A Brief for Israel

It is April 5th, 2024.  But this needs to go upfront.  As an American who numbers Jews among my very best friends, as an American who is a sincere friend of the state of Israel, I am nonetheless deeply disturbed and horrified at the number of civilian deaths – even as "collateral damage" in wartime – in Gaza at the hands of the IDF under PM Benjamin Netanyahu.  But for 75 years, the policy and practice of Palestinians  – whether under Hamas, the Palestinian Authority or the Palestine Liberation Organization – has been the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians.  Where was the outrage?

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While many of us bemoan the ascendancy of Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel's Donald Trump?) and his supporters, you have to wonder: if you were an Israeli Jew, would you still be patient with the daily threats of bloodshed posed by Palestinians?  Yes, Israel has over-reacted to Palestinian violence, but what would you have done?

It is my conviction that a lot of anti-Israel sentiment in these United States, especially among young people, is due to a lack of historical perspective.

Herewith, some historical perspective:

• Not for a single moment in the past 2500 years all the way to today have Hebrews, Israelites and Jews NOT lived in what we now call Israel or Palestine.
• Jews who emigrated from Europe and Arab countries to Palestine, from the first years of Zionism in the 1890’s until U.N. Partition in 1947, moved into land and property that they paid for.  90+% of immigrants to "Palestine" from 1920 to 1947 were Jews.  By 1947, one third of the population of Palestine was Jewish.  For 50 years or more, the vast majority of Jews living in Israel were born in Israel.
• In 1947, the United Nations did NOT merely recommend the creation of a Jewish state in British Palestine; rather, it recommended partition of British Palestine into TWO separate states: a Jewish state of Israel and a Muslim state of Palestine.
• In May of 1948, at the expiration of British control of Palestine, Israel declared itself a nation-state.  Her Muslim neighbors – Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq, with help from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan – not content with partition into two co-existing states, initiated a war of extermination against the just-born state of Israel.  At least six formally declared wars have occurred since then, all but one of which were initiated by the Palestinian side.  Only recently has Israel's adversary been "Palestinians"; Israel's adversary in the early years were the neighboring Arab states.
• So-called “occupied” territories are spoils of war.  Wars that Israel fought in self-defense.  If the state of Israel is a colonizing state and the Jews should go back to where they came from, are YOU prepared to return to where your ancestors came from?  How prepared are we to return this land to the peoples from whom we stole it hundreds of years ago?  Every square inch of the world is occupied by people who stole it from another people years ago.  If this is "illegal," we have a lot of population shuffling to attend to.
• Whatever walls were built by Israel – that are characterized by some as concentration camps, sometimes as open air prisons – were not built to imprison Palestinians, they were built to keep Palestinians OUT of Israel.
• The Israeli Right of Return is the offer of full citizenship for Jews who immigrate to Israel.  The Palestinian Right of Return is the offer of land and property (that belongs to Israel) to Palestinians who abandoned that land and property because of wars that their side initiated and lost.
• Whenever Human Rights violations are spoken of, Israel is always accused of being the worst – if not the only – offender in the world; whereas every Arab nation in the region is a worse offender.
• Half of the times that the U.N. General Assembly has censured a nation, that nation has been Israel.  Antisemitism – or Jew hatred – is not a new thing, and it is easy to attack Jews as they are such a small part of world population, 1/5th of one percent.  There is only one Jewish state – a state with a majority Jewish population – Israel.  There are nearly 2 billion Muslims, 24% of world population, 125 times the number of Jews, and 50 countries with a majority Muslim population.
• Two million (!) citizens of Israel are Arabs (mostly Muslim, mostly Palestinians, 21%).  Israeli Arabs can vote.  Muslim Arabs sit in the Israeli Knesset.  They were part of the ruling coalition government just months ago.  Name even one Arab or Muslim country where a single Jew is part of the governing structure.  Israeli Arabs lead better lives than Palestinian Arabs.  Palestinians who live in Israel want to live in Israel.  Only 12,700 Jews now live in Arab countries and more than half of them live in Turkey.  If this is apartheid, it is apartheid of the few Jews still living in Muslim countries.  Just days after Gaza Palestinians attacked Israel on October 7th, 34 Harvard organizations  condemned Israel for apartheid.
• Much of the Palestinian leadership – especially Hamas in Gaza – still explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and Jews living there or anywhere.  Most Israeli Jews want a two-state solution.  Over and over, Israel has offered land for peace.  The Palestinian side has refused every offer that was directed at peace, nor have they counter-offered; they prefer war until they imagine they will win in the end.  For Palestinians, winning is having world public opinion on their side; easy when the other side is Jews.
• Ask yourself: which side really wants peace (without victory)?  Which side wants perpetual war (until the other side is wiped out)?
• No doubt the Palestinian side has legitimate grievances; Israel's military is no longer the underdog that she was in 1948 and the Palestinian side can no longer count on the military support of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, etc.  But Palestinians have had countless opportunities to negotiate settlement of those grievances; they prefer war where they will lose ten times the lives that Israel will lose as long as world public opinion sides with them.  Why does world public opinion always side with the Palestinians?  Because antisemitism is alive and well.  Why does antisemitism exist in the world?  Because Judaism is the father religion to Christianity and Islam, and they worship the God that Jews invented.  Because Jews are so few and are an easy target for scapegoating.  Because of envy.
• Is Israel under Netanyahu over-reacting to the latest escalation that began on October 7th?  Probably.  Would you make a better Prime Minister than Netanyahu?  What would you suggest is the proper action for Israel to take?  And how would the Palestinian side react?
• If you believe that the Palestinians are the good guys in this enduring conflict, I recommend any of a half-dozen books on Israel and Palestine by the ardent Zionist and notable Constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz.  Yes, Dershowitz is biased, but bias does not mean dishonest and how else is truth discovered except by listening to both sides of a story?  See also, the free Myths & Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Mitchell G. Bard.
• I am not suggesting that Hamas represents all or even most Palestinians; nor am I suggesting that Netanyahu represents all or most Israelis.  But the actions of extremists on one side makes for more extremists on the other side.

