By Josh Basson, Special to JTNews
The 60-year span of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be of serious concern to all Jews who have a love for Israel and its brave people. How that conflict is brought to an end will determine its survival as a Jewish state.
The Palestinians are doing quite a PR job in promoting dishonest propaganda on the conflict, serving to greatly distort the truth. They make misleading claims that Israel is engaged in a “land grab” of Palestinian land — land that was never really theirs. Jewish settlers have built on land they either purchased from the Arabs, or were on disputed land.
Jews are not the usurpers in Jerusalem. They have been living there since the Biblical era and have been the majority population since the 19th century. Jews have synagogues and holy sites in most cities of the world, but they do not claim sovereignty over those cities because of it. Therefore, the Muslim Arab claim to Jerusalem, based on the two mosques on the Temple Mount, is not acceptable or justifiable. Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish life, Jewish yearning and Jewish thinking for over 3,000 years. That is the reason why the State of Israel has rededicated the Jewish holy city to be its indivisible capital. Palestinian demands that East Jerusalem be given to them as a future capital for a Palestinian state would be tantamount to striking a dagger at Israel’s heart. It should not be permitted.
It is difficult to make sense of the recent fanaticism of someone like Ala Abu Dhaim, who calmly entered the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva’s school library and slaughtered eight young yeshiva students. Palestinians consider him a “martyr,” but he is really a murderer of innocents.
If the gunning down of these students or the blowing up of a bus in Tel Aviv were presented as an attempt to kill as many Jewish men, women and children as possible (as it was intended to do), it would not sell well with the world. But when it is exhibited as “an expression of deep frustration coming from an oppressed people,” the act of sheer and horrific evil assumes a sophisticated veneer.
The sad thing in all of this is that many Jews, in their earnest craving for peace, passionately embrace the masked story of the Arab leaders. By Israel deceiving itself that evil is not evil and hate is not hate, it empowers the evil and gives it additional momentum, causing the deaths of innumerable Jews and Arabs. Making peace with evil could never work, for the evil comes back to haunt and destroy you. If Israel would once and for all acknowledge the evil that exists in its midst and treat it as such, thousands of lives on both sides would be saved.
Israel has a much more valid claim to the land than the Palestinians, both morally and historically. On June 30, 1922, U.S. President Warren Harding signed into law a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the U. S. that unanimously endorsed the “Mandate of Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Balfour Declaration in Britain, signed on November 2, 1917, granted similar rights to Jews for a homeland in Palestine.
Israel has been short-changed on the land it was granted under the U.N. partition plan in 1948. Having lost four wars since Israel’s creation, both the Arab states and Palestinians have been demanding that Israel retreat to pre-1967 borders. Those indefensible borders would make Israel vulnerable to defeat if it agreed.
And presently, Hamas and Fatah charters call for the destruction of Israel. They do not conceive of compromise. It is all or nothing and has been that way since 1948. Israel would be foolish to agree to the establishment of a terrorist state that could lead to its demise.
Presently, Hamas and Fatah are fighting amongst themselves — thus Israel is not dealing with a civil society with whom it can make a long-lasting peace agreement.
It is disconcerting that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s reaction to the yeshiva student massacre is to continue the phony “peace process” that has brought Israel nothing but terror, tears and a mounting toll of death. Unfortunately, Israel is refusing to face the fact that it is in a war for survival — a war it will only win by fighting and defeating its enemy. These enemies regard negotiations, concessions and all trappings of the “peace process” as evidence that Jews are in retreat, and that hitting them even harder will bring victory even closer. That is why there was such jubilation in Gaza, and why this atrocity in Jerusalem was only the latest such horror and not the last.
A Palestinian poll taken after the killings indicated that 84 percent of them approved of it. That should speak volumes of how badly the Palestinian leadership has brainwashed their people to accept a culture of violence as a means to reach their political goal.
It has been suggested that the best strategy for Israel to adopt is all-out war with Hamas, and the elimination of its leaders that seek to destroy Israel. Israel has the duty and right to defend itself against violent attacks, and that includes targeting the terrorists, their rocket launchers and their weapon storehouses. Sadly, many Palestinians commit war crimes by placing their weapons and terrorists within heavily populated Palestinian civilian areas.
Out of respect for innocent civilians, Israel does its best to avoid harming non-combatants, but any Palestinians inadvertently hurt when Israel strikes back against terrorists and their weapons are the fault of the Palestinians who use civilians as human shields.
A Palestinian state should not be created at the expense of Israel’s survival based on a U.S.-imposed deadline (which sets the target time as by the end of 2008).
Yet against all odds, Israel has miraculously survived, despite existential challenges, war and terror attacks. A very happy 60th birthday to Israel. May Israel eventually be blessed with a lasting genuine peace with its Palestinian neighbors.
This piece is adapted from a speech Josh Basson gave on April 7 at Congregation Sha’arei Tefilah-Lubavitch in Seattle.