Shalom and welcome back!
So, we've reviewed the history of the region. Now to present day and the distortion of the conflict. There is a definite anti-Israel feel to world reaction and there are several factors involved.
First, part of the problem was brought on by the Israel itself. If after they acquired the land in the wars that were waged against them they had just expelled the occupants and established new Israeli borders, this would all be different. Sure the violence would continue from the Arabs, but at least it would not be coming from within Israeli territory itself. I understand that there are some Palestinians who just want to live in peace with the Jews. But their words are being drowned out by the explosions of the terrorists and the false rhetoric of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the like.
I hesitate to call those who oppose the actions of Israel as anti-Semitic. I really get frustrated by people who claim that any disagreement or mistreatment is a result of racism, sexism or any other prejudicial bigoted -ism there is. But in this case I really have to wonder. I wonder because of almost two thousand years of time-honored anti-Semitism. And with the attacks on synagogues and other Jewish establishments in France and other countries, it is clearly a part of the problem. However, I'd like to believe that it is a small part, just as numbskulls who defaced mosques following the September 11 attacks were a very small minority of the American population. Any time that one group of people does something to another group, there are going to be idiots who already had a hatred of those people and take their little actions. I do believe anti-Semitism is alive and well all over the place to some degree, especially in certain sectors of the Christian world resulting from the "I hate the Jews because the Jews killed Jesus!" idiocy. Maybe I'll delve into that argument at a later date. The anti-Jewish statements of the Islamic world speak for themselves.
Now the press. In this case, I'm not just railing against the U.S. liberal press, but also their counterparts in the rest of the world. We see pictures of tanks rolling through Ramallah and other West Bank towns. That's pretty much all we are shown. Why? To give the poor dumb people of the world the impression that the Israelis are the aggressors and oppressors. When we have seen such sights in the past, it has been in the context of an evil force invading a peaceful people. Nazis rolling across Europe. Soviets cracking down behind the Iron Curtain. And who can forget the tanks in Tienanmen Square. Israel has an army and the Palestinians do not. No matter how just the Israeli cause is, it looks bad to the ignorant masses. What we do not see are the suicide bombers detonating themselves and murdering innocents. (Some are starting to call them homicide bombers. I like that.) Sure we will occasionally see the aftermath, but even with that there is almost sympathy for the terrorists, as if they were simply innocent victims of the shared tragedy. One reason Americans maintain resolve in our so-called war against terrorism is that we all have seen the pictures of the planes smashing into the World Trade Center towers. We never see the cowards blow up pizza parlors or shopping malls in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Then there was the travesty of the Jenin massacre. Oh wait, there was no massacre in Jenin. That didn't stop the world press from assuming there was and running with the story. Tell a lie often enough and it will be believed. The headlines and lead stories decried the atrocities. When the story was proven false, the volume of the retractions was barely audible. But to too many members of the press, Israel is the bad guy, oppressing the poor down-trodden Palestinians over whom they rule. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Then there are just idiots. Witness this exchange between UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. (It should be noted that Thomas is a withered old crab leftist who is a child of Lebanese immigrants and Fleischer is a Jewish Republican, a rare breed.)
HELEN THOMAS: Does the President also equally condemn the killing of hundreds of Palestinians and the destruction of the West Bank with American-made weapons?
ARI FLEISCHER: Helen, again, the President has made his point clear --
THOMAS: Equally condemn.
FLEISCHER: Helen, the President has made his point clear. People who strap explosives around them, civilians who go into civilian areas for the purpose --
THOMAS: Well, aren't the Palestinians civilians?
FLEISCHER: Helen, I think we know you have a different opinion, but let me answer your question.
THOMAS: I want to know, are they civilians or not?
FLEISCHER: Let me answer your question. The President believes that people who strap explosives around their waist as civilians who go board buses, who go to hotels on the eve of Passover, who go where you can find civilians for the purpose of murdering civilians, are terrorists. The President --
THOMAS: Well, what do ground ships do when they go through Jenin and Ramallah?
