The Mystery of Hate

The following article was written by a Israeli journalist....


The Mystery of Hate
by Yair Lapid

Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of
dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not including
the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of lake Karon in
1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The helicopter took him
and until this day I do not know whether he is dead or survived. All
this, and one cannot figure it out.

And its not only what happened but all that did not happen -
hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened,
roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from
millions of teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the
above, we still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of
where it all started:

Why do they hate us so much?

I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with
us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives.
Without getting into the 'which side is right' question, it is obvious
that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here. We
all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a personal
way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that will stain
the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that could at least
be understood, even if no sane person is willing to accept the means
that are used to run it by.

It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan
Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his
life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he
has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he
has no reason to fight?

Why do children in Iran , who can not even locate Israel on the map
(especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city center
and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and
Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the
peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push
their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to stay a
pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to
finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own
country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In
Iraq ? In Sudan ? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to
their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much in
Afghanistan ? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they get
the energy to hate?

This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true
that it is a religious matter but even religious people make their
choices. The Koran (along with the Shariaa - the Muslim parallel to the
Jewish Halacha) consists of thousands of laws, why is it that we occupy
them so much?

There are so many countries who gave them much better reasons to be
angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the
colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the
Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the
British, they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We
did not even try, so how come we are the enemy?

And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers then
where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that
were evacuated? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a
school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern
surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers, why
do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating?

Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism
taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something
about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone
wanted: we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little
country, where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others.
We didn't even ask a lot for it. Israel is spread on a smaller
territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no
minerals, without settling on another existing state's territory. Most
of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from
anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we
established them. The other katyusas landed on territories over which
no one ever questioned our right with regards to them. In Haifa there
were Jews already in the 3rd century BC and Tiberias was the place
where the last Sanhedrin sat, so no one can claim we plundered them
from anyone.

However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible.
Active hatred, poisoned, unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of
Iran , Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again 'to act for the vanishing of
Israel '' as if we were bacteria. We got used to it so much that we
don't even ask why.

Israel does not hope and never did for Iran to vanish. As long as
they wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them. We do not have a
common border with them or even any bad memories. And still, they are
willing to confront the whole western world, to risk a commercial
boycott, to hurt their own quality of life, to crush what's left of
their economy and all that for the right to passionately hate us.

I am trying to remember and cannot: have we ever done something to
them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that ' Israel is the main
problem of the Muslim world'? more than a billion people living in the
Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from
hunger, poverty, ignorance, bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to
Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh . How come we are the
main problem? How exactly are we in their way?

I refuse to accept the argument that claims 'that is just the way
they are'. They said it about us so many times that we have learned to
accept this _expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret
that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow to rouse the
quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has already
retreated from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland
exactly at the time they finally escaped twenty years of disasters.

We got used to telling ourselves worn expressions - 'it's the Iranian
influence', or ' Syria is stirring behind the scenes' - but it is just
too easy explanation. Because what about them?

What about their thoughts?
What about their hopes, loves, ambitions and their dreams?
What about their children?
When they send their children to die, does it seem enough for them to
say that it was all worth while just because they hate us so much?