| Profile taken from a DiscoverNetwork.com
article
NINA MAYOREK * Believes that Israel alone caused the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, and that it should cease to exist as a Jewish
state.
Mayorek
crisscrossed the U.S. in the spring of 2005 in the annual speaking tour
organized by Partners
For Peace (PFP), a pro-Palestinian activist organization. PFP chooses
three "mature" women -- an Israeli Jew, a Palestinian Muslim,
and a Palestinian Christian -- to give a "balanced" account
from three perspectives. In fact, the three women chosen always share
the same PFP anti-Israel views. Mayorek
was a good choice for PFP. Though she and her husband fled to
Israel in 1968 to escape Polish anti-Semitism, she is blind to the
anti-Semitism in the Palestinian
Authority (PA) and the larger Arab world. She vehemently
opposes all of Israel's counter-terrorism measures and presents them as
Israeli techniques to oppress Palestinians. She opposes administrative
detentions and road blocks. She officially signed a letter supporting
soldiers who refuse to serve in the Territories. She supports the International
Solidarity Movement's (ISM) efforts to obstruct the Israeli Defense
Force's (IDF) operations, and she spoke at a memorial service
for Rachel
Corrie, the ISM activist who became the poster child of the
anti-Israel movement when she was accidentally killed by an IDF
bulldozer. Mayorek's one-sided, anti-Israel views were spelled out in the "Olga Petition" she signed in 2004. Its central statement simply rehashed Palestinian propaganda: "We are united in a critique of Zionism, based as it is on refusal to acknowledge the indigenous people of this country and on denial of their rights, on dispossession of their lands, and on adoption of separation as a fundamental principle and way of life." Mayorek
ignores context. She distorts history. And she has sympathy only for
Palestinians, never for Israel and Israelis. Among the distortions she
has stated are the following:
Nina
Mayorek knows anti-Semitism first hand. Her aunt and grandmother
perished in Treblinka during the Holocaust. Her family nonetheless
stayed in Poland after World War II. But anti-Semitic policies continued
to haunt the family. Hounded by Stalin's dictatorship, her grandfather
died in one of Stalin's prison camps. In Poland, the increasing
anti-Semitism of the communist regime cost her parents their faculty
positions. In 1968, she and her husband fled this anti-Semitism that had
re-erupted (even though few Jews still remained in Poland) and
moved to Israel. Ironically,
the Mayorek story confirms one of Zionism's primary goals: to be a haven
and homeland for Jews persecuted around the world. Mayorek went on to
have a successful career as a biochemist in the Department of Human
Nutrition and Metabolism at the Hebrew University. In this respect, too,
she confirms the Zionist vision of creating a land where anti-Semitism
would not exist and where being Jewish would never be an obstacle to
living a full life and realizing one larger human potential. The irony is that despite the fact that Israel's existence as a Jewish state allowed Mayorek to get refuge and to pursue her career and private life without the scourge of anti-Semitism, she does not support the continued existence of a Jewish state. She calls for the right of return of Palestinian Arab refugees. She attacks the Jewish state for creating insecurity for Jews: "The State of Israel was supposed to grant security to Jews; it has created a death-trap whose inhabitants live in constant danger, the likes of which is not experienced by any other Jewish community." She insists the land belongs to all the people and condemns Israel for its "tribalism." Mayorek
has worked to help Palestinians. Between 1996 and 1998 she was the
coordinator of Israeli volunteers at a Palestinian school in El Khader.
She lectured on Women and Family Health at the Ibda Community Center in
Bethlehem's Deheisheh refugee camp. She joined Machsom Watch to monitor
IDF behavior at checkpoints. She supports leftwing fringe groups, such
as Gush Shalom, and their views. Like
so many on the post-Zionist or anti-Zionist left fringe in Israel,
Mayorek is convinced that if Israel simply withdrew from the
Territories and allowed the right of return, Arab hatred against Israel,
and Arab efforts to destroy that nation and to kill Jews, would
cease. In part, she is rcorrect because there would no longer be a
Jewish nation; such a state of affairs has been the goal of
Arab nations since 1948. But she never explores the repercussions for
Jews of such a policy, in part because she turns a blind eye to the
realities of Palestinian society under the PA -- the incitement,
anti-Semitism, corruption, anarchy, and the power of Hamas
which wants to claim all of Israel as Islamic land where sharia should
be imposed. In part, too, she seems to suffer from guilt over any
actions the Jewish state uses to defend itself. Nor does Mayorek confront reality. Her work for Machsom Watch has focused on the Nablus checkpoints, including the Huwarra checkpoint. She never mentions the many terrorists the IDF was able to stop at the roadblocks and checkpoints around Nablus. The IDF prevented three terrorist attacks in November 2002 alone. Soldiers found a suicide belt hidden at the bottom of a box of jeans; a suicide belt hidden inside two computer cases; and two terrorists armed with assault rifles and suicide belts in a taxi. At the same checkpoint, the IDF discovered that the terrorist group Tanzim had persuaded an 11-year-old boy to carry a suicide belt in his book bag as he crossed the checkpoint on March 15, 2004. B'Tselem denounced the terrorists' callous use of children as a "war crime." A week later, on March 25 2004, the IDF discovered a 14-year-old boy hiding a suicide belt under his sweater. But
Mayorek refuses to give this side of the story. |