COEXISTENCE: THE MYTH .

 

by Seth J. Frantzman

  

There are riots between Jews and Arabs in the Israeli town of Acre. Already the chorus of voices has told us that "for years the people of this mixed city coexisted." Now we hear that a 'spark' has set off an 'explosion' of ethnic violence. We have heard this before. We heard it about Rwanda, about Lebanon and the Balkans and about India in 1948. Coexistence is a myth. It is one of the great myths that western liberalism has created. There has never been coexistence and there never will be. There is only individual coexistence. Communal coexistence does not exist.

If, after the Holocaust or in the midst of it, someone had said 'the Germans and Jews coexisted for years before a spark set off the genocide' would it seem logical? Everyone knows that the roots of the Holocaust do not spring out of some 'spark' but out of a deep history that involved Martin Luther's anti-Semitism and the rise of pseudo-scientific racism in the 19th century. The Holocaust was an exception but it does not therefore suggest that the two communities were at peace before.

The myth of coexistence takes itself from the belief that the opposite of ethnic riots and killing must be that the two communities lived in 'peace'. But this is predicated on the false idea that just because nothing is happening that therefore things are peaceful. The evidence that the great communal conflict in India in 1948, in which all the Sikhs and most of the Hindus were cleansed from the newly created state of Pakistan and many millions of Muslims fled India. Hundreds of thousands were massacred. History books tell us that it was partition that created this mass slaughter. Like the Holocaust this is partly a correct explanation. The massacre of 1948 was a unique event. Yet books and articles often go further and tell us that these three communities (Hindu, Muslim and Sikh) coexisted before 1948. The idea is that simply because before the partition they didn't routinely massacre one another they must have lived in perfect harmony. Stories such as these usually involve some individual evidence of someone named Mahmud and some other person named Vikram and how they were friends and shopped at each others' stores and that their children played together.

But these strange stories of individual coexistence always ignore the reality behind them. If someone were to tell us that Thomas Jefferson's family coexisted with the Hemmings family would we believe it? If someone told a story of idyllic coexistence between the white family of Jefferson and how their children played with the children of the Hemmings' we might almost be lulled into a false scenario of 'coexistence since time immemorial'. But if we were subsequently informed that Jefferson's family owned the Hemmings we would view this quite differently. Now if we return to the story of the hypothetical Vikram and Mahmud and their idyllic coexistence in India we must recognize that throughout the history of Muslim India the relationship between Vikram and Mahmud was one of slave and master, one of the Dhimmi and the ruler, one of 'Infidel' or kaffir and of believer.

In the West people spin tales of coexistence that appear, more than the story of Vikram and Mahmud, to be plausible. In the West where the secular nation has no identity and every man is equal before the law we seem to have created situations where genuine coexistence can flourish. Under these circumstances every wealthy and middle class bourgeoisie tells stories of their coexistence. The stories always begin in a like manner: "my Asian friend" or "my Indian friend" or "my Muslim friend." In order to reinforce an ideology of coexistence the elite culture creates movies and books about it. In a sense the idea is that if mass society can see two peoples coexisting on screen then they can imagine it in real life. So we have movies of Jews marrying gentiles (Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite), Indians dating whites (Namesake), blacks dating whites (Save the Last Dance) and whatever else our culture can come up with to convince us that coexistence is possible. But the theory is always the same: if we can show individual coexistence then we can create it in society. But coexistence in society always exists on a superficial level, usually between elites and usually involving some sort of lie where one party is involved only because they want to talk about 'coexisting' and the other party is involved for some other reason. In the end coexistence becomes some sort of peep show or zoo where people are shown little scenes of coexistence. Little of it is ever genuine or decent.

Take the recent Israeli film, For my father, which tells the story of a Palestinian terrorist meeting and having sex with a wealthy Jewish woman while waiting to carry out his terrorism in Tel Aviv. This perverted drama is only acceptable in a society where people have no taste and where the vulgarity of modernity has mixed with the religion of coexistence to create a monster. Like the strange naziploitation movies of the 1970s such as Salon Kitty (1979), Ilsa She Wolf of the SS (1975), Beast in Heat (SS Hell Camp, 1977), which were made in Italy and the U.S and released in Germany as well, we have here an example of a people seeking coexistence with those who will kill them. It would be like having a movie about a KKK member who falls in love with a black girl hours before he is supposed to fire bomb her church and burn a cross on her parents lawn. And yet the public craves this to the same degree that Max Mosley, Formula One's CEO and a descendent of the Fascist Oswald Mosley, apparently craved being dressed as a prisoner in a 'concentration camp' and beaten by prostitutes he had hired to play 'concentration camp guards'.