Is anti-Zionism (Zionism is the right for Israel to exist) antisemitic?  Of course.

Addendum: Thursday, 11/30/2023

Part I

OK, I get it, for some of you mere facts don't move you.  Listen to an Israeli tour guide give you history lessons.

Words of an Israeli Tour Guide

No?  Ok how about Arab Muslims who have seen both sides.

Words of an Arab Muslim Israeli

Words of the son of a Hamas founder who spent time in an Israeli prison

Part II

Solving the Unsolvable

I am as despondent of solving the 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian crisis as anyone living.  Nevertheless, last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, the following occurred to me.

Two or four TV producers – one from each side or a man and a woman from each side – should agree to co-produce an ongoing daily TV event, eight hours per day or 24 hours per day, of indefinite duration, perhaps several years.  The event will be carried on Israeli and Palestinian TV channels (it will NOT have worldwide coverage because that would be … distracting).  The event shall consist of everyday Israelis and Palestinians – no politicians and no celebrities – who want to express themselves as to What I Want, and Why.  They may speak, sing, cry, scream, dance or otherwise express themselves in any way they choose, for a minimum of 30 seconds to a maximum of 30 minutes.  They will alternate, a speaker from one side followed by a speaker from the other side.  In the first days, the producers will attempt to have speakers follow each other who both want war, then for some days, they will attempt to have speakers follow each other who both want peace, then for the duration, random points of view should follow each other.  Once every citizen from both sides has had his or her opportunity to speak, they may elect to go again, without limit.  Speakers may speak in their own language, or English, and translations will be provided in all cases by persons trusted by all the producers.  If fact-checking becomes necessary, that will be provided too, by both sides.

This is, of course, “reality TV,” the difference being, first, that it is really real (most so-called reality TV is scripted and fake) and second, that it has a purpose, bringing two peoples to a greater understanding of each other and, ultimately, to a peaceful settlement.  It may take weeks, or months, or even years, but I believe if the two peoples hear each other – real people one at a time – all speaking their truths, peace will happen.  There is not a person alive who does not believe that everyday Israelis and Palestinians want something different from what their leaders have been serving them for decades.  At the leadership level, both sides want to annihilate the other side; at a personal level, both sides want justice and to live without being stalked by death every day of the year.  In the immortal words of John Lennon, “give peace a chance.”

