Israel Surges Ahead, Arab World Stuck in the Past 

Against all odds, tiny Israel has established itself as a thriving first-world island surrounded by a decaying and failed Muslim Arab world.

By: Daniel Krygier, Exclusive to United with Israel

The Jewish community on the Tunisian island of Djerba was recently attacked during anti-government protests. This tiny community, which numbers around 1,000 people, is one of the last remaining ancient Jewish communities in the Muslim and Arab world that once numbered almost one million Jews.

While the despotic Arab world gets a free pass for being virtually Jew-free, democratic Israel, which is home to 1.5 million Arab citizens, is shamelessly accused of “apartheid.”

The head of the local Jewish community in Tunisian Djerba, Perez Trabelsi, told Reuters that “Unknown people took the opportunity of the protests and threw Molotov cocktails into the lobby of a Jewish religious school in Djerba.” It is not the first time this tiny Jewish community has been targeted in a Muslim Tunisia that claims to be moderate. In 1985, three Jews were murdered in the local synagogue. In 2003, a truck bomb placed outside the synagogue by Muslim extremists killed 20 people, including 14 German tourists.

After the failed Arab aggression against Israel in 1948, nearly one million Jews fled or emigrated from the Arab and Muslim countries. The majority settled in Israel. Despite the fact that most arrived penniless, the Jewish immigrants and their descendants were successfully integrated into modern Israeli society.

Itamar Levin, author of the book Locked Doors: The Seizure of Jewish Property in Arab Countries, estimates that the value of Jewish properties that Arab regimes looted is in the neighborhood of 6 to 10 billion dollars. Unlike the Arabs who fled the failed Arab aggression against Israel in 1948, the Jewish refugees from the Muslim Arab world did not receive a penny from the international community and their suffering was largely ignored.

Arab Refugees Remain Pawns in War Against Israel

By contrast, the Arab world, which lost its war of aggression against Israel, refused to resettle the Arab refugees and continues to use them cynically as pawns in the ongoing political warfare against the Jewish state. While Christians and Muslims can walk freely in the streets of Israel, the few remaining Jews in the Muslim Arab world must keep a low profile in societies that have been spoon-fed a steady diet of Jew-hatred and lies about Israel.

Against all odds, tiny Israel has established itself as a thriving first-world island surrounded by a decaying and failed Muslim Arab world. While the Arab world is hopelessly stuck in self-pity from past self-inflicted injuries, Israel thrives because it has moved on and focuses on tomorrow.

Genuine peace between Arabs and Jews will only arrive when the Muslim Arab world accepts Israel’s existence and stops blaming Jews and the West for its own self-inflicted problems.