Coexistence in the Middle East is one of the great myths. In Iraq we are told that the Christians and Sunnis, Kurds and Shias all 'coexisted' under Saddam and that the American invasion set off 'ancient rivalries'. Ancient rivalries? Coexisted under Saddam? Its like saying that the Poles and Ukrainians 'coexisted' under Nazism. Its easy to coexist when the Nazi jackboot is on your head. The same myth is peddled about the Copts in Egypt. From the BBC to Lonely Planet the public is offered up the official government line that Copts, the Christian minority in Egypt, and Muslims get along perfectly. The BBC adds this tag line to most articles dealing with Copts in Egypt "Christians account for up to 10 percent of Egypt's population and relations with the Muslim majority are usually harmonious. But disputes over land, religious buildings or inter-marriage sometimes lead to violence." And yet year after year they are murdered raped and killed. Each time it is an excuse. It is a 'deranged man' who stabs them outside their churches (2006). Or it is a riot because of some play they are staging 'offends' Muslims (October, 2005). Or it is some riot (1999). Or the excuse is that a Muslim harassed a Christian woman or a woman converted to Islam (October, 2008) or a woman sold property to a Muslim (October 2008). Investigating the 'incidents' is not possible anyway because the media and public are barred from most Coptic villages or mixed towns that are outside the tourist circuit.

Now the coexistence myth is being peddled about the Israeli town of Acre. On Yom Kippur 2008 a Muslim man drove his car around Jewish neighborhoods of Acre with his music blasting. This is a holiday where Jews, even secular ones, refrain from driving and are generally fasting and quiet. Jews, responding to the offensive behavior, stoned the Muslim man's car after he would not leave. The BBC would have us believe differently "an Israeli-Arab man was assaulted for driving his car during the Jewish Yom Kippur holy day." The New York Times tells us "[a city that has been a] national symbol of coexistence [was ruined]. The troubles started Wednesday night...an Arab resident of Acre, Tawfiq Jammal, drove with his son into an increasingly religious Jewish neighborhood to pick up his daughter from her fiancé's apartment in a mainly Jewish block." So it is the 'religious' Jews who harmed this innocent Arab. There is no investigation as to whether his daughter was really there or if he could have avoided the religious area or why he played loud music. The Times explains "after leaving the car the Jamals were chased by a stone-throwing mob..Arab residents heard Jamal had been killed ... and set out to take revenge." See the Arabs are the victims, even though only Jewish property, shops and cars were destroyed the first night of rioting, it was all a misunderstanding, and it is the 'stone-throwing' Jewish 'mob' that is clearly more blood thirsty. The Arabs only wanted some revenge.

But the BBC gets the second event correct: "Hundreds of Arabs took to the streets damaging shops and vehicles after the car driver, Tawfik Jamal, was assaulted by a group of Jewish youths." So this attack on an Arab was the 'spark'. Just like the 'spark' that set off the First and second Intifada. Or the 'spark' that set off the 'Paris Intifada' in 2005 when Muslim rioters torched thousands of cars over a two week period after two Muslim 'youths' were electrocuted, by climbing into a power station, while running from police. But newspaper articles reveal deeper truths. One Jewish woman interviewed in Haaretz said she didn't want the Arabs living next to her anymore because they "take all our daughters." Although people tell tales of coexistence and weave myths about the mixed cities in Israel, such as Lod, Ramla, Haifa, Tel Aviv-Jaffo, Nazareth-Nazareth, Alit and Acre, every average person knows the truth. There is no coexistence. There are two communities. One community is the victim of the other. One community robs the other. One community rapes the other. One community blares its music intentionally on the others holidays. One community teaches hate about the other in its schools and calls the other 'Kaffir'. One community whines about racism. One community believes it is discriminated against and because of this receives all the benefits of various 'coexistence projects'. One community has its mosques which blare their 'call to prayer' five times at day beginning at 4 am.

