A Dutch Turkish driving school instructor, Sait Cinar, recently posted a video on his school's Facebook page in which he said, "Remember this, those cancerous Zionists, you have to compare them to zombies. And do you know that to do with zombies? You shoot them." The original Facebook page on which the video was posted had over 70,000 "Likes" before it was removed.
In the video, Cinar pulls out his 9mm pistol and fires eleven bullets before pulling out a .38 revolver. "But that's not enough," he continues, while firing another two rounds from his balcony. "You take your gun and this is how you break these cancerous Zionists, you have to kill them, you must compare them to zombies" Although the video was recorded in Turkey, upon Cinar's return from Istanbul he was arrested and is now in Dutch custody on the accusation of hate speech.
Statements such as those on social media coincided with major demonstrations against Israel's operation "Protective Edge," in which it attempted to destroy weapons stockpiles and a city of underground attack tunnels built by the Islamist terrorist group, Hamas, throughout the Gaza Strip.
In the Netherlands, demonstrations -- attended by tens of thousands of people --erupted in the Dutch cities of The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Utrecht.
The first round of demonstrations in The Hague caused a large controversy. It was originally considered a "mainstream" demonstration: Hitler-salutes, banners comparing the Israeli flag to the swastika, and attended by well-known "left wing" politicians.
During this first "mainstream" demonstration, pro-ISIS Muslims organized still another demonstration elsewhere in The Hague. Here, countless pro-ISIS banners were displayed, and chants through the speakers called for the death of Jews.
The Hague's mayor Jozias van Aartsen, from the conservative VVD Party, came under heavy fire for allowing these protests and for commenting that, "No lines were crossed." A petition calling for his resignation has so far been signed by more than 15,000 people.
Presumably fearing similar repercussions, city councils said they would increase their surveillance of future demonstrations and equip the police with "translator vans" to be able to know when anti-Semitic or genocidal calls were being chanted in Arabic.
Although explicitly anti-Semitic chants and symbols during demonstrations have been significantly fewer, demonstrations are still characterized by malevolent exaggerations, revisions of reality, cryptic-rather-than-explicit genocidal chants, and massive hypocrisy. Although, unlike explicit anti-Semitism, these are not punishable by Dutch law, they do contribute to an atmosphere in which hate and violence against Jews can flourish. They have also made videos like Cinar's more common.
During all demonstrations, accepted chants such as "Free Palestine!" were rampant. The true meaning of the chant, however, is revealed by an equally accepted chant: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" In other words, those demonstrators are calling for the disappearance of Israel in its entirety.
The normalization and common approval of slogans that actually call for the destruction of the entire Jewish state, Israel, contribute to an atmosphere of hatred, violence and anti-Semitism that now seems as acceptable as it is overt.
Then there is the equally accepted slogan: "Stop the Genocide!" The accusation of Israeli genocide is often twofold. On the one hand, demonstrators seemed to be referring to an alleged 'chronic' genocide they claim Israel has been committing against the Palestinians since Israel was founded in 1948. On the other hand, they seemed to be referring to an alleged 'acute' genocide they claim Israel was committing now, during its recent military operation against a terrorist state not essentially different from al-Qaida, Boko Haram, Hezbollah or ISIS. Despite the commonness of the accusations, they are malevolent and false, both in terms of the demographic growth rate in Gaza and Israel's ability contrasted to what it does not do.[1]
Bluntly, if Israel had actually wanted to destroy of the residents of Gaza during in its attempts to remove the sources of the attacks against them, it would not have dropped leaflets, phoned, text-messaged and "knocked on the roof" of buildings to warn residents to leave before each planned strike.
If anyone was trying to commit "genocide" during the Gaza War, it was clearly Hamas. Why did Hamas place weapons and tunnel entrances in apartments, hospitals, schools and mosques to begin with, and order its citizens not to leave areas from which Hamas leaders were launching attacks and return-of-fire?
During Operation Protective Edge, on the Gaza side, 1,994 people died, every innocent of whom is a tragedy. But the tragedy should rightly be laid at the door of the openly genocidal terrorist group Hamas, and not at the door of Israel -- a liberal democracy, like ours here in Europe, which was just trying to defend itself.
It is the UN that has stated that 80% of Gazan casualties were civilians. However, the UN has a disgracefully solid track record of being politically biased against Israel and of overtly aiding Israel's enemies, even when those enemies are classified as terrorist organizations by the EU and USA. UN figures should therefore not be trusted without thorough scrutiny.
The UN mainly derives its causality figures for the Gaza War from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, a Gazan organization under influence of the Hamas-run "Gaza Health Ministry." Presumably for propaganda reasons, Hamas apparently makes sure only a very small percentage of casualties is registered as combatants. The BBC and New York Times -- not known for their journalistic sympathy toward Israel -- investigated the numbers portrayed by the UN and determined that they were wrong. Both media outlets concluded that males between 20 and 29 years, who universally constitute combatants, were disproportionately overrepresented among the casualties.[2]
If Israeli air strikes truly had a random character, or if Israel were purposely targeting civilians with the intent of decimating them -- a legal criterion for the classification "genocide" -- these numbers would look very different. [3]
The percentage of civilians killed during Operation Protective Edge was likely drastically lower than the UN's 80%. Moreover, given Israel's proven lack of intent to harm Gaza's civilian population, there is simply no case for any kind of genocide.
