Horowitz: DeSantis is right: The overwhelming majority of Gaza Arabs have toxic beliefs

Every American has the First Amendment right to express hatred for Jews or anyone else. There is no affirmative right to immigrate, however, and we should expect those we choose to admit to the United States to share our values and not parrot the world’s most demonic ideologies.

Immigration is a privilege at the discretion of a sovereign nation, and it has always been the policy since our founding only to admit immigrants of “merit and Republican principles” (as James Madison put it), those who share our “republican-American values” (Thomas Jefferson), and “reputable and worthy characters” who were “fit for the society into which they were blended” (Rep. Theodore Sedgwick during debate over the 1790 Naturalization Act).

After Florida Governor Ron DeSantis resolutely asserted that we should not be taking in people from Gaza who harbor anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiments, CBS News reporter Margaret Brennan was incredulous. “But how can you paint with such a broad brush to say 2.3 million people are anti-Semitic?” asked Brennan on "Face the Nation."

Well, let’s look at the facts. The media always takes the Anti-Defamation League’s tracking of anti-Semitism as God’s word when it comes to attacking conservatives, so let’s examine its anti-Semitism data. Based on surveys around the world, the ADL in its global index on anti-Semitism, which measures support for sentiment behind 11 common anti-Semitic stereotypes, finds that all of the top Jew-hating countries are in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, the Palestinians top that list:

Source: Anti-Defamation League

What this means, according to the ADL’s survey, is that 93% of Palestinians, and at least anywhere from 70% to 80% of nationals from other Middle Eastern countries, believe in tropes about Jews being responsible for wars and having too much economic, political, and academic power. The United States sits at the very bottom of the list, and we should keep it that way. It’s interesting that the leftists who run the ADL haven’t applauded DeSantis for echoing their own surveys.

So when it comes to admitting refugees, it’s worth asking if it’s tolerant to take in millions of intolerant people. Consider a 2017 survey by the Hanns Seidel foundation — a think tank affiliated with the Christian Social Union party in the German state of Bavaria — showing that “more than half of Muslim asylum seekers showed clear tendencies of an anti-Semitic attitude pattern”:

When asked by the investigators if “Jews have too much influence in the world,” 52% of Syrians said yes, while 53% of Iraqis agreed with the statement. Nearly 60% of Afghans said Jews wield too much influence, while a mere 5.4% of those from Eritrea — a Christian-majority country — held antisemitic views. Some Eritreans said they were familiar with Jews from the Bible.

These were the sentiments even among those seeking to enter Western countries and leave their homelands behind. Note that anti-Semitic beliefs aren’t necessarily endemic in the Middle East or Africa. They’re endemic in Islam. The contrast between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East is also borne out by data collected by the Pew Research Center in 2010. Take a look at the percentage of those from selected Muslim countries who dislike Jews.

Source: Pew Research Center

As you can see, both Middle Easterners and Muslims have near-unanimous unfavorable views of Jews. But as you move away from the Middle East to divided countries like Nigeria, the dichotomy between Muslims and Christians in their sentiment toward Jews becomes quite pronounced.

Are there exceptions? Undoubtedly. But as these surveys indicate, and as the reality of reverse assimilation in the West affirms before our very eyes, anti-Semitism is all too prevalent among Arab Muslim immigrants. The mass protests celebrating Hamas’ slaughter of Jews are too ubiquitous to ignore.

How deep does this dogma run? We have no way of knowing for sure because the media tries to cover it up and doesn’t want to ask.

A Pew poll from 2017, however, revealed near-unanimous support for Sharia law among Palestinians, as well as countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, from which we’ve admitted hundreds of thousands of immigrants over the past 20 years.

Source: Pew Research Center

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley initially denounced DeSantis’ statement on Gaza refugees, insisting that “there are so many of these people who want to be free from terrorist rule” and that we can “separate civilians from terrorists.” How tragic and ironic that Haley has been such a strong proponent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and believes in similar urban renewal projects in the Middle East under the guise of protecting Americans at home. It’s precisely that mentality that has brought the problem to our shores.

When you import more than 100,000 Middle Easterners every year and allow in an equal number on student visas, the odds are excellent that you’re also bringing in some vile sentiments. Former Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg surveyed 1,000 Palestinian Arabs in 2011 and asked them if they agreed with the “hadith” quoted in the Hamas Charter about the need to kill Jews hiding behind stones and trees. Seventy-three percent said yes. There is no way those numbers have gotten better in recent years.

Andrew Bostom, a scholar of Islamic supremacism, explained the significance of this belief as follows:

As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology — end of times theology — highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl — the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ — or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan, or Jerusalem, wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered — everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). The hadith — which three-quarters of those surveyed agree should be acted upon — is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews.

So what about the people already here? Clearly, some of them assimilate, but we’re talking about millions of immigrants in recent decades.

According to a 2015 survey by the Center for Security Policy, 29% of American Muslim males under 45 said they believed that violence against America is justified to make Sharia the law of the land.

Wouldn’t it be prudent to heed the words of Dr. Nidal Alsayyed, a brave imam from southeast Texas, who said in 2015 that we “need to stop taking new ones until we fix the existing situation”? Alsayyed was fired for expressing his support for a cool-off period of new immigration from the Middle East. But he was right. Just look at the alarming state of universities today.

How is it “tolerant” to import so many people who hate Jews that now Jewish students are afraid to show up for class?

In many respects, mass migration from the Middle East is the point of no return in the destruction of Western civilization. Unchecked political correctness now threatens our whole system of values and our very survival. It’s not like we didn’t have years of fair warning.