Coexistence is a myth preached by wealthy people who do not coexist. Those who speak the most about coexistence never have to live with it. Those who talk about coexistence in Egypt or among the communities in new York or Acre never live face to face with the 'other'. They live in wealthy gated communities and expound about the importance of coexistence and a non-racial society of colour blindness. They are the ones who make the movies describes thus: "For My Father brings a suicide bomber and a Jewess together." It is the wealthy elites who want us to accept this coexistence: the coexistence between the Nazi Jackboot and the Jew. But we do not want to coexist as slaves. A free man coexists on his own terms. He does not tolerate another man driving through his community playing music on his holiest day. He does not tolerate his daughters being raped. Coexistence only exists when both communities have honour and respect, not when one community murders and rapes the other.

The true myth of coexistence is that the lower classes are forever part of a scientific experiment conducted by the wealthy elites. This experiment at social engineering is called coexistence. Blacks and whites, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims, Serbs and Croats, Hutus and Tutsis, are put together, forced to live side by side like rats in a medical test facility so that some wealthy social engineer can see what happens. The real hatred should be directed not merely against the community of other who suppresses and rapes and disrespects us but also against the wealthy elites who treat us as if we are some sort of social experiment. The hatred should be directed and the rioters stone thrown also at the media who treat us like animals and against the Europeans who come to 'monitor' us and the UN who 'supervises' us and against the sociologists and anthropologists and intellectuals who come to 'observe' us and the philanthropists who come to create their fake coexistence projects that ignore the truth. Until those who preach coexistence actually live it they should be forbidden to preach it.

Wealthy Europeans who never saw a person outside their own little group should not be allowed to go to Africa and tell Hutus and Tutsis how to live. A Tutsi knows how his people were raped and murdered by machetes supplied by the French to the Hutus in 1994. He need not be told to coexist next to those who gang raped his sister. If he chooses to coexist it should be on his terms and not those of some outsider. Likewise the Serbs, who were slaughtered, first by the Muslims, and then by the Nazis, did not deserve to be told to coexist next to their former colonizers and genociders, the Bosnians and Croats. If the Serbs desired, after 700 years, to retain some of their honour, that should have been their prerogative. They didn't want to live next to their former masters anymore than the southern blacks desired to live under theirs. And yet they were told by the German peacekeepers: forget your stupid old history and join modernity. Easy for the Germans to say: they already killed off all their minorities. And that is what coexistence is usually about. Its about former Nazis such as Kurt Waldheim running the UN and telling us how to 'coexist'. He learned about coexistence in the Balkans, putting Jews in the gas vans and murdering them. Its about the Saudis telling Europeans how to coexist with their burgeoning Muslim populations, telling them, and Greece and Ethiopia, to build mosques for their Muslims. Saudi, a country where non-Muslims cannot drive in Mecca and where no houses of worship, except those of Islam, are allowed.

Everyday brings new revelations about the riots in Acre that shed light on the true nature of coexistence. The Arab driver who 'sparked' the riots by driving offensively through a Jewish neighbourhood on the most holy day in the Jewish calendar was actually the head of a 'coexistence' project. We have learned that Jewish funding has been poured into Acre over the years to support coexistence, from the likes of the Abraham Fund and the Jewish Agency. Numerous schools with names like 'Shalom' teach coexistence in mixed class rooms. In addition millions has been invested, only in the Arab part of the city, on various coexistence projects, such as theatres and class rooms. Each year an annual 'coexistence' Fringe festival comes to Acre, ironically it was scheduled for the week after the riots and has since been cancelled, and the performers perform only in the Arab part of the city bringing money only to Arab vendors and businesses. So why did all the investment in coexistence lead to an Arab mob preparing to assault Jews even before the 'spark' set them off? Why did they have their home made axes ready? Why was hate speech and incitement broadcast from the mosque in Acre ordering the Arab mobs to sack the Jewish business district? Where was all the coexistence? Where were all the Arab graduates of these coexistence programs to tell the mob to stop? Why was the entire riot sparked by an Arab who ran a coexistence center? We know why. Coexistence only teaches hate.

