Israel and the Arabs

Editorial

I support Israel in its determination to exist because Jews need a home, a country, where they can be what they want to be. They need a native country because of the persecution they have suffered in the name of their faith for more than 2,300 years. At the time of the founding of Israel following World War II there was a difference of opinion whether the Jews should have a home or whether they should stay where they were and adapt to life in those countries. Zionist was the name given to those who chose the new state. The United Nations partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, but the Arabs rejected the decision and have refused to recognize a Jewish state to this day. It is obvious that the goal of the Arabs in the region is the elimination of Israel. Anything else from the Arab side is window-dressing.

The Old Testament tells us the Jews refused to worship any God save the creator, refusing to bow down to the gods of the Persians, Greeks, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Romans. The Jews added to their problems because of dietary laws, which were based on sound hygiene, refusal to work on the Sabbath, their observance of holy days, marrying inside their faith, and maintaining traditional dress. They were easily identified and were thought odd because of nonconformity. In essential matters, Jews are not much different from what they were in the time of Moses.

The New Testament, in Acts 15, shows a building tension between Judaism and what became Christianity. “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved,” said the traditionalists. But the great success of the missionary work of St. Paul forced a separation. Jesus was the Messiah, he said, who spoke not only to Jews but also to all people. The Jews of the time would not abandon their ancient faith for some upstart and hailed Simon Bar Kochba as the Messiah, one who would lead them in rebellion against Rome, gaining their freedom. His rebellion failed. Freedom from Rome, the Christians wisely decided, would not be won by armed conflict. Angered that the Christian Jews did not support the revolt, Bar Kochba killed some, seeing them as enemies, heretics, and traitors to the national cause-freedom from Rome. The growing new faith began to harbor bitterness toward the old faith, and as Christians increased in number and had their faith supported by the state, two thousand years of Jewish persecution began. We do not have to document the harassment of the Jews during the past two thousand years, chiefly by Christians, because it is well known. The problem is what to do now.

David Limbaugh gave a summary of Israeli-Palestinian relations:

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to approve a plan to partition Palestine into two separate states. The Jews accepted the plan, and the Palestinians rejected it. Even while the UN was deliberating prior to accepting the partition plan, the Arabs made clear that they rejected the idea of partition and would resist. On November 30, the Arabs began to carry out raids and arson in Jewish neighborhoods. By March 1948, 1,200 Jews had been killed, half of which were civilians.

On Friday, May 14, 1948, Israel announced its independence, establishing the modern State of Israel. That same day, the Arab League’s secretary-general, Azzam Pasha, declared a holy war via radio: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.”

The very next day, five Arab armies attacked Israel. After Israel handily defeated the united Arab forces, armistice talks began on Jan. 12, 1949. Over the next half year, Israel signed separate pacts with each of those Arab nations (Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria) except Iraq. . . . Following the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, a number of other wars ensued, in 1965, 1967, and 1973, during which Israel retained her land and acquired more-including the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Despite her defensive, wartime acquisition of these lands, Israel agreed in 2000 to relinquish some ninety-seven percent of them to the Palestinians. In order to understand the magnitude of this concession, you must realize that these lands are vital to Israel’s defense.

Nevertheless Yasser Arafat not only rejected Israel’s offer; he launched a new war of terror against Israel. This should not surprise anyone familiar with the Palestinian’s persistent practices of speaking peace in English while spitting war in Arabic and of teaching their children that Israel does not exist on the maps of the region.

Why do the Palestinians hate Israel when the two cultures have been living side by side for centuries? As good a statement as I have seen comes from Edwin A. Locke of the Ayn Rand Institute.

When the Jews came to Palestine, it was a desert. People were living in the same primitive manners as they had been since the time of Moses. The Jews brought Western knowledge and Western values to the Middle East. They turned an almost barren land into a modern industrial civilization. They raised cities where there had been only dirt; they developed irrigated farms where there had been only dry sand; they built cars and trucks and planes where there had been mainly pack animals. They produced wealth where there had been only poverty. They brought freedom and individual rights to a land where these ideas were unknown.

And many of the Arabs hated Israel for doing so-because it was an achievement they could not and did not want to equal. That is why they have always wanted to destroy Israel. That is why the Palestinians continue today in that quest.