FLEISCHER: The President has always said that Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel exercised the right to defend herself, and then the President made his call that you know about in the Rose Garden.
To Helen Thomas, Israel's right to defend itself is on the same moral level as the Palestinian murderers. And therein lies another part of the problem, moral equivalency. Israel wants to live in peace in its own land. The Palestinians want to live in peace in Israel's land after the extermination of the Jews. Israel uses its military to root out the terrorists and secure its safety. The Arabs pay handsome sums to families of young people who strap explosives to themselves to murder innocent civilians. Moral equivalence? Bollocks! We went into Afghanistan to root out the terrorist organization that attacked our citizens. Israel is doing the same. But somehow they are wrong. They are told they must negotiate with the people who have sworn their destruction. Would we be expected to do the same with Usama bin Laden and his network? Of course not.
I have heard people try to equate Palestinian terrorism with terrorist acts by the early Zionists. Sure, we can't say the bad guys are wrong without somehow pointing out the wrongs that some of the good guys committed. I usually hear about the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946, as if that one act equals the decades of attacks against Israel. Here are some more facts. The Irgun group targeted the hotel after British troops invaded and confiscated many documents. Menachem Begin, who was later one of the three peacemakers involved in the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, wanted to avoid civilian casualties. Telephone calls warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated were made to three parties: the French Consulate, the Palestine Post, and to the hotel itself. The call to the hotel was apparently received and ignored. One British official who refused to evacuate the building was quoted as saying: "We don't take orders from the Jews." Because of his good old anti-Semitism, the death toll was higher than it needed to be. Now match that action with the incessant surprise attacks of the homicide bombers whose only aim is to slaughter Jews. Are they equal?
Even more insulting are those who liken Israel treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazis. Give me a bloody break! I get frustrated with people who refuse to differentiate black from white because the white isn't pure, thereby nullifying the cause of the just. If that was the case, we should give back our entire nation because of the way we treated the native population as we rolled across the continent. We should also give in to the claims of the radical blacks for monetary reparation for slavery. Keep in mind, both of those injustices were state-sponsored. We are good guys, but we are not pure either. I can live with that if we go forward and do our best to pursue what is right.
Other groups of misguided folks are the peacenik hippies (and their current dopey college student counterparts) and American isolationists. What the children of the sixties do not realize is that all conflict is not resolved peacefully. Peace is achieved through strength and sometimes your freedom must be secured in war. To these airheads, the incursion of the Israeli military into land from which they are attacked is as wrong as the attacks themselves. God I hate hippies! Then there are the isolationists who want the U.S. to just wash its hands of the whole situation. This would entail giving up our only ally in the region, the only free nation in the Middle East. Pure folly. Israel and the rest of the western world have a certain belief in freedom and democracy in common. The Arab states are not free. Some are under totalitarian regimes, the same kind of governments that we have fought wars against in the past. The funny thing is that Israel could probably take care if itself if we just let them. They have the far superior military in the region.
The true underlying factor is oil. It always has been. The bad guys have it. The good guys don't. We should not be willing to sell out our friends to those who would destroy them for oil. People claim that if we get involved, the Arab OPEC members may cut off our supply of oil. Maybe so, but we get plenty of oil from Mexico, Venezuela, Russia and its former republics. I'm sure they would be more than willing to make up the slack. And don't get me started on domestic supplies. Radical environmentalists (you can't spell "environmentalist" without "mental") wet their panties anytime someone proposes drilling for our own oil. But that's another discussion for later. I for one would be willing to pay more for energy to stand up for what is right. Damn it, freedom required sacrifice. And if you haven't noticed, many of the same people who hate Israel hate us too. They would be more than happy to see us exterminated as well. We must not give up Israel to these people. There will be no appeasement.
Now I have been old enough to care about what's going on in this conflict for a relatively short time in the grand scheme of things. But I did some investigation and read the history. If more people did the same, maybe they would come around on the subject. Unless they just hate the Jews.
And another thing ...