Coexistence programming in Acre, funded by leftist Jews who hired right wing Muslim Arabs to do the programming, taught only hatred. Only wealthy leftist self hating Jews participated from the Jewish side and each in turn wore his Khaffiya and made sure to denounce Zionism at every opportunity and call Jews 'Nazis' and 'colonizers'. Each Coexistence program spoke only about Arab victimhood and nationalism and taught Arabs about the 'Nakhba' and 'Jewish racism' and 'discrimination'. Thus coexistence programming was a platform to teach hate, Islamism and nationalism. This is how coexistence always is. Neville Chamberlain also brought coexistence to Europe with the Munich agreement of 1938. This is the model of coexistence that we are always forced to bow down to. It is a model that encourages hatred and religion and fascism among one group and encourages the other to be self hating.

Liberals say that by canceling the Acre 'coexistence festival' that society and 'culture' are 'surrendering to forces of evil.' Leftists say the city is "held hostage" by extremists and 'thugs' on 'both sides'. There is the Ayalim association of coexistence groups in Acre and its Jewish director, Danny Gliksberg. The violence, for this captain of coexistence is "anther reason to work harder." But lets listen to testimony of how coexistence works, of what happens when wealthy American Jews and other do gooders dump their money in 'coexistence' programs: Silvi Vaknin is a poor Jewish resident of Acre. She just wanted to enjoy the most holy day of her calendar in peace and quiet when "there was a group of hundreds outside, mostly masked, from young men to older women, a number of young men climbed on my husband's car and destroyed it. A hail of stones was throne at the yard. We turned out the light and went into the reinforced room. Eight of us, my family and our guests, in that room all night...I felt so insulted. They hurt me and my home on the Jewish people's holiest day."

But remember, always remember, the reaction of the wealthy captains of coexistence who live in gated communities elsewhere. There reaction, and that of the media, is to condemn the mayor of Acre for canceling the coexistence festival and their reaction is to want to 'work harder' to help Arabs in the Arab section of Acre and bring more programs for those who were the leaders of the violence. But listen to the testimony of another poor resident of Acre, listen to them describe how wealthy people have created coexistence: "when I leave the house kids from the Arab school say insulting things. When I mention to the young men that they're blocking my parking space they say 'Yallah, shut up, you're temporary here.'" That's how a 60 year old grandmother experiences the coexistence that wealthy leftist Jews brought to Acre.

Will we give in to the power of the intellectual and his Nazi and Saudi friends who tell us how to coexist. Or will we struggle against each tentacle of this Octopus with all our strength? Those poorer Jews who today throw rocks in self defense in Acre are not the worst members of society, but rather the best for they are standing up for their honour which for too long was crushed under the boot of the intellectuals, Islamic hatred and the philanthropists. They are merely trying to remove part of that boot and remove the myth of coexistence from their throats, where culture has placed it. Coexistence is the true threat to the existence of all people. It is the precursor to genocide everywhere. Whether it was 'coexistence' in the Balkans, or in Lebanon, or Sudan, or 1920s Germany or Cambodia or Rwanda, it always produced the same thing. When a wealthy person comes to a poor community with the intention of opening a 'coexistence center' he should be chased out and beaten. The social engineering forced down our throats by intellectuals, who have been behind every genocide of the 20th century, needs to be opposed with every ounce of our strength. If rich wealthy people want to coexist they deserve to be settled as a buffer in places like Acre and Rwanda between the two peoples who exist there together. Until the rich intellectual leftist builds his home and subjects his property to destruction at the hands of mobs and until his daughters are raped and he must listen all night to the sounds emanating from the mosque and the music played intentionally on religious holidays to offend others, he and his money should be kept out and his nefarious role in society must be deracinated. There is no genocide without intellectualism and wealth. Every single genocide, from the Armenians to the Blacks of the Sudan has been caused by racial and social engineering, pseudo-scientific intellectualism, liberalism, leftist anthropologists, western elitists, the media and, today, post-colonialism. Coexistence is the code word for genocide and it is the precursor to it.

 
Seth J. Frantzman is a graduate student in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His master's thesis was on the 1948 war.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.