The Plus and The Minus

Here is rich and wealthy and almost reformed terrorist Mamoun Khozendar talking from Gaza - in 2008:

We live in a fundamentalist country – my wife and daughters can't go swimming freely. I decided to give my family their life back, so I built a small club with a pool, where my wife can wear a bikini and no one will interfere. The walls are very high and they can swim, have barbecues and taste life. Gaza is my paradise. No one can break me.

I want people to give us a chance to prove ourselves, to show that we are a nation equal to others. I don't want Gaza to be persecuted and then for us to be asked: "Why are you violent and why do you kill?"

Why is everyone against us? What have we Palestinians done? Did we create the Jewish crisis? No, Europeans created it and now we are paying the price. Our land has been taken from us, now we just want to live.

On the one hand, the dark side of fundamentalism with the reality that there are Arabs who really do know they are being screwed.

On the other hand, the same old perversion of Jewish national history:

Europeans created the "Jewish crisis" and the Arabs are paying the price.

The Arabs helped with that "Jewish crisis" in two ways:

a) they occupied(*) the Jewish national homeland, quashed our presence there, destroyed our economy there and kept us from coming back for 1300 years in numbers despite relative success in maintaing a Jewish presence all during that time;

b) acting in violence and terror against Jews all during that time and especially in the 20th century after international law recognized the reconstitution of the Jewish national home when the Arabs launched their 90-year old terror campaign as well as joining up with Hitler.

Still a long way to go.

Still more minuses than pluses.



(*)Here is his actual admission:

For 800 years my family has been based here in Gaza. We came to this country from Jebil Bakr with [the 12th-century Islamic ruler] Saladin. Our ancestor was Saladin's finance minister. We came with our swords and our horses.

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