Many readers of this short piece will accuse its author of being hopelessly naïve, to which the author responds: please share with me your better idea.



Addendum: Sunday, 01/07/2024

If you, dear reader, have read or heard that the state of Israel is guilty of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing, how do you explain that the population of Muslims living in Gaza and the West Bank and Israel have each increased by an annual 3% since 1970, while the population of Jews living in Israel has increased by an annual 2% since 1970.  If this is genocide or ethnic cleansing, Israelis are doing a horrible job of it.  As to the reduced land area that remains under Muslim control, blame that on losing a half dozen wars to Israel.  The solution is easy: one, Muslims should stop attacking Israel and losing land as a consequence; two, abandon hope that Israel and its Jews will ever disappear, and come sit down with Israelis at a negotiating table.  Also, for Muslim treatment of the Jews, see this.  For recent Islamist terrorist attacks, see this.

In the recently published HUMAN FREEDOM INDEX 2023: A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil, and Economic Freedom (a close cousin of the Human Rights Watch publication which, for unknown reasons, does not rank nation states) by the CATO Institute, the state of Israel is #59 in their rankings.  As a reference point, Canada is ranked #13 while the United States enjoys rank #17.  While #59 is nothing to write home about, Jordan is next at #108!  But among Middle Eastern countries, Israel ranks #1.

Addendum: Thursday, 01/11/2024

"Kill the Jews" is probably protected speech under the First Amendment. 

• Unless you are speaking to people who are servile to you, and they act on your command.  In which case, you are legally as guilty as anyone who commits first degree murder. 
• Unless you are speaking to random people, and someone acts upon your suggestion.  In which case you are in a heap of legal trouble, to be determined case by case. 
• Protected speech – speech covered by the First Amendment – ONLY protects you from government prosecution, it does not protect your status as a student, or as a teacher / instructor / professor. 
• And it surely does NOT protect you from being black-listed by potential employers.   
• What is the moral of this story?  One, before committing to acting stupidly, consult a lawyer.  Two, antisemitism is stupid and it isn’t good for you.  Sooner or later, you will regret it. 

Addendum: Sunday, 01/14/2024

Since the founding of the International Court of Justice in 1946, there have been more than a dozen instances of genocide whose body counts dwarf the number of Gazan deaths at Israel’s hands since October 7th.  But only one charge of genocide has made it to the ICJ (in 2022, when Ukraine charged Russia with violating the 1948 Genocide Convention by falsely claiming genocide as a pretext for invading Ukraine).  If the ICJ had existed in the 1940s, might Japan have brought charges against the United States for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Germany for fire-bombing Dresden?  Is a nation at war bound by “rules of war” to act “proportionately,” especially when it reacts in self-defense to an unprovoked aggressive attack?  Every (one exception) outbreak of killing between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East has been initiated by Muslims.  And, while Israel has sued for peace over and over again, Muslims have made the total destruction of the Jewish state the keynote of their charters.  

I am dead-tired of defending Israel’s right to exist.  Not another country on earth has had to defend its right to exist in the court of public opinion.  Only Israel.  It is like having to defend American Blacks for equal protection under the law.  Anyone who thinks this needs an argument or a defense is deeply troubled.  Those who believe that Blacks should not be treated equally under the law are racists and they are psychologically and spiritually damaged in a way that only death will cure.  Those who believe that Israel has no right to exist are antisemites.  It really IS that simple.  Hatred does wound innocent people, but in the end it poisons and destroys the haters.  Shakespeare's Julius Caesar declared, "cowards die many times before their deaths."  So it is with haters, and they die a little every living day.

