"The Greatest Deception of Modern Times"

Before jumping into this post, I just want to wish a "happy new year" once again to those readers who celebrated Rosh Hashanah. Personally, I celebrated the holiday at the home of friends, and oh. my. goodness. was there a lot of food. Beyond belief. Their new house, by the way, is gorgeous.

While Allison takes a break from her duties, I'm going to be covering for her at Israelity. Below is one of the posts which will appear today. I think it's important that anyone reading this explore the post and pass along the information if you can. In particular, do read the whole Maariv article.

Cross-posted from Israelity:

Who is killing the Muslims?

Imshin has gone to great effort to translate an important article from Maariv, with the following introduction (by Imshin) about why she wants this story to get more attention in English:

The reason I translated the article by Ben Dror Yemini that appeared on the Friday addition of Maariv is that it is extremely important. It makes the important case of the libel against Israel, which he calls the greatest deception of modern times.

He explains that while Israel is seen as a state committing genocide and war crimes, and its very right to exist is widely questioned, in actually fact ‘only’ about 60,000 Arabs have died in the Arab-Israel conflict since 1948 (including the War of 1948 itself), most killed in wars started by the Arabs themselves, and only a few thousand of those killed have been Palestinians!

Now, it goes without saying that every one of those killed is a tragedy, but the numbers killed in this conflict are dwarfed to insignificance by the terrible, horrendous atrocities that have been committed elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world at the very same time. All this time, millions of Muslims and Arabs have been dying at the hands of Muslim and Arabs. And he goes into detail. He calls it a cover up and says that the great deception of the libel against Israel is the great tragedy of the Arabs and the Muslims - for it allows this horrific carnage to continue undisturbed.

The full English text of the article begins here and continues here and here.


A summary:

Number of Arabs killed in the framework of Israeli-Arab conflicts since the creation of Israel (including in the 1948 war for Israel's independence, all the wars fought between Israel and its neighbors, and the occupation of Palestinians): 60,000.

Number of Algerian Muslims killed by the French in the 1950's Algerian war for Independence: Between 500,000 to 1 million.

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims in the 1990's Algerian civil war: 100,000.

Number of people, including some Muslims, killed by Muslims in Sudan between 1955 and today: 2.6 million- 3 million.

Number of Muslims killed by the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980's: at least 1 million

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims in the Afghan civil war of the 1980's-90's: 1 million

Number of Muslims killed by the Americans in efforts to overthrow the Taliban: less than 10,000.

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims since 1977 in Somalia's civil war: Between 400,000- 550,000.

Number of Muslims in Bangladesh killed by other Muslims from Pakistan since 1977: 1.4 million-2 million

Number of Muslims killed by other Muslims in Indonesia since 1965: at least 400,000.

Number of Muslims in East Timor killed between 1975-1999 by Muslims from Indonesia: 100,000 - 200,000

Number of Muslims killed in Iraq by other Muslims (mostly those in the regime of Saddam Hussein): 1.54 million- 2 million

Number of Iranian Muslims killed in their war with Iraq: 450,000 - 970,000

Number of Lebanese killed by Israelis between 1975-1990: up to 18,000 (this number is included in the first statistic given several lines up, about Arab deaths at Israel's hands)

Number of Lebanese killed by other Lebanese or by Syrians between 1975-1990: at least 112,000.

Number of Yemenites, Egyptians, and Saudis killed in the Yemen civil war of 1962, and in the Yemen riots of 1984-1986: 100,000 - 150,000

Number of Chechen Muslims killed by the Russians since 1992: 80,000- 300,000

Number of Arabs and Muslims killed in Jordan (includes at least a few thousand Palestinians), Chad, Yugoslavia, Tajikistan, Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Zanzibar in the course of smaller conflicts in the 1970's, 80's, and 90's: at least 150,000.

Summary of the summary:

The next time Arabs and/or Muslims complain about the persecution they suffer at the hands of the Americans and Israelis, remember this . . .
Since 1948, the number of Muslims killed by the Americans and Israelis combined is still less than the number killed by the French. And the number of Muslims killed by the French, Israelis, and Americans combined is still less than the number killed by the Soviets/Russians. And the number of Muslims killed by the Soviets, Russians, French, Israelis, and Americans, combined, is still about 1/3 of the number of Muslims who have been killed by Muslim states.

I don't mean to minimize anyone's suffering, and as an Israeli I'm interested in continuing to pressure Israel to keep Arab casualties at a minimum while still protecting Israelis. But if the goal is to save lives, then to focus one's pressure on the deeds or misdeeds of Israel is to apply an incredible, ridiculous double standard, one clearly motivated by anti-Semitism and nothing more. If the goal is to spare Muslim lives, then the Muslims could start with themselves, and come back to us when they value each other. (Oh, and when they themselves don't think anymore that 1,000 of them is worth 2 of us.)