A Government's First Duty is to Defend it's People

I resent the common use of the word, “Terrorist”. Terrorism is only a tactic. The Bush administration uses it for anyone against the USA. For me, a terrorist is one who uses an act of violence against random unarmed civilians. An act against a military is an act of war, not terrorism. Militias and soldiers are fair game and are legitimate acts of war. Therefore, attacking Hamas militants and Israeli soldiers are legitimate attacks in a war but blowing up people in a café is terrorism. Tactics to scare potential terrorists of blowing up their home where their family’s lives in order to dissuade future terrorists, are not against random civilians but are certainly wrongfully punishing innocents for the acts of a criminal.

I resent the claim against Israel stating that Israel uses disproportionate retaliations against the attacks against her (in Hebrew, countries are feminine). In war, the object is to win, not to return the exact degree of attach that was committed. The country has formally been at war since its inception. I believe that the government of Israel really wants to crush the hostile population of Palestine until they surrender and realize that, the best way to get Israel to give great concessions (remove the barrier, remove settlements) is to unite, surrender to a two-state solution, much like Clinton and Barak offered Arafat. Every time that Israel withdraws (such as in Gaza or Lebanon), Israel is attacked. When Gazans broke through into Egypt, some tried to sneak into Israel to kill Israelis. Every day they bomb southern Israeli towns while Israel pinpoint-laser-attacks the “enemy”. However, there is, of course, collateral damage and untargeted innocents are harmed. If Hamas attacked a military post and innocents in the vicinity were around, it would not be terrorism.

This is the heinousness of war. Every land hosting a war has had to endure this. How many innocent Afghanis died in the US invasion to get after the Taliban? How many innocent Gazans have died from Israeli attacks against Hamas? How many innocent Germans, Turks, Vietnamese died from attacks against military targets? How many innocents died when the U.S. bombed Kosovo from several safe miles away? How many suffered in the Scorched Earth tactic? This is hideous war and we need to find a peaceful end to it. All of the Israelis that I know (and I know few of the crazies who support the settlers) would love to have great relations with the Palestinians and have two countries with wonderful trade relations. They agree with me that the settlers must be moved back into Israel or somehow become Palestinian Jews much like the 20% of Israel that is Arab.

Some of the secular non-Jews I meet here seem to resent Israel. They don’t seem to appreciate the freedoms and transformation of what was a backward barren land. They just seem to focus on the negative such as the preference toward Jewish immigrants and the harsh treatment of the Palestinians. Many resent that it is a Jewish country and feel that everyone should be able to immigrate as easily as Jews. I speak with many non-Jews who have married Jews and live here and I explain the difficulties that new immigrants have in the USA when they come in and the time frame needed to get a green card and citizenship. They understand but resent seeing Jews cruise through end enjoy the benefits that they want. Just a few hours’ drive away women are forced to wear burkes and the country is led by a king or dictator with little or no freedoms, no internet, no free press, and no possibility of freedoms. There were 850,000 Jews in these countries that were already 2nd class citizens, victims of pogroms, and forced to leave these countries since Israel’s founding. Yet, the world press doesn’t criticize these places nor demand compensation for the people that were forced to flee.

It is cliché to say, “Hey, Israel is far from perfect”. She has made a lot of mistakes and has her share of criminals and corruption (albeit one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world). Look how far she has come in the last century. Almost no one spoke Hebrew a hundred years ago. We have a modern true democracy and a free press. The Arab world has hijacked the UN and passed around 130 UN provisions against Israel. The Arab world has not allowed the Palestinians to emigrate to their countries and Egypt and Jordan have each killed more Palestinians than has Israel.

The “land grab” building of the security barrier and the settlements certainly don’t help promote loving relationships. Again, Israel wants to strengthen it’s bargaining position should negotiations come to the surface. Palestinians are suffering for sure and most are innocent and just want to give their children a better life than they had, like the rest of the world. However, they are victims of the violent radicals that play into the hands of the Israeli Zionistic expansionists. Once they realize that Dr. King and Gandhi had the most persuasive strategy, they will have a tremendous amount of support and aid from Israel. The longer they play their strategy of out-waiting the Israelis, the less Palestinians will have ever lived in Israel and the more Israelis will be native Israelis. The right of return for Palestinians will be the mirror image of Zionism.