Addendum: Monday, 03/11/2024

Thomas Sowell, a brilliant black American economist, when asked by a Rabbi friend, "what can we do to end antisemitism?", cheekily replied "fail."  As though antisemitism was merely envy of those who fared better in life than you.  His answer has merit but it ignores history.  While the word itself was coined as recently as 1860, Jews have been persecuted for no rational reason for two thousand years, give or take a few hundred.  But we have not been envied for our success for all that long.  The first wealthy Jewish family in popular history is the Rothschilds, whose patriarch made his mark beginning in the 1760's, only 260+ years ago.  But organized antisemitism goes way back.  Timeline #1 and Timeline #2.  Sorry, Thomas, antisemitism did not begin with the banking Rothschilds, with Jewish success.  

Wednesday

There are 15 recent wars or conflicts whose casualties dwarf the 30,000 claimed by the Palestinians.  Only the war in Ukraine gets column inches that compete with Israel-Gaza.

Addendum: Thursday, 04/04/2024

For a NTTimes opinion piece by one of their outstanding journalists, see The Appalling Tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement, by Bret Stephens.

Addendum: Sunday, 04/07/2024

I am filled with sympathy for the death and destruction committed on Palestinian civilians by the IDF since October 7th.  And a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of Israel's PM, Benjamin Netanyahu.  Who is very unpopular all over Israel and will most likely lose his position real soon now, and may well end up in prison.  But, and I must keep reminding everyone, Hamas started this war.  And Hamas will not be kicked out of office any time soon as there are no elections in Gaza.  Hamas is in control of Gaza until Gazans kick them out.  So, Palestinians in Gaza have to take their government back if there is to be peace, as Hamas is committed to perpetual war until there is no more Israel, and no PM of Israel will ever let that happen.  The future of peace is in Gazans' hands.''

Addendum: Monday, 04/15/2024

Why is Israel always treated differently?

The Appalling Tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement

Addendum: Tuesday, 04/23/2024

Across America, college students (mostly freshmen) at our top schools are demonstrating for Palestine and against Israel.  I applaud their youthful idealism, rooting for the underdog.  BUT, 

1. they don't know EXACTLY what they are demonstrating for: does FREE PALESTINE mean NO MORE ISRAEL?  
2. their youth underlies their ignorance of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict (see above for a very brief history lesson).  
3. there is a reason that 98% of Congress – Republicans and Democrats alike – takes Israel's side.  The reason should be obvious to anyone: most Americans over age 25 are pro-Israel, not because antisemitism is rare in these United States, but because they know the history, part of which is that the Palestinian leadership for 75 years wants no peace until there is NO Israel, ONLY Palestine.  
4. Pro-Palestinian American youth will be demonstrating against Biden's policies at the Democratic National Convention.  Perhaps they should consider the alternative: Donald Trump is rabidly more pro-Israel than Joe Biden.  Put that in your pipe.

Addendum: Saturday, 04/27/2024

Let's talk about "rights," the rights of Palestinian protesters.

• If you walk into a Walmart or a Target or a Kroger, do you have a Second Amendment RIGHT to bear arms.  Hell, NO, you do not.
• If you are an employee of a private firm, what RIGHTS do you have?  None.  Your only right is to work there until they terminate you for no reason at all, like posting an antisemitic slur on social media that is visible to the world.
• If you demonstrate for FREE PALESTINE on a college campus, what rights have you?   The RIGHTS that the administration grants you.  If you occupy their lawn, your right to stay there ends when they say so.  The notion of "Academic Freedom," when understood classically, meant for professors, not students.  Students at a private university have no RIGHTS, except to get an education.
• The same goes for peaceable assembly.  You have NO such right on someone else’s private property.
• The whole notion of RIGHTS is universally misunderstood by children across America.  First, the RIGHTS mentioned in the Bill of Rights do not apply to children.  Second, the RIGHTS mentioned in the Bill of Rights protects you only from GOVERNMENTAL coercion.
• What is a child?  Someone who thinks that he can do what he wants any place he wants to do it, because “it’s a free country.”
• For those who think that their protests are "civil disobedience," you need to go back and read H.D. Thoreau, the "inventor" of civil disobedience, or Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., Thoreau's greatest disciples of the 20th century, and learn that prison time was part of the deal for breaking the law, even a "bad" law.