One-Tenth of One Percent

College campuses across America, especially Columbia. Yale, NYU, USC, are being overrun by anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrators. USC has even canceled its graduation ceremony due to security concerns relating to anti-Israel protests. These protesters are responding to Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israel where 1,400 innocent Israeli civilians were targeted and murdered by Hamas terrorists, and somehow, these moral geniuses are protesting Israel. They are protesting the country that had their elderly shot in cold blood, their women brutally raped and murdered, and their babies beheaded. The country that suffered those atrocities is being vilified and protested. But this is what Islam does. It twists and vilifies the justified actions of their enemies to their own gain. So, Islamic terrorists attack Israel, Israel fights back, and Israel is painted as the bad guy.

The Muslims completely memory hole the fact that they drew first blood because in their mind, they can do whatever they want with impunity. No one’s speaking about all of the vicious murdering that the Islamic terrorists did. We’re supposed to forget about that, or ignore it, or write it off because those are just extremists, and they don’t represent all of Islam. But where are the Islamic leaders who are denouncing what happened on October 7 in the name of Islam? Why do they refuse to distance their religion from the terrorists? Where is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Where is Kyrie Irving? Where is Barack Obama? They are imitating crickets. Every time there is an Islamic terrorist attack, the Muslims in America are not required to stand up and denounce the attack. Only the non-Muslims are warned about Islamophobia. We haven’t even processed the terrorist attack, and we’re being accused of Islamophobia because Muslims targeted another group of people because of their religion. Every white person in America has to denounce white supremacy over and over and over again. We have to denounce slavery that ended 160 years ago, but Muslims are never required to denounce Islamic terrorism that happened the day before. And they never do because many tacitly approve.

This is the way it always works with Islam. Between the 6th century AD and the 10th century AD, the Muslims invaded and took over all of Byzantine Christianity, sacking city after city, town after town, murdering and raping, and giving the people a choice – convert to Islam or die. The Muslims took over all the Holy Lands, and pushed into Southern France and Southern Italy, leaving a river of blood in their wake. We never hear about that, but when the Pope organizes the Crusades to take back the Holy Lands and southern Europe which had been stolen from the Western world by Muslims, the Crusaders are painted as the bad guys. Most of the ancient mosques in the Middle East used to be Christian churches that the Muslims turned into mosques after they conquered that city by force. They never mention all the murdering brutality that the Muslims did which created the need for the Crusaders. But the Crusaders are always framed as the bad guys and Islam is always portrayed as the innocent victims.

The Ottoman Empire is the only empire in the history of the world, that is never taken to task for the mass atrocities that they committed in building their empire. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Spanish Empire – the historians are brutal to them. They point out every crime that was ever committed under those empires, but the Ottoman Empire gets a free pass, even though the Ottoman Empire was probably the most brutal empire that ever existed in the world. Why? Because they are Muslim, and pointing out the crimes against humanity that Muslims committed across history would be considered Islamophobia. The Muslims in the Middle East never have to apologize or self-flagellate because the Muslims stole all that land from the Christians and the Jews.

The Muslims are now fighting to their death over a sliver of land in the Middle East. The entire land mass of the Middle East is 5,000,000 square miles. The state of Israel is 8,600 square miles. The amount of land that Israel occupies in the Middle East is one-tenth of one percent. For perspective, the United States is 3,800,000 square miles. The state of New Jersey is 8,700 square miles. The Indian reservations in the United States combined are 87,000 square miles which is 10 times bigger than all of the state of Israel. Are people in America appalled that there are Indian reservations in America? It is so small of percentage of the United States, that the average citizen doesn’t even notice that these Indian reservations exist. Yet the entire Muslim world is fixated on one-tenth of one percent of the landmass in the Middle East that happens to be the state of Israel. There are 9 million Jews who live in Israel, while only 5.2 million Native Americans live on Reservations in the US. So, almost half as many people live on 10 times as much land, and we are told that we need to give more land to the Native Americans, and at the same time we are told that the 9 million Jews should be expelled from Israel from the “river to the sea”. Can anyone please explain how the Jews in Israel who live in 0.1% of the land mass in the Middle East and are surrounded by 99.9% of the Middle East that are hostile to them, are the oppressors?

The anti-Jewish Muslims act like the United Nations creating the state of Israel in 1948 was some sort of abomination to the ancestral lands that go back thousands of years. All of these states in the Middle East do not go back even hundreds of years. They were created in the 20th century, around the time that the Ottoman Empire fell. Kuwait was created in 1913; Turkey and Syria in 1920; Jordan in 1921; Egypt in 1922; Iran in 1925; Iraq and Saudi Arabia in 1932. So, the idea that these countries are appalled that the state of Israel was created in 1948 is ludicrous considering that their own countries were created just a few years earlier.

In 1948, when Israel was formed, there were millions of Jewish people living in the surrounding countries in the Middle East. 99% of those Jewish people were kicked out of their countries, had their houses and property taken from them by the government, so they were forced to come to Israel. There were only about 300,000 Palestinians in what is now Israel at that time, now there is 2.5 million, but Israel is still accused of committing genocide against the Palestinians even though the Palestinian population has increased by 8 times since 1948. The original two states solution was Jordan for the Palestinians, but the Palestinians refused to go to Jordan and Jordan refused to accept the Palestinians, thus this eternal conflict was manufactured.

But this conflict is not about land. It's about hatred. The number one religious group that is a victim of persecution and death because of their religion in the world are Christians living in Muslim countries. Why are the Muslims murdering and slaughtering the Christians in the Middle East? I thought it was the Israelis who stole the Palestinians land? They hate Christians as much as they hate the Jews. The problem in the Middle East is not a land dispute. It is about the Muslims hating every other religious group and wanting to kill them. The land in Israel is just an excuse to do that to the Jews. This is the 21st century, and the Muslims are at war the Jews, the Christians, and the Hindus because of their religion. But we’re being accused of Islamophobia because we’re reacting to the hate of the Muslims.

Don’t believe the Muslims hate the Jews? One of the leaders of the anti-Israel Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, Khymani James, openly stated in a live-stream of an official university inquiry in January that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” He also challenged Jewish people to “meet up and fight” and warned them that he “fights to kill.” So, he threatened to kill Jews in January, and no disciplinary action from Columbia University. But he is just one person, you may point out. Okay, but where are all the Muslims in America tripping all over themselves to denounce this call to violence against the Jews? Cricket… Cricket… Cricket… Whenever any random white person says anything that is considered racist, politicians and celebrities have microphones jammed in their faces and they are required to denounce the racism. Most white people publicly denounce the racism without prompting. But where are the Muslims in the America publicly denouncing the hatred and call to violence against the Jews that we are seeing on college campuses? Nowhere. And their silence speaks volumes.

This never-ending conflict all goes back to the Muslim world hating Jewish people so much that they refuse to allow Israel to have one-tenth of one percent of the land in the Middle East. Millions of people have died because the Muslim world can’t say, ‘we will take 99.9% of the Middle East, and the Jewish people can have 0.1%.’ That is what is being fought over. Understand, that 0.1% of land, statistically, is absolutely nothing to the Muslim world, but that 0.1% of land is everything to the Jewish people, because it is all they have. And the Muslim world refuses to allow them to have even that, and thus they refuse to allow anyone else to have peace.

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J Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.