Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
On the one hand, Wilf claims that the creation of Israel as a catalyst for Arab hostility is "utter rubbish",
I made no such claim. I just rejected the notion that the creation of the modern state of Israel is the primary source of discontent. Each Arab nation had it's own agenda and post-colonial problems, plus tensions with neighbours. To claim it's all about Israel is to be grossly ignorant of modern middle east.

he claims that the most powerful and ruthless anti-semitic ideology informed the Arab program and that a "very substantial proportion [of Arabs] have centuries of enmity and hatred towards Jews".
If Arab nationalism is founded on anti-semitic ideology (which is really the only relevance in arguing of some existential relationship between Arab nationalism and Nazism), and Arabs have some centuries-spanning disgust with Jewish people, how is the creation of a Jewish homeland in the middle of the Arab population NOT a "primary source" of discontent?
Hitler backed Arab anti-colonial movements. Arabs nationalist themselves adopted Ba'athism, which clearly has it's roots in National Socialism and European proto-fascism.
Arab nationalists viewed all their problems as being ones created by colonial occupation - something inherent to their expressions of National Socialism.
There has been centuries of Arab-Jewish tension in the middle-east - the same as there was in Europe.

So to blandly state that the "primary source" of discontent in the Middle-East, starting in 1948, is the creation of Israel is to be simplistic beyond belief. Is it a source of discontent. Yes. But to put it beyond that, is the hoary old argument of "wouldn't the Mid-East be at peace if it wasn't for the Jews."

I reject simplistic and inaccurate history and made the same observations in regard to China - strangely something none of you are arguing about!