Extremism exists in all cultures and religions. While Israel and the Jewish people overwhelmingly condemn extremism, Islamists embrace lethal hatred. That is why Jewish extremism is a fringe phenomenon while Muslim extremism is mainstream.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly condemned the recent New Zealand mosques massacres.
“Israel mourns the wanton murder of innocent worshippers in Christchurch and condemns the brazen act of terror in New Zealand”, Netanyahu said.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also condemned the White Supremacist anti-Muslim massacre in New Zealand:
“I condemn the terrorist attack on the mosques in Christchurch in the strongest possible terms and send my condolences on behalf of the people of #Israel to the families of the victims, the injured, the government and the people of #NewZealand. Jewish organizations worldwide have also condemned the massacre on Muslims in New Zealand.
By contrast, pro-Hezbollah and Iranian media celebrated the recent Gaza rocket attack on Tel Aviv. When Christians and Jews are murdered, Muslim extremists regularly hand out sweets in celebration.
A vast gulf of different values separate Israel from her hostile neighbors. Israel and the Jewish people embrace life and progress while her lethal enemies embrace death and destruction. Hamas infamously boasted that it loves death more than Israelis love life.
Israel’s strength and resilience come from its optimistic embrace of life. It transformed the traumatized and homeless Jewish people after the Holocaust to a reborn, successful and powerful independent nation. It guided the Jewish state to turn multiple daunting challenges into advantages. Everything the Jewish people has achieved in Israel against all odds is rooted in this powerful embrace of human life.
By contrast, death cults like Iran’s ayatollah regime, Hezbollah, Hamas and PLO have no future. The reason is simple. Societies that embrace hatred and destruction eventually stagnate and wither away. Ironically, antisemitism ultimately hurts Jew-haters much more than the powerful Jewish state. Forty years of destructive anti-Semitic and anti-American Islamist dictatorship has harmed Iranian society far more than Israel or America. A society that names squares and schools after murderous terrorists is literally blowing up its own future. PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to prioritize financing anti-Israel terrorism over his population’s future is a self-inflicted lethal pathology that should concern all life-embracing Muslims and Arabs.
Israel is frequently demonized as “racist” towards Muslim Arabs. In reality, Muslim Arabs in Israel are among the freest human beings on earth. Israeli Arab citizens serve as senior judges, doctors, lawyers, diplomats, generals and entrepreneurs. Israel must be the world’s only “apartheid state” where Arab and Jewish patients are treated side by side by Arab and Jewish nurses and doctors. Israel even treats wounded Muslim terrorists. Israeli Arab members of Knesset regularly slam Israel and express support for her enemies. However, very few Israeli Arabs are in a hurry emigrating to Muslim Arab societies in Gaza, Ramallah, Beirut or Damascus.
Israel is often blasted as an anomaly in the Middle East and the root to all the region’s problems. In reality, the tiny sliver of land known as Israel is an island of life and freedom in an ocean of death and despotism. Israel is not merely hated for being the Jewish homeland. Israel is also hated by despots who feel threatened by the Jewish state’s embrace of human life, freedom and progress. Israel is not the mother of the Middle East’s problems. Israel is the potential mother of crucial solutions to the troubled region’s many problems.
The failed “Arab Spring” did not erupt out of concern for the Arab population in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. It erupted because the Muslim Arab world increasingly lags behind most of the world in terms of freedom, standards of living, education and human rights for women and minorities. Gazans are far worse off today under the Islamist Hamas dictatorship than before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005. Christians and gays flee from the “moderate” Fatah-controlled territories.
The giant Arab world is more than 500 times larger than tiny Israel and 1.5 times larger than the United States. What it needs is not more territory but embracing life and progress over death and destruction. The Sunni Arab world is gradually realizing that there is much to gain from cooperation with Israel in terms of technology and trade.
The Iranian regime regularly calls for the destruction of Israel. Iran oppresses its own people. Tehran has squandered billions of dollars on its nuclear arms project and its imperialist aggression throughout the Middle East and beyond. While the ayatollahs fear Israel and America, they ultimately fear their own people even more. The majority of the talented and educated Iranian people rejects the ayatollah’s oppressive rule. While Iranian leaders brag about destroying Tel Aviv, Israel has offered technologies to solve Iran’s growing water drought problems. After an earthquake in Iran, Israel offered to send rescue workers, which was rejected by the Iranian regime. Young and educated Iranians do not seek Israel’s destruction. They increasingly admire Israel and want Iran to emulate the Jewish state’s success. Unlike natural resources like oil, success is an unlimited commodity that can be shared by everyone willing to celebrate life and progress over death and destruction.
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Daniel Kryger is a writer and a political analyst and a Fellow at the Haym Salomon Center.
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