An occurrence even less noted during the anti-Israeli demonstrations was the exaltation of the Palestinian people and the future "Palestinian State." Although of course many Palestinians are honorable and peace-loving, during the demonstrations Palestinians were portrayed as even more innocent, and more peace-loving than a glance at the real historical record can objectively justify. And the more angel-like the Palestinians are portrayed, the more Israel is hated for "hurting them." After all, as much naïve and erroneous thinking can go, a country accused of doing bad things to people inherently good, must be inherently bad itself, mustn't it?
During the protest in Rotterdam, rap-artist Appa shouted through the microphone: "They are heroes!" But can the Palestinian government, with its genocidal charters --yes, Fatah's too -- and record of initiating wars, truly to be classified as heroic?
The Palestinian people have, since 1995, received, per capita and adjusted for inflation, 25 times more financial aid than did war-torn Europe under the American Marshall plan. It is hard to see how Palestinians culturally differentiate themselves from the surrounding Muslims and Arabs. It is also hard to see how a future Palestinian state would positively differentiate itself from surrounding Arab states. Hamas is now a corrupt "Millionaires Club" with around 1200 millionaires in its ranks, while the personal wealth of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is estimated at $2.6 billion. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority [PA] is no less corrupt. The personal wealth of PA President Mahmoud Abbas -- who will exceed his presidential mandate by five years coming January -- is estimated at $100 million.
In addition, the PA is oppressive toward its Palestinian subjects. Critical journalists and bloggers are harassed and arrested on a regular basis and the PA has shut down at least one website that published material critical of the PA.
Even if one differentiates between the people and their leaders, as the Algerian author Anwar Malek stated: "Arab leaders are a reflection of their people. Arab leaders don't come from Mars or the sun, they emerged from among the people and share the same beliefs. If you placed any Arab citizen in power... I challenge any Arab citizen who may become a ruler to do anything beyond what current Arab leaders are doing."
Although a sovereign Palestinian state might seem desirable "on paper" -- at least if it is not next to you and calling for your death -- the exaltation of a future Palestinian State, glorified during anti-Israeli demonstrations as a haven of peace and harmony, seems for the near future unfortunately baseless.
What the protestors in the Netherlands also revealed -- in terms of hypocrisy -- is that a killed Palestinian is only worth demonstrating for when the blame can be pinned on Israel.
In February 2014, 2000 Palestinian civilians had already been in killed in Syria. The Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk in Damascus, has seen over 128 Palestinians literally die of starvation. Hamas executes Palestinians on a near-daily basis. Where are the demonstrators?
Finally, in a massive revision of history, the demonstrators' view of causality is completely reversed. In 2005 Israel unilaterally retreated from all of the Gaza Strip, forcibly uprooting its Jewish inhabitants. The "economic blockade" started only in 2007 after the Gazan population democratically elected Hamas, and Hamas started to launch missile attacks on Israel -- not the other way around.
Recent anti-Israeli demonstrators might show fewer anti-Semitic expressions, but the escalating lies and accusations only contribute to the increased possibility of anti-Semitism and violence toward Jews becoming normal throughout Europe, as well as the increased empowerment of those who do not harbor the most tolerant views toward non-Muslim inhabitants of Europe.
[1] In terms of "genocide," with an annual growth rate of 2.9% Gaza has the 13th fastest growing population on earth, and with an average of 4.2 children, Gazan women have the 34th highest fertility rate in the world. Gazans have an average life expectancy that is higher than that of NATO member Turkey and the Arab population of the Gaza strip has increased with 1568% since 1948. The "systematic genocide" demonstrators accuse Israel of committing since 1948 is in no way compatible with these figures, thereby making the accusations malevolent and false.
[2] Although this subgroup only makes up 9% of the 1.8 million Gazans, it provided 34% of the Gazan casualties. A list of names and ages published by Al-Jazeera, confirmed this distribution. By contrast, the subgroup "women and children under 15 years of age," which makes up 71% of the Gazan population, provided a relatively smaller 33% of the casualties.
[3] During operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, Hamas followed a similar policy and initially reported that only 49 Hamas combatants had been killed during the war, making the percentage of civilians killed appear astronomically high. However, after the Gazans accused Hamas of cowardice, Hamas came forward with the real numbers. They had lost around 700 combatants; a number nearly identical to Israel's claim of having killed 709 enemy combatants. The numbers mentioned by the BBC and New York Times do not count as conclusive evidence that 34% of the casualties were indeed Hamas combatants. However, accounted for by the Hamas policy in 2008-09, the fact that UN numbers are heavily influenced by Hamas itself and that Hamas missile crews often fight in civilian clothing, it is highly probable that the true number of killed Hamas combatants will again closely resemble the Israeli numbers: about 900.
