Yes, you read that correctly. Israel, alone among its neighbors, is taking in refugees from the war in Ukraine, as many as 100,000 Jewish refugees, and tens of thousands of others as well. Commendable, you say? Of course! None of its neighbors are doing anything similar, like most of the world. But this is Israel that we’re talking about, and any action by Israel is, for its critics, an excuse to condemn it.
Israel, of course, was created to take in Jewish refugees. It absorbed Holocaust refugees, those expelled from Arab states after the Arab League failed to destroy Israel, and countless others from around the world. Here, too, Israel offers a refuge for those Ukrainians who might be attacked in the streets in other European countries, just for being who they are: Jews. Apparently, NPR prefers to ignore this obvious consideration, and criticizes Israel for offering special refuge to persecuted Jews.
That, to the left, is not the only thing Israel is doing wrong. It is also allowing these Jews to live in Judea. It doesn’t matter that every effort to make peace with Palestinian Arabs has recognized that certain cities will remain part of Israel. It doesn’t matter that George Bush recognized Israel would not simply abandon those cities, Barack Obama spoke of land swaps (which Arabs in Israel, having seen what Palestinian rule looks like, roundly reject if it involves trading in their Israeli citizenship), and Donald Trump outlined a way for Israel and a Palestinian state to coexist in what Jordan dismissively called the “West Bank.” To the left, Jews living in Judea is more aggressive and evil than a terrorist murdering five people in Bnei Brak earlier today.
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As it turns out, only two of the casualties were Jews. Two others were foreign workers, and the fifth was the Arab Druze policeman who neutralized the terrorist.
Because it’s “apartheid,” of course. Or, as Mansour Abbas, the head of the Ra’am party that is part of the government, said, “the streets of Israeli cities are filled with Arab and Jewish citizens alike, and those who embark on a vicious killing spree do not notice or differentiate between them.”