Youssef Al Yafai: A Backward-Looking Glance At The Six-Day War

He’s unable to see that Israel never tried to disrupt its neighbors, or set them one again another. It was never Israel that wanted war with the Arabs. War, Jihad, has been made constantly by Muslim Arabs on Israel,war by combat, war by terrorism, war by economic boycotts and attempts at diplomatic isolation, war by the propaganda of the invented “Palestinian people,” war by all means. Al Yafai is a reasonable man, in his own context, but he prefers not to see things in those bleak and accurate terms. Nonetheless, his attitude toward Israel is not, in the continuum of such attitudes by Muslim Arabs, malevolent, and he sees a place for it in the Middle East. But does he realize that what he thinks doesn’t matter that much, because Israel has to base its policies not on the handful of advanced Arabs, but on the masses who remain resolutely Muslim and completely, dangerously, murderously hostile. Surely if he were to imagine himself an Israeli, knowing what he knows about the real attitudes of those among whom he lives, he would not risk everything, give up military control of the territories, just in order to make a “peace” that is more likely to be kept, that can only be kept, if it