Segal's Anti-Palestinian Polemics

Hat tip to one of my friends for letting me know. When we were having a conversation, he said: “I have found Segal’s The Class to contain some Zionist propaganda.” [Note: Zionism is a racist secular ideology which has nothing to do with Judaism as a religion, but Israeli apologists argue that the criticism of Israel and its apartheid and its Zionism is anti-Semitic. Some people may indeed use it in an anti-Semitic way, just like you can use an empty bottle of soft-drink to store water. Israeli apologists and their fellow supporters of ethnic cleansing and apartheid ought to know better.]

You may have heard of Erich Segal, author of several books on how shall I put it... ‘love’, as I’m choosing the word right out of his titles. But skimming through The Class, I agreed with my friend. I didn’t have time to read the whole book or anything, but I am quoting all the instances of lies and polemics directed against the Palestinians:

"I don't know all the details," he stammered. "Eva just called and said that there was a terrorist attack. Their kibbutz is very close to the border. Apparently some Arabs crossed over in the night and threw hand grenades into the children's dormitory. Fanny was seeing to a sick little girl and-" He broke down and sobbed.

At first Jason was numb. "I can't believe it," he murmured to himself. "I just can't believe this is really happening."

I had to find out about this Fanny character, so I turned back the pages. In brief, Fanny and Jason fall in love and to get Jason into a hate mentality and Zionist trapdoor, Segal the author kills off Fanny and blames it on an ‘Arab’. The above extract is a perfect example of how some writers in works of literature highlight compassion for themselves and disgust for others even though their enemies are the real victims. Quite an angst writer, this Segal, but that’s not all as he uses angst to dehumanize Palestinians. First of all, it’s in his language where he doesn’t say 'Palestinians' but ‘Arabs’ whenever he’s mentioning Palestinians which is a clever attempt really to say there are no Palestinians and these so-called Palestinians are basically Arabs, a very broad term to divest them from any right to their homeland. And as you may know from Fox evening news, all Arabs are terrorists and all Israelis are lovers of freedom etc. etc. Believe it or not, race plays a big part in this. One of the characteristics of Zionist propaganda is to say that all Palestinians are Jordanians or they aren’t a people at all! Now I’ll quote the next one:

"I don't care what his reasons are," Yossi retorted defensively. "Besides, doesn't the Bible allow us an eye for an eye?"

"That's primitive and you know it," Eva countered. "It's a metaphor, not to be taken literally."

"The Arabs take it literally," Yossi interposed.

"Hey, let's cut the polemics. Do I have your blessings to enlist or not?" Jason asked.

Is Segal talking to himself or what? He is the one who should be cutting out the polemics. He is putting his thoughts into a character’s mouth and asking him to quit it in hopes of sounding an arbitrary to his naïve teary readers after indoctrinating them with lies.

Israel was now confronted by over a quarter of a million troops, two thousand tanks, and seven hundred aircraft. The country was menaced on three borders. Its fourth frontier was the sea. And that was where the Arabs intended to drive them.

This is terrible shorthand by Segal, and quite amusing to those of us who study history which honours Palestinians in their dignity and right to self-determination, which Segal doesn’t mean to grant them. He had to fall into his own trap yet again. The following is the original statement uttered not by any bloodthirsty Arabs as Segal makes them out to be but Yitzhak Rabin, a former Israeli Prime Minister in 1992: "I would like Gaza to sink into the sea."

Even as he spoke, the shell shocked and defeated Arabs were planning a new kind of war against their enemy. A campaign of terror and sabotage. They created the PLO, whose stated aim was the "national liberation" of the people who had never been a nation.

Guess what? The Palestinians or as Segal says the “defeated Arabs” had “never been a people”. Of course, there is a grain of truth in that. The Palestinians have never been a people because Israel never saw them as one. I mean, you would need to dehumanize people if you, Mr Segal, don’t see them as people. They weren’t seen as people at all. Not when they were driven out of their homes, ethnically cleansed in some parts of their homeland, driven into a thin stretch of land called the Gaza which Yitzhak Rabin wished would sink into the sea. Your police state shelled them, bulldozed their homes, drained their economy in exile even, settlers from America and Russia and other parts of the world (just like your lionized character Jason) continue to come into Israel and that means one less home for one poor Palestinian, and they’re further pushed ‘into the sea’. Israel builds a large apartheid wall so the cries of the oppressed cannot reach the world. Journalists are supposed to be pro-Israel or they get fired for alleged anti-Semitism and the apartheid wall becomes a fence. Compassion and reason not being on your side, what will you do? Like other defenders of Israel, you’ll resort to lies. I’m not surprised by such absolute ahistorical gibberish. I would suggest to my readers to not buy any books of this prevaricator, borrow one from a library if you must.

I have read some complaints about the works of Leon Uris, too. I'll insha'Allah take up these Orientalists and history revisionists one by one. These writers must feel very miserable defending an apartheid country like Israel.