Ramallah, June 18 – Arab thinkers and activists alike are pointing to Israeli society’s collective, low-venom reaction to the kidnapping of three teenagers by Hamas as further evidence that the Jews are foreigners in the region and have no legitimate sovereignty there.

Israeli media have concentrated on reporting the groups prayers for the return of the boys, the solidarity with the families, and the sober analysis of what military moves might be necessary to secure their release. Conspicuously absent, say the Arab commentators, are cries for vengeance, genocide, pillage, and widespread destruction, staples of what they call the authentic Middle Eastern approach.

As examples, these experts point to Iraq, where none of the parties to those conflicts show any restraint in their efforts to defeat, intimidate, slaughter, or otherwise dominate their foes. Reports of large scale executions of Iraqi Army captives by Sunni insurgents were met with the summary killing of 44 Sunni prisoners and calls for the complete elimination of the Sunni minority in the country. For ten years, suicide attacks and shootings have been almost weekly occurrences throughout the country as Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites vie for control. By contrast, Israeli attitudes have always been generally more muted, considering those who call for expulsion of the Palestinians to be beyond the pale of legitimate political discourse. Such moderation, say the activists, has no place in the region and is an unnatural transplant that must be removed.

“No true Middle Easterner in his right mind would envision long-term coexistence as a goal worthy of pursuit,” says Massikr Themal, a Palestinian activist. “The very notion of even letting one’s enemy survive, let alone reconciling, is alien to this region and must be uprooted with the rest of the Zionist colonialist enterprise.” He said that arrangements under which defeated populations were kept alive were always post-facto allowances for practical exigencies, and not an acceptable a priori approach.

“You’ll notice we’ve stopped claiming massacres by Israeli forces with victims in the dozens or hundreds,” he said. “The last time we did that was back in 2002. Basically, we’ve come to realize that such behavior is at home in this part of the world, and anyone who does not endorse it, even if they don’t have the opportunity to perpetrate it themselves, simply doesn’t belong here.”

Arab pundits have been mystified by the Israeli emphasis on prayer and well-wishing, as they are more accustomed to the brandishing of weapons as the rhetorical and political tool of choice. “It makes us uncomfortable, and must be kept out,” said Masmer Durrur of the Group of Eleven Nations Operating to Chuck Israel into the Dustbin of Eternity (GENOCIDE). “You couldn’t ask for a better demonstration of why Jews don’t belong here.”

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