MONTREAL — Palestinians will be able to flourish peacefully only if they emulate the Arab emirates by restricting the populations of their states to homogeneous single “tribes,” an Israeli professor of Arabic studies says.
Mordechai Kedar
Unlike the “failing” states wallowing in poverty, neglect and illiteracy, the Gulf emirates have flourished in peace and development, Bar-Ilan University’s Mordechai Kedar noted.
“Why? Because each one is comprised of one tribe,” he told students recently at Bialik High School. “That will be the secret to [Middle East] peace success. Give each tribe its own state.”
He said he is willing to give Palestinians as many states as necessary, as long as each is restricted to just one tribe. “We should give Palestinian states whatever number they need according to the number of tribes they have.”
Kedar, who is fluent in Arabic, came to Montreal armed with a now quasi-notorious interview he had done last June on Al-Jazeera television. In the interview, he enraged the questioner, Jimal Rian, with the language he used in vowing that Jews will never leave Jerusalem.
“We were here when your forefathers were drinking wine, burying girls alive and worshipping pre-Muslim idols,” he lectured Rian at one point in defending Israeli plans to develop 1,000 more residences in east Jerusalem.
Screening and explaining his interview to the students, almost line by line with English subtitles, Kedar said he was merely describing practices that took place before the establishment of Islam 1,400 years ago.
Kedar further flummoxed Rian by stating, contrary to the moderator’s assertion, that Jerusalem is not explicitly mentioned even once in the Qur’an.
By contrast, Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible hundreds of times, and was established by King David as the Jewish people’s spiritual and ancestral home some 3,000 years ago, Kedar said.
“It might not have sounded politically correct, but these are the facts, the truth according to Islam’s own history,” he said.
Another “fact” Kedar referred to was that the West Bank, contrary to the popular perception, is not – and has never been – under the actual sovereignty of any nation or people, including the Palestinians.
“This is a historical fact nobody can deny, but the Arab media is afraid of the facts.”
For Kedar, one of the most relevant aspects of the Middle East dispute is that according to the thought that prevails in Islamic states, “peace” is a status that exists between communities, not nations.
That’s why the concept of a permanent peace with Israel is “totally unacceptable” – within that mindset, he said.
“Even when [the late Egyptian president] Anwar Sadat consulted the imams for permission to make peace with Israel – as Mohammed offered peace to the infidels of Mecca – it was only for a time,” Kedar said.
“The peace [in this case] might be permanent, but only if Israel stays strong enough.”
Kedar said he is occasionally asked to be interviewed in Arabic on Al-Jazeera, which broadcasts from Qatar, because “there are Arabs who like to hear what the other side says.” But he said the network’s Arabic-language broadcasts overall depict Israel as “wicked, racist and cruel, [a country] without any respect for human rights.”
He said he also agrees to be interviewed because “there are those who might listen,” adding that he personally knows Muslims who accept his analyses of the facts.
On the other hand, in the view of many Muslims, “Jews are those upon whom the wrath of Allah rests,” perpetual infidels who are descendants of “pigs and monkeys.”
While visiting Montreal, Kedar also spoke at a fundraiser on behalf of Canadian Friends of Meir Panim, a network of Israeli relief centres and soup kitchens, and at the Canadian Zionist Federation Eastern region’s annual Zave Ettinger Memorial Lecure at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation.