Israel: The Country Muslims and Leftists Love to Hate

I heard a Pakistani lawyer, who happened to visit Israel from England for a professional conference, mention how astounded he was by what he saw. What I found surprising is how what astounded him would be common place to Israelis and to us who know a bit about Israel.

The astounding revelation came to the Pakistani at a bus stop in Jerusalem.  There, standing waiting for a bus, was a Muslim woman whose faith was evident from her head covering, an Orthodox man with tzitzis, beard and payyes, IDF service people, one a woman and one a man, and a youth with green hair and a nose ring.  Anyone of these people might have occasioned a lingering glance on my part, but that they should all be standing waiting for a bus would have seemed not extraordinary at all.

It suddenly came to the Pakistani that Israel is remarkably diverse.  Druze, Muslims, Jews, Bahais, and people of a variety of other faiths and ethnicities live in Israel in relative harmony.  We who know Israel may take this for granted.  But, for many who are devoted to disparaging Israel and, indeed, in maligning Israel it is not.

He then went to the West Bank to see how the Palestinians faired there.  What he saw was a diversity of architecture.  There was a bank in Ramallah located in a remarkably modern and handsome building.  There were lovely apartment buildings  housing the West Bank's 1%.  But, in traveling around, he also came upon refugee camps.  Some were actually rather nice little villagers.  Some did look miserable.  However, they seemed nowhere as miserable as the refugee camps he had seen in Pakistan -- camps left over from the separation of Pakistan from India.

Aware of all the money poured into the PLO by agencies of the UN and various Arab countries, the Pakistani wondered where it had all gone.  True Arafat had skimmed off handsome sums which he deposited in Swiss banks, a policy followed by Abbas, but surely some money must have been left for the Palestinian people.