When a person sees that a different culture can produce a much better life-greater knowledge, greater mastery over nature, greater comfort and security, greater respect for the individual-than his own, he has two choices. He can adopt the new culture as a blessing or he can seek to destroy it-and himself-because it stands as a reproach to his irrational form of existence.

The Palestinians have chosen the latter. They are guilty of “hatred of the good for being good.” They hate the Israelis not because of their vices, but because of their virtues-their ability to better their lives by embracing reason, science, technology, and individual rights. Israel represents the triumph of secularism and freedom in the Middle East. Israel stands for the principle of life.

The other major problem is with refugees. Palestinians left their homes in Israel because they were encouraged to do so by the Arab leadership. Arabs assumed their armies would conquer Israel in a couple of days, and the people would re-enter, seizing the wealth left behind. When the war did not proceed according to Arab expectations and the exodus became alarming, neighboring Arab states sealed their borders against refugees. On the other hand, after Israel’s Proclamation of Independence issued May 14, 1948, Palestinians were invited to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the new state. David Ben Gurion sent Golda Meir to Haifa to try to persuade Arabs to stay, but they were afraid to do so from fear of being thought traitors to the Arab cause.

On November 30, 1947, permanent Arab residents in Palestine were 809,000, but in 1949 the count was 160,000, meaning 650,000 could have become refugees. However, the UN Mediator in Palestine gave a figure of 472,000. The number of Jews who fled Arab countries around this time was about the same as the number of Arabs who left Israel. Jewish refugees left with no more than their clothes and were resettled in Israel at great expense, with no compensation from the countries who seized their possessions.

While Jewish refugees from Arab countries received no international assistance, Palestinians received millions of dollars. Initially, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel almost $3 million. The total Arab pledges were $600,000. For the first twenty years, the United States provided more than two-thirds of the funds, while the Arab states contributed a tiny fraction. Israel donated more than most Arab countries.

After the Suez War, in 1957, the Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria, passed a resolution saying,

Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees’ right to annihilate Israel will be regard as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason.

Little has changed with the refugees during the past forty years. Arab governments have frequently offered jobs, housing, and other benefits to Arabs and non-Arabs but exclude Palestinians. Saudi Arabia, during its labor shortage in the late 1970s and early 1980s, imported South Koreans and other Asians but refused work for unemployed Palestinians. After the Gulf War, Kuwait employed large numbers of Palestinians but expelled more than 300,000 of them when the crisis passed.

By the middle of 2000 rolls of Palestinian refugees listed 3.7 million, though not all of the refugees lived in the squalid fifty-nine camps of the United National Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). When Netty Gross visited Gaza and asked an official why the camps were not dismantled, she was told that the Palestinian Authority had made a political decision not to do anything for the 400,000 living there. They were symbols of Israeli oppression!

The refugee problem began at the urging of Arab states, counseling Palestinians living in Israel to leave so that Arab armies would be free to crush the Jews and seize their wealth. The refugee problem continues because the surrounding Arab countries will not take the refugees into their countries, or give them work, preferring to let them live in deplorable conditions while they blame the squalor on Israel.

The United States has been trying to bring peace to a land that does not want peace unless the Jewish state is destroyed. In an attempt to wipe out the terrorists who use this tactic to destroy Israel, Prime Minister Sharon sent his tanks into occupied areas that harbor terrorists in an attempt to wipe out their infrastructure. The tanks are said to have been brutal and have caused animosity, not only in surrounding Arab States but also in Europe.

How can the problem be solved? There is no solution until the Arab States compel Islamic radicals to live peaceably with their Jewish neighbors. If they can adopt this civilized behavior they will find their enemies are good people who can be trusted friends. If the Arabs refuse to stop terror, Israel will build borders and engage Arabs for as long as needed. The almost 2,500 years of oppression of Jews has bred in them a determination sufficient for the task.

As far as the United States is concerned, there are a couple of needs. 1) We should increase domestic oil production on land and sea. Concern for animals is nonsense, as they will not be harmed. 2) We should proceed with speed for power by fuel cells to make ourselves independent of Arab oil. I get the impression that we have the technology. All we need is the impetus. We must also recognize the animus of the Islamic culture, and its cruelty, is so extreme that Islamic countries in the Middle East are capable of cutting oil supplies in a determined effort to destroy our civilization. Saudi Arabia preaches peace but subsidizes terror. It is not to be trusted.