and is now moving north to the pristine Israeli beaches.

Israel haters blame Israel for not permitted building materials to repair Gaza?s water infrastructure and homes. Not so. Since last October, Israel let into Gaza 4,824 tons of building materials, most of which was diverted by Hamas for their terrorist activities against Israel. They keep building tunnels to smuggle terrorists into Israel, with no concern for their own civilians.

When Israel occupied Gaza, the strip?s fishermen went out daily and both Israelis and Gaza residents ate together in the wonderful seafood restaurants. Now, the fishing industry is dead and the restaurants empty. In addition, the best business activities in Gaza under Israeli occupation were cut-flower greenhouses. When the Israelis left, they offered the greenhouses to Gaza as a gift, a gift that was immediately destroyed by mobs who preferred nothing to something once Israeli. The poor Palestinians have the worst governance possible and no possibility of thriving.

The third article was about prevailing bribery, corruption, and bad courts in nine Middle East countries. This Arab report stated that one-third of the people in nine Arab countries have had to pay a bribe to access any kind of public service. The survey claims to have interviewed 11,000 people in the region. Yemen, of course, is the worst (77% pay bribes).

The polling survey, Transparency International, surveyed Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories, all of them corrupt. Unlike polling about social issues, which Arabs would hesitate to answer honestly, corruption is acknowledged and hated.

One-third of the people surveyed paid bribes in dealings with courts and 25% paid bribes to police---multiple times. One-fifth pay bribes for public medical services (in Morocco, 38 percent do so). A staggering 92 percent said they thought corruption had increased. The "Arab Spring" was a mirage. Things are much worse now.

Fixating on the supposed evil of Israel, demanding boycotts and condemnation by university faculties and liberal churches, is not based on fact. It is anti-Semitism under the mask of righteousness. But it also prevents the really bad players in the Middle East from being condemned (and hopefully corrected) by these same intellectuals.

There are 56 Muslim states in the world, most dysfunctional. If Israel, the one Jewish state, were destroyed, there would be a 57th Muslim state, "Palestine." They would join the other 56 in violence, misogyny, and corruption.

Which would you want for an ally? Unless you are a bigot, you know.

681 words
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

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