By
Donald H. Harrison
San Diego (special) -- An Israeli screenwriter and lecturer on terrorism,
Sabi Shabtai, said Arab
propagandists are trying to persuade the world that there is an analogy
between Serbia's treatment of the ethnic Albanians and how Israel might
treat the Palestinians if the dispute over proposed Palestinian
statehood grows more heated.
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While there are some geopolitical similarities between
the two regions, Shabtai told an April 18 Israel Bonds gathering at Tifereth
Israel Synagogue in San
Diego, the overriding difference between the two situations is the
fact that Israel is a democracy, while Serbia is a dictatorship.
Based on his knowledge of terrorism as a former intelligence specialist
with the Israel Defense Forces and a former member of Israel's Foreign
Ministry, Shabtai helped develop the scripts for such thriller movies as
The
Assignment and Five Minutes to Midnight.
He said a superficial similarity between Kosovo and the Palestinian
situation is that prior to the current wave of killings and flights by
refugees, Serbs represented about one-tenth of the population in Kosovo,
while Muslims accounted for 90 percent. That is |
Sabi Shabtai |
approximately the same ratio of Jews to Muslims in the territories won
from Jordan and Egypt
by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and now claimed by the Palestinians.
Another similarity is that just as the Serbs consider Kosovo to contain
sites holy to their religion, so too do Israelis consider such disputed
areas as Jerusalem and Hebron
as sacred to Judaism.
And, according to Shabtai, Arab propagandists make much of the fact
that some right-wing Israelis have suggested "transferring" the Arab population
from Israel -- a proposed policy that some think sounds quite close to
"ethnic cleansing". Shabtai said that such right-wing elements are on the
fringe of Israeli politics, and do not speak for the government, whereas
in Serbia the architect of the campaign against the Muslims is the government
of Slobadan Milosevic.
In Israel, he said, "something like that cannot happen, and not only
because we are Jewish but primarily because we are a democracy. ...: A
democracy would have conflicting opinions..
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"Sometimes those opinions that are expressed by the other
side are not to our liking, and we would like to force the other side to
accept our opinions, but in Israel unlike in any of the other countries
in the Middle East, and definitely unlike the situation in Serbia, you
cannot do it through the use of force, or even through the use of bribery,"
he said.
Following Shabtai's speech, Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal was honored for
contributions to Israel and to the Jewish people and was presented by Tifereth
Israel Synagogue's President Joan Greenstone with a framed rendition
in caligraphy of Israel's Declaration of Independence. Israel Bonds
new San Diego representative, Dianna Glick, also was introduced at the
meeting. |
Rabbi Rosenthal and Joan Greenstone |
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