Going into overdrive
In “Abbas’s speeches and narratives” (My Word, January 19), Liat Collins goes into overdrive criticizing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s historical knowledge. I would say that on both sides, when people get angry, they lose their sense of logic and overstate their case.
In particular, objecting to Abbas’s claim that the Palestinians are Canaanites and stating that Islam didn’t exist back then make no sense. Nobody is arguing that Islam was around in 2000 BCE, just that a certain percentage of the “Palestinians” have been here for a long time. And Abbas is arguing that a lot of the Jews in Israel aren’t really Jews. The Chief Rabbinate surely agrees with that.
Of course, on the Palestinian side, denying any Jewish connection with Jerusalem is crazy, as is Holocaust denial. But there’s a big difference between the kingdom of David and Solomon (almost zero archeological evidence) and of later kings or the Second Temple period, where there’s much more evidence, from both archeology and non-Jewish sources. Then you get to the issue of “what is an Arab.” I would define an “Arab” as someone whose mother tongue is Arabic. Certainly, Arabs and Muslims aren’t the same; there are Arabs who aren’t Muslim, and Muslims who aren’t Arab. Many “Palestinians” – including “Shirley Temper” (Ahed Tamimi), the blond teenage girl-provocateur who regularly tries to punch, bite and scratch soldiers and police and is much reviled in your pages – look more “Jewish” than some Jews in Israel. BILL HALSEY Acre
In his recent speech at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claimed once again that the Palestinians are the original Canaanites and therefore were in Jerusalem long before the Jews. If he is right, does that mean we are obliged to fulfill the Torah commandment Lo techayeh kol neshama (You shall not allow any soul to live, Deuteronomy 20:16) and wipe them out? Luckily for Abbas, Halacha has a principle (Ein
adam meisim atsmo rasha; Yev.25b, Ket. 18b, San.9b) in that we do not punish a person solely on the basis of his or her own confession. So the Palestinians’ claim that Israel is committing genocide against them is just one more example of their unfounded paranoia. MARTIN D. STERN Salford, UK