The Hypocrisy of the Arab-Muslim World
The Houthis are at it again. This time, they’ve hit Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are fed up.
What’s going on?
The Houthis are an Iranian-backed terrorist organization based out of Yemen, a small country on the edge of the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia, its northern neighbor, has gone through CENTCOM to indirectly ask Israel for help. Saudi Arabia was also one of eight Arab and Muslim countries that had recently signed a joint statement affirming that no peace or normalization with Israel would be made until a “Palestinian” state was established. The other countries that issued the statement were Egypt, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan. The Saudis have been pushing this prerequisite for quite some time, going back and forth in talks of diplomacy with Israel over the issue.
What’s so confounding about the matter is that these countries will lament over the absence of a “Palestinian” state, demand its establishment, and that Israel is not to be legitimized. But when someone in the Mediterranean, the Arabian peninsula/Gulf coast, or elsewhere in the Middle East is in trouble, that stance evaporates. Hence, Israel is Schrödinger’s country: Israel is not legitimate until a Muslim or Arab country needs it to be.
Selectively Pro-Israel
The Saudis are not the only ones who have indirectly or directly enlisted the assistance of the Israelis. Jordan and Israel signed a solar energy-water swap deal brokered by the UAE in 2021, which the Saudis actually tried to prevent (not that Amman and Jerusalem are good friends, anyway). Along with the Jordanians, the Egyptians also rely on Israel for natural gas which is a multi-billion shekel source of revenue for the Israelis and crucial to the economy and infrastructure of both Egypt and Jordan. In 2023, Israel delivered humanitarian aid to Turkey in the aftermath of an earthquake, which included search and rescue and medical aid delegations and physical goods like clothes, equipment, and medical supplies. Also, the United Arab Emirates is dependent on Israeli technology: “The UAE utilizes Israeli technology to purify wastewater for agricultural use and preventing diseases in palm trees. Agrinet Israel is helping the UAE grow healthy date palms with its Israeli-made technology to identify difficult pests that are known to spoil entire orchards and trees.”
These countries rely on Israel for resources, technology, and security but maintain a hostile public attitude to save face with their Muslim allies across the region. They’ll publicly condemn Israel for anything under the sun and deny any sort of “peace” or “normalization” but have no issue cooperating with Israel out of self-preservation. This is even the case with countries that actually do have peace treaties and diplomatic relationships with Israel; the first country to sign a peace treaty with Israel was Egypt during the Camp David Accords in 1978-79. Israel and Jordan signed the Wadi Arab Treaty in the fall of 1994. More recently, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, along with Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, established diplomatic relations with the historic Abraham Accords in 2020.
Granted, I’m not denying that Israel sometimes acts out of self-interest either. It benefits everyone to cooperate for the sake of regional stability. But the contrast is evident in strategic goals: Israel has a genuine need and desire to create allies and maintain peaceful relationships with its neighbors, for the sake of its existence and because it is a first-world country leading in medicine, technology, and education that is happy to offer its riches elsewhere. The other countries can afford to double-cross Israel by forming partnerships when necessary but championing “Palestinian” statehood, which is a cynical ploy for Jewish annihilation disguised as self-determination, for the sake of the Islamic status quo and global hegemony. Therein lies the hypocrisy of the Arab-Muslim world.
The “Palestinian” Question, Again
What should these countries care if “Palestine” is a state or not? It’s audacious and deceptive to put on the facade of genuine concern for the “Palestinians”, when all they’ve done is create chaos and destabilization wherever they go. Jordan and Lebanon have learned this the hard way after accepting “Palestinians” into their lands only to end up restricting them or expelling them altogether.
Jordan’s decision to accept “Palestinian refugees” was a grave mistake. King Hussein found his government threatened by militant “Palestinian” forces (that means terrorists, by the way) who exchanged fire with Jordan’s military in the capital of Amman in September of 1970. The “Palestinians” joined forces with the Iraqi and Syrian militaries to strengthen their numbers. “The crisis escalated September 6 to 9 when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four airplanes and forced three of them to land at Dawson’s Field, an airport 20 miles from King Hussein’s palace.” The king, terrified of nearly being overthrown, requested the help of the British to get military assistance from Israel. This request, not important enough to London, was passed to Washington who then contacted Jerusalem on King Hussein’s behalf. “Hussein was prepared to accept the Israelis’ help, but his troops rallied and drove the invaders out before it became necessary for Israel to join the fight. After Hussein’s forces repulsed the Syrians, they turned on the PLO, killing and wounding thousands of Palestinians and forcing thousands more to seek refuge in Syria and Lebanon.” “Palestinian” leadership, among them Yasser Arafat, the founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and verified KGB plant, fled to Lebanon, taking their bloodlust and oppositional defiance with them.
