Arab propaganda at it’s finest.

A good buddy of mine gave me an interesting read, from what looks like a Pakistani blog. The article discusses several quotes from an Israeli professor, reviled Dutch-Israeli Military Historian Martin van Creveld, that include some very aggressive and fiery rhetoric. It makes him sound like a madman and unfortunately this same post can be found on the whose who of hate sites including notorious hate mongers such as Stormfront.org (neo-Nazis). The very first quote listed (ironically the last one in the actual interview) is the following:

“We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force.”

Sounds captivating does it not? The article is then cleverly appended with prophecies that call for the destruction of mankind from the one and only anti-Christ. Gotta hand it to the Arabs, they sure do have a penchant for the melodramatic.

The link to the story can be found here.

I was able to track down the actual interview, which was conducted in 2003 by a Dutch paper.
The translation and full interview can be found here.

When read in context, the picture is completely different. What the professor is explaining, in actuality coincides with the opinion of an earlier piece I wrote. He is critical of the incursions into Palestinian territories and feels they are a waste of time. Instead he suggests that some Israeli leaders are considering a deportation of all Palestinian people. The interviewer then asks if the world will support such ethnic cleansing and the professor surmises they might not, however Israel is armed with nuclear weapons – and therefore the world might just have to.

His ultimate point and something that everyone should think about is this; Does the current arrangement make sense? Israel can never win against terrorists that are within the population. Israel will only continue killing more and more civilians. A much better solution is to provide a peaceful process for the people of Gaza and West Bank to exit the areas and live in any of the 57 Muslim countries available to them. In the short run, this will seem barbaric. In the long run, this will provide long lasting peace. This is what the professor was trying to explain. Instead the Arabs honed in on the man, isolated him, took his words out of context and spread it all over the Internet to raise anti-Israeli sentiment. Disgusting.