Yitzhak Navon Quotes
I grew up in Jerusalem and went to school here. I studied at the Hebrew University - mostly Islam and Arabic: Arab literature, Arab poetry and culture, because I felt like we are living in this region, in the Middle East, and we are not alone: There are nations here whose culture is Arab.
Navon, Yitzhak. Interview by Peleg Levy. Toldot Yisrael, 2009.
The Nazis and most of the Arabs were allies in WWII. The Jews of Palestine—although they were opposed to many of the British policies regarding Palestine—were active in the Allied cause contributing units to the British Army. Although the Germans were brutal to civilians, murdering millions, they refrained from public pronouncements or exhortations to kill civilians in most cases. The Arabs did not. The Mufti was actually given the rank of General in the Nazi SS and had his own SS unit. In this despicable exhortation he actually uses a concept and wording from the Koran. See {584355}. This quotation is important in that it refutes a common claim by some Palestinians that it was only the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust and the post war Jewish Refugee problem and that the Palestinians had to bear the price rather than place Israel in Europe. This quotation and the other by the Grand Mufti prove that Palestinians were not only complicit in persecution of Jews but took a leadership and advocacy role.
Although he was a failure as a fighting general, he was prescient in this advice which would have helped had it been heeded by American policy makers at the beginning of the 21st Century.
The Germans allied themselves with the Islamic insurgency of the day as a strategic maneuver. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem broadcast propaganda from Nazi radio in Berlin and was dispatched to organize Muslim fighters in Iraq. Fascism was introduced into the Middle East and the Arabs and Persians saw it as a natural extension of their authoritarian and highly prescriptive forms of religious and civil government. 60 years later, there would be Islamic Fascists throughout the Middle East in control or vying for control of many of the countries.
After the 6 Day War, Israel was in control of the West Bank.
There are large areas of life and society in which all Arabs—especially in Saudi Arabia are expected to behave, believe, and think in certain ways. The modern Islamic religion governs behavior of all kinds and is very prescriptive. Everyone is expected to take it literally and behave accordingly. Individualism and even creativity except in prescribed areas is even regarded as sinful. Islam was not always such, and ironically when Christianity was in its Dark Ages and was even worse for the individual than Arab Islam today, the Muslims celebrated intellectual creativity and exploration of all ideas including those of the West. However, in the 12th century there was a “closing”—a narrowing of allowable Islamic thinking, and since then, Islamic people have had great difficulty with change or modernity. Not all Muslim nations are equally rigid but the Arabs are at the extreme among Islamic counties.
The UN peacekeepers have had a sorry record of protecting people from aggression, attacks and even genocide. In Sarajevo they stood by as the Serbs rounded up 7,000 male Muslims and marched them off to be executed right past the United Nations forces. And the UN was unable to stop the genocide in Rwanda. In the Middle East on several occasions, Arab armies have walked right through the United Nations peacekeepers and attacked Israeli civilians. So no one, lease of all the Israelis have any confidence that the United Nations can provide security in Jerusalem or anywhere else in the Middle East. The Israeli position was that when the Jordanians controlled the city, they did not allow Jews to their sacred places to pray or have access to the city. The UN could not prevent violence at all. No one else is willing, but since 1967 the Israelis have maintained the peace and security of the city while allowing the Arabs and other groups access to their places of worship.
This was his signal for a reversal of policy from the 4 previous American Presidents of vigorously exporting Democracy and repect for Human Rights for women as well as men. Trump restricted his foreign policy to teh immeidate economic and security interests of the United States. This reversal, was opposed by many including most Republican politicans and activists for whom the spread of true democracy and human rights had been a cornerstone of their foreign policy for years. However, it was very popular amongst American isolationists, and other Republicans and Democrats as well who did not want to focus American lives or treasure on foreign nations whose cultures and history were anti-democratic and had little respect for women or human rights.
Yitzhak Rachamim Navon was an Israeli politician, diplomat, and author. He served as the fifth President of Israel between 1978 and 1983 as a member of the centre-left Alignment party. He was the first Israeli president born in Jerusalem and the first Mizrahi Jew to serve in that office.
