Commentary

The Peace Development Fund awarded a small grant to Monmouth University to promote Jewish-Arab dialogue in Monmouth County . The program will be overseen by Dr. Saliba Sarsar, a political science professor at the university. Through dialogue groups, Dr. Sarsar hopes to create peace and understanding between Jews and Arabs. The grant received front page coverage in the New Jersey Jewish News. Sorry, Dr. Sarsar, but we're not interested.

We bear no ill will for Dr. Sarsar. On the contrary, we too pray for peace. However, we object to his methods. For example, he has written that just as Palestinians need to recognize the Holocaust, so do Jews need to recognize Al Nakba (“The Catastrophe”), as they call Israel 's War of Independence. But the Arabs were not the victims in 1948; they were the attackers. This is akin to the mugger who complains about the little old lady pulling a gun when he only had a knife.

But he goes a step further. Not only must we recognize Al Nakba, we also need to acknowledge the canard that Jews massacred Arabs at Deir Yassin, a terrorist stronghold on the outskirts of Jerusalem in 1948.

Unfortunately, Dr. Sarsar also has a skewed view of the Middle East . In a report to the United Nations on democracy in the Middle East , he graded Syria 3 out of 4 points on the issue of free elections.

Arabs don't deny the Holocaust, the most documented event in history, because of a lack of facts. They deny the Holocaust because they hate Jews. As Rabbi Chaim Lobel says in regards to Ahmadinejad (a Persian), why bother teaching him about the Holocaust when he can't even remember who he killed yesterday?

We're not interested in teaching them history. Nor are we interested in understanding their version of history. All we want is for them to stop murdering and torturing non-Muslims. Is that too much to expect in the 21st century?

- editor