Arab-Jew Hostility Discussed

Arab-Jew Hostility Discussed

By Larry Bush

(Higher Education Reporter)

"Israel is an alien state in the land of somebody else, therefore Arabs will always be hostile toward it,” Dr. Fayez Sayegh, senior consultant to the foreign ministry of Kuwait said here yesterday.

He addressed opening sessions of the 17th annual convention of the Organization of Arab Students in the United States and Canada in the Michigan League. The conference, which has the theme "The Palestinian Revolution," will continue through Saturday on the U-M campus.

“The Arab determination to liberate Palestine is a matter of right. It has nothing to do with Israel’s association with the great powers. Even if the great powers had no interest in Israel, the Arabs would still want to liberate Palestine,” he said.

At a question and answer period following his talk at an afternoon seminar, Sayegh was asked about Russia’s attitude toward the “liberation” of Palestine.

"Even today the Soviet Union is not in favor of the Arab demands in Palestine. Barring unforeseen changes in the Soviet Union, I do not think the Russians would be in favor of abolishing the Jewish state,” he said.

“If the problem of Palestine came before the United Nations today, the Soviet Union probably would not vote to create a Jewish state. But at the same time the Russians wouldn't vote to eliminate the Jewish state because the Soviet Union itself is a colonial nation” like the other great powers.

“Colonialism is a part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union wouldn't want the liberation of Siberia any more than the United States would want Oklahoma to be separated from it,” said.

“It is impossible for Israel to be without a survival problem because it is in an alien land. The only way it wouldn't have a survival problem would be for it to control the Arab world.”

Sayegh said there was a difference between the typical European colonization pattern and that adopted by the Jews in founding Israel.

In the case of the United States, Australia and New Zealand there was a mother country, England, while in South America and South Africa there were other mother countries such as Spain, Portugal and The Netherlands. The Jews had no mother country to support their colonization.

"Also, in the case of Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas the colonized lands were occupied by primitive people, unlike Palestine which was occupied by a civilized people when the Zionists moved in. Palestine was not empty, it had at least a half million Arabs.

“As a colonial experience it was utterly unlike all other colonial experiences” in which a mother country supported colonization and liberation gained later.

“To co-exist with the natives did not fit in with the Zionist idea of a Jewish majority state. The aim of the Zionists was to do away with the native population by economic strangulation,” Sayegh said.

Prof. Abu Jaber of the Smith College department of government who had just returned from a trip to his native Middle East said he had discerned a new sense of realism in the Arab nations.

Speaking on the “brain drain” from Arab countries to the United States and Canada, he blamed the defeat of the Arabs by Israel on disorganization and the failure of the Arabs to move ahead in the fields of science, technology and engineering.

“Our defeat was a defeat of disorganization. We have paid the price of disorganization and it is time we lived up to reality.

“It was not a defeat of knowledge, talent and resources, it was one of organization at the lowest level and the highest level.

“Israel is a modern nation with all the means of securing destruction and the will to use these means. Israel won because it used knowledge augmented with discipline. Our problem in the Arab World is the lack of discipline,” he said.

The political science professor said Arabs trained in the United States where organization and discipline permeate the society should take the lessons they have learned in these areas back to their people.

He said Arab nations should guarantee their students attending U.S. and Canadian universities “security and good pay” if they will return to their homelands in order to stem the "brain drain."

Arab nations "should offer security, good paying positions and low interest loans” to induce their students at foreign universities to return.

“A conscientious effort also must be made to expand the meager research facilities and libraries in the Arab World. Facilities for publishing research papers should be provided. Scholarships should be provided in all branches of knowledge.

"There is no excuse for these shortages -- no excuse whatsoever,” he said.

The Smith professor said the Arab nations should follow the example set by the British recently in getting their students to return to England from the United States.

“Last year the British government sent a mission to get British degree holders in the United States to return, and many did return.”