Below is an email message I received, commenting on what I wrote about Helen Thomas: “Sir, in your article you state "Personally, I see nothing offensive in her statement (regarding Israel). Why should more than 1 million Israeli Jews and their descendants who were ethnically cleansed from Morocco return to Poland and Germany? The same goes for almost 2 million Israeli Jews and their families who were expelled or are refugees from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. You are saying that all these people should be deported to Eastern Europe. Do you also believe, like Helen Thomas, that Jews were invented in Siberia? Despite her previous good work, Helen Thomas showed her ignorance and her racism on a subject that she should have had more knowledge of. That is offensive. It is also offensive that you write with such ignorance pretending that Jews come from Poland and Germany. It shows not just that you are offensive, but that you are an unprofessional and amateurish writer who failed to research your subject.” The above e-mail was signed “Joe Ben Avraham”, who as the name shows is Jewish. However, I do not know whether he is Israeli, because if he were, and if I knew that he was Israeli, I would not have responded to him, and I would have thrown his letter in the rubbish bin: Following the failure of the peace process in the nineties, which I supported at the time, I returned to boycotting [Israel] since I do not support war and killing. I contend that I do know my subject well. I have studied it as history and then as religion, for 30 years now, to the extent that I studied it again with my son when he was studying in a British university. Also, I have been a journalist since my university days, and I have since been following the political side of this subject on a daily basis as well. The email's author is either ignorant or a racist Zionist who supports the murder of Palestinian women and children, and the theft of their homes in Jerusalem. The one and only truth is as follows: - There have never been a million or two millions Jews in Morocco as the email's author claims. There were thousands who were treated like all other people, and their descendants in Israel live on state welfare and their rabbis are despicable racists. - Our countries are all undemocratic. All people in each Arab country were persecuted, not just the Jews. We have the example of Saddam Hussein and what he did to the people closest to him, to the Sunnis and Shiites and to everyone else, the point being that we do not need to focus on the Jews. - In Lebanon and Syria, where my knowledge is direct, the Jews were treated in the same manner as everybody else. When I was little, I used to see some of them spending the summer in Bhamdoun like everyone else, or in the streets of Damascus. - Israel is the source of all terrorism, and the first to practice it. The Ashkenazi who came to our lands from Europe were behind the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem, the assassination of Count Bernadotte, the bombings in Iraq to push the Jews there to emigrate to Israel, and then the Lavon Affair and the plans for bombings in Egypt. - Ashkenazi Jews came from the Caucasus to Eastern and Central Europe and ended up in our countries after the Christian West murdered 50 percent of European Jews, compared to one percent of North African Jews killed during World War II. - There is no secret at all in the names or origins of Israeli prime ministers. Each and every one of them has changed their family name, something that has not happened in any other country in the world. On 21/2/2010, I wrote an article mentioning their original names, and the countries they came from. Everybody changed their name, or in other words, they are all mongrels just like their alleged homeland. - The religious account is well-known. However, it is a myth, and is not factual history. There are no traces or kingdoms of the Jews in Egypt, the Sinai or Palestine, but only small tribes in all the countries of the Middle East. I want to pause here to say that I read, only three days before the email above, an article written by the extremist Likudnik Frank Gaffney, in which he objects to the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, and in which he mentioned that “In Jerusalem, triumphant Muslims built the Al Aqsa mosque on top of the Jews' revered Temple Mount…” This is a lie. There is no such thing as the first or second temple because Solomon did not exist to begin with and also because there are no traces what so ever of a Jewish kingdom of any kind in Jerusalem. In his first ministry, Yitzhak Rabin had excavated under the Holy Mosque and found an Umayyad palace that he wanted to restore as a tourist attraction. However, the religious parties prevented him from doing so. This was reported by the newspapers at the time, and thus cannot be blanketed. Last but not least, when I said that Helen Thomas was right I also said that there are those in the Israeli government who are calling for a Jewish state, i.e. to expel the Palestinian owners of the land from their countries, and render ‘transfer' a declared policy. The land is ours from the sea to the river. Then I personally accept one state for all or two states side by side. [email protected]
