Friday, June 11, 2010

Jews Will Not Go Meekly To Slaughter Again


Tom McLaughlin

While I was in Israel three years ago, Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip. Israel had pulled out two years earlier, and the fight was between two Palestinian terrorist groups: Fatah and Hamas. Our Palestinian guides advised us to call home and tell relatives we were okay because there was widespread media coverage of the fighting and they would be worried about us. We were about thirty miles from the fighting at the time and safe enough. Every since, Hamas has been shooting rockets into Israel from Gaza daily. Israel sends fuel and electricity into Gaza, yet Israel is the villain and Hamas the victim in the eyes of the world. It’s Theatre of the Absurd in the mainstream media.

There are 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel and 5.5 million Jews and I was struck by contrasts. Jewish towns and cities are orderly, blooming and booming. Arab towns and cities are strewn with trash, graffiti and idleness.


Palestinian Town in Israel

The contrast is even sharper in the mostly-Muslim West Bank. It’s a microcosm for the entire Arab Middle East. With huge deposits of oil and the trillions of petrodollars for Arab countries, they remain primitive. Yet, with no oil, industrious Jews from around world have made the desert bloom in Israel. They’ve built a thriving economy, and fought off three invasions by much larger, fanatic, Arab-Muslim neighbors. It’s the ultimate humiliation to have tiny Israel existing in their midst and providing a constant contrast to their backwardness. Rather than taking lessons for their own improvement, they hate Israel with a passion and rabidly plot its destruction.


Arab East Jerusalem

When I’m teaching about the Arab Muslim invasions of 1948, 1967 and 1973 to my US History classes, I tell students to imagine a kindergarten kid waiting alone at a bus stop and being jumped three times by several large, high-school boys. Imagine how the big boys feel after the kindergarten kid thrashes them single-handedly all three times. Their humiliation is unbearable and it’s their own fault.

There can be no such thing as a peace process in Israel without the destruction of Israel’s enemies. Neither Fatah nor Hamas wants a Palestinian State. Palestinians want Israel gone and they’re willing to play victim poster-children for the wider Islamic world’s propaganda against Israel and the United States. After the 1967 invasion, Israel took territory from Egypt, Syria and Jordan as buffers against future invasions - including the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. In the Camp David agreement, Egypt took back the Sinai in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, but didn’t really want Gaza. Nobody does. It’s an insane asylum full of Palestinians who have been indoctrinated since infancy with hatred of Jews and groomed to become “shahids”: suicide bombers. Israel pulled out in 2005 but terrorism increased. So much for leftist claims that Israel’s occupation is the cause of Palestinian terrorism.

After years of daily rocket attacks against its civilian population, Israel went back into Gaza to take out launch sites, which Hamas puts in or near schools and hospitals. Palestinian terrorists hide behind children, but the UN ignores this and instead investigates Israel for war crimes if civilians are killed. Hamas is a terrorist proxy for Iran, who supplies the rockets raining on Israel, and who promises to wipe Israel off the map. The United Nations does nothing as Iran builds the nuclear weapons with which to perpetrate a second Holocaust while denying the first ever happened. Under the noses of UN “peacekeeping” forces, Iran supplies Hezbollah with rockets and other weapons in southern Lebanon that are periodically shot at northern Israeli civilians. Why we continue to support an inept and corrupt organization like the United Nations, I cannot fathom.

Israel’s strategy now is to blockade Gaza to prevent Hamas from importing more Iranian rockets but Turkey, which had hitherto been the most supportive of Muslim countries toward Israel, is now leading the effort to break the blockade. There’s been a profound policy shift in Turkey’s relations with Israel. Looks like the Turks have stopped westernizing and, by demonizing Israel, are allying with Syria and Iran. Not good for regional stability.

According to its own charter, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and killing all Jews, yet Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan insists Hamas is not a terrorist organization. The man has no credibility, but he’s a hero in the eyes of the American and European left and their media sycophants. Meanwhile, President Obama has shined up to Hamas. He’s obsequious with Iran, and he’s distancing himself from Israel.

Israel has faced existential threats since its birth in 1948 and met them head on. It will meet today’s threats and tomorrow’s as well. Israel will do what it must to survive. A preemptive strike against Iran - with nuclear weapons - is a very real possibility. This is a nation founded on the ashes of the Holocaust. Israel’s Jews will not submit meekly to slaughter again.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Tom McLaughlin is a history teacher and a regular weekly columnist for newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire. He writes about political and social issues, history, family, education and Radical Islam. E-mail him at tommclaughlin@fairpoint.net.

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