In Lebanon, “the PLO seized whole areas of the country, where it brutalized the population and usurped Lebanese government authority.” These animals raped, mutilated, and massacred the Lebanese people. A Christian village in Beirut, the capital, was turned “into a military base” and churches were perverted into “strongholds and armories.” A multinational coalition comprised of the United States, France, and Italy oversaw “the evacuation of PLO forces from Beirut” in August 1982. Contemporarily, “Palestinians” in Lebanon don’t have any rights, can’t own property, and are restricted from employment in a number of industries. Their options for schools and hospitals are severely limited. When it comes to both Jordan and Lebanon, the “Palestinians” have reaped what they’ve sown.
Conditions for “Palestinians” in other countries are not favorable either. Syria has made their lives miserable, Kuwait has “denied them citizenship” and “expelled more than 300,000 Palestinians”. This trend is seen throughout the Muslim/Arab world. The bitter truth is that none of the Arab countries actually want them. If that weren’t the case, why must they have their own country instead of being given citizenship in the 22 Arab and 50-something Muslim countries? Why must the burden fall on Israel?
I believe that Dr. Einat Wilf, an Israeli diplomat and politician, puts it best in her book The War of Return:
“The resettlement of a significant number of refugees in Arab countries would have relieved Israel of one of the most potent threats to its existence and deprived the Arab states of a key political and diplomatic weapon in their struggle against Israel. At this point the refugees were the only visible evidence of a conflict between Israel and the Arabs. Their rehabilitation would have left the Arab states without grounds for complaint. Rehabilitation in the Arab states would have healed the wounds of the 1948 war, but not by rewinding the clocks and abolishing Israel as the Arab countries had hoped. The rehabilitation of the refugees in Arab countries would have meant the end of the war, but that was not what the Arabs wanted. There was a way to solve the problem by creating a new status quo in the Middle East, but the Arabs were determined to use the problem to destabilize exactly that status quo…Arab public opinion viewed any possibility of rehabilitating the refugees outside Israel with hostility and would have treated Arab agreement on this matter as betrayal. Return to Israel was considered the only way to erase the humiliation of the military defeat, as it signified the destruction of the Jewish state.”
The Muslims/Arabs know that the creation of a “Palestinian” state means the loss of the Jewish one, which is ultimately what they want, or at least they think they do. It is a self-serving ambition. As if, after everything, these self-righteous states haven’t learned their lesson. But the less obvious factor in all of this is that the Arabs have no shame, except for their failure to exterminate every last Jew.
Enough Already
It is abhorrently preposterous for any Muslim or Arab nation to request Israeli assistance while presenting the only Jewish country in the world with an ultimatum to grant “Palestinian” statehood in exchange for a hollow pledge of diplomacy, and then look away when legitimate efforts on the Israelis’ part end up in piles of dead Jews. How many more Jews have to be kidnapped, tortured, starved, raped, mutilated, bombed, car-rammed, beheaded, shot, stabbed, and set on fire before the Muslims, who claim to be adherents of the religion of peace, say “this has gone too far”?
But they’re masters at playing this game. The “Palestinians” do not want a state of their own, and the Muslim countries know that. You’re talking about a group of people who have been offered six different proposals for their own sovereign territory, not including frameworks and conferences. They said no every single time because of their hardline all-or-nothing position, which has cost them the state they claim to want.
The question of the true motive behind a “Palestinian” state is to be discussed at a later time. So, I’ll leave whoever is reading this with one question: why haven’t the “Palestinians” accepted any of these offers?
I am not one to suggest or make commentary on what Israel should or shouldn’t do. I want Israel to do what is best for Israel. If it is their prerogative to lend a helping hand against the Houthis for Saudi Arabia, or Iran for everyone else, so be it. May there come a day when the Arab-Muslim world comes to its senses and decides to stop acting like a spoiled, bratty child that doesn’t get their way, and actually say “thank you, Israel” for once.
As far as a “Palestinian” state is concerned, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: the “Palestinian” state died on October 7th, 2023 and was laid to rest when 4-year-old Ariel Bibas and his 9-month-old brother Kfir returned to Israel in coffins.
