Guardian book review includes throw-away line about Israeli ‘ethnic cleansing’

Though we haven’t read the book by Arun Kundnani (a Soros Fellow who’s appeared at events sponsored by the Khomeinist Islamic Human Rights Commission) titled ‘The Muslims Are Coming!‘, A Guardian review by Robin Yassin-Kassab suggests it comports perfectly with the Glenn Greenwald – Guardian Left view that Islamist terror isn’t caused by radical ideologies, but by legitimate grievances against Western foreign policy. 

However, in addition to the author’s passionate endorsement of even the most risible excuses for extremism, there was this characteristic swipe at Israel.

Culturalism’s best-known proponent is Bernard Lewis, Dick Cheney‘s favourite historian, who locates the problem as Islam itself, a totalitarian ideology-culture incompatible with democratic modernity. So Mitt Romney explains the vast divergence between Israeli and Palestinian economies thus: “Culture makes all the difference” – and decades of occupation, ethnic cleansing and war make no difference at all. 

Without revisiting the quote by the former U.S. presidential candidate, it’s important to note the causal manner in which Yassin-Kassab charges Israel with “ethnic cleansing” – an accusation, as we’ve noted previously, that has absolutely no basis in reality, and can be easily refuted by a few population statistics.

• The Palestinian population in the West Bank increased from 462,000 in 1949 to more than 2.5 million today.

• The Palestinian population in Gaza increased from 82,000 in 1948 to more than 1.7 million today.

Additionally, to add further context:

•  The Jewish population in the Arab Middle East has decreased from over 850,000 in 1948 to less than 5,000 today.

So, while the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza has increased over 700 percent since Israel’s establishment, the Jewish population in the Arab Middle East has decreased by 99 percent – dry data which demonstrates that though Arab governments have quite ‘successfully’ ethnically cleansed their Jewish citizens, Zionists remain the most ‘incompetent’ ethnic cleansers on the planet.