What The Liberals Just Don’t Get About Israel
By
Leonard Zwelling
Lately, the American left has made a lot of noise in support of the “Palestinian cause.” The left accuses Israel of being an unfair aggressor and warmonger beating up on the defenseless Arabs in both the West Bank and Gaza. I guess these folks don’t remember the 1972 Olympic Games and the massacre in Munich. I do.
Let’s step back.
That small strip of land that is Israel, the West Bank and Gaza has been in dispute for thousands of years. It has been evident that from a historical perspective, the rulers of that land will be the group that can take and hold it by force. That’s pretty much how the English conquered the thirteen American colonies and how the white Americans came to dominate the land between Canada and Mexico between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There was no nice way to create the United States. It was created in blood.
So was Israel.
And like the United States did, Israel will have to revert to bloodshed to maintain its hold on that land and the many external and internal challenges to Jewish domination of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
It is absolutely true that many Arabs owned land in Israel and were displaced from that land in the 1948 and 1967 wars.
It is absolutely true that for three thousand years the Jewish people longed for a homeland in the Holy Land and that forces set loose in 1930s Germany and subsequent to the Second World War as well as political and territorial chess moves dating back to the First World War gave birth to the land of Israel. Once the Jewish people acquired their homeland in 1948 and after the Arabs tried to take it away in 1967, there was going to be no substitute for force if the Jews were to keep the land of Israel as the world’s only safe haven for Jews after thousands of years of running and persecution.
The joke is that every Jewish holiday is the same: “they tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.” It’s no joke. This is the first time in three thousand years that Jews have a place to go when everyone wants to kill them. This is not paranoia. This is reality for those born of parents who lived through the Second World War.
And, if that wasn’t enough, the Holocaust sealed the deal. Never again. So all you Democratic liberals out there who want mercy for the poor Arabs in the West Bank, go visit. See what Israel has bloomed from the desert and the contrast of that to the third world of the West Bank and Gaza. Go see the tech valley that has grown up between Haifa and Tel Aviv while the Arabs in the West Bank struggle to vaccinate their people. Go visit the pediatric cancer ward of a hospital in Jerusalem where half the patients are Arabs being cared for by Israeli doctors and nurses at no cost to their families. Finally, ask yourself what the best solution for the Arabs would be, a corrupt government in the West Bank, terrorist leadership in Gaza, or becoming part of the free world of Jewish Israel as full citizens?
The answer is easy.
After four visits to Israel including many areas of the West Bank and being five miles from Gaza after the 2014 conflict, it is obvious to me that only a one state solution that includes everyone between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea will bring peace and prosperity to the Holy Land and all of its citizens—Arabs, Jews and Christians. That the current leadership of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Israel cannot get there is a tragedy, but don’t blame this on the Jews alone. The Jews are in an existential vice but one far better than the one that was their existence in 1947. Israel will not go back to being a wandering people. The Jews have a homeland and will defend it from internal and external forces that wish to undermine the existence of a Jewish state. The Jews will never give up and will never give in to the illusion perpetrated by the left that somehow the Palestinians are a real country. They aren’t and never have been. It would be best, if the Arabs of the region joined forces with the Israelis as many Sunni Arab states have done for the good of those Arabs living in the land that used to be the British Protectorate of Palestine.
The Arabs of the area have demonstrated that they cannot make it as a country or even as two countries without the use of terror. The Israelis will never give in. Never. The Arabs would do better joining rather than fighting and if they need new leadership to realize this, let’s help them get it.
