Jonathan Howard, blogs.timesofisrael.com
Howard image from article
Excerpt:I’m not talking about the people who automatically spit venom at everything Israeli. They’ve got their own problems, and believe me, I will be addressing them in good time. I’m talking about the decent people, who want to see us being as decent as we claim to be.
It’s not surprising that in the aftermath of pogroms, Dreyfus, the Holocaust and the Mufti’s implacable rejection of our existence, we were so scared, in such existential panic, we closed our hearts to all tragedies but our own. It was entirely understandable, and yet, at the same time, entirely unhelpful. We failed – miserably – to see, for example, the beauty of how the Arabs venerate hospitality as a sacred honour, and instead we went binary, got nasty, and triggered their defensive instincts.
Our defensiveness begat a total lack of consideration for the Arabs’ reality, and our lack of consideration helped beget their aggression. We could have been honoured guests in our own ancient homeland, eventually welcomed as equals. Instead, our insularity cast us as intruders. And no amount of public diplomacy or military prowess can ever reverse that. ...
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