'The Arabs have become nihilistic with regard to Israel because they focused on annihilating Israel instead of building state from start.'

Syrian-American human rights activist Ammar Abdulhamid and Egyptian-American researcher Samuel Tadros discussed Zionism and Israel last week on Al-Hurra TV (United States), reports the Middle Ease Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Ammar Abdulhamid said that there is a colonialist-imperialist streak in all civilizations and this means that the colonialist aspects of Zionism are not unique. He argued that the Arabs have become nihilistic with regard to Israel because they focused on annihilating Israel instead of building a Palestinian state right from the start.

He also said that one cannot ignore the role that Arab Jews played in Israel's establishment and the fact that they did so to escape persecution by Muslim Arabs. In addition, Abdulhamid pointed out that the West was not always supportive of Israel, despite Arab claims that the West planted Israel as a foreign cancer in the Middle East.

He added that Israel is the most successful and most stable country in the Middle East and it would make no sense for Israel to be annihilated while unstable countries like Egypt and Syria survived.

Samuel Tadros said that Israel is the only country to have successfully resurrected a dead language. He said that the Holocaust proved Theodor Herzl's argument that Zionism is the solution to the fact that other nations will never accept the Jews. Tadros added that the idea that Israel is a foreign cancer planted by the West ignores the historical presence of Jews throughout history in Palestine and the Middle East.

Tadros also said that the fact that the Jews successfully established the thriving State of Israel, despite coming from different places and speaking different language, should serve as a “very important lesson to anyone trying to establish a state.”