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The Torah (Old Testament) is filled with the history of Jews who went out to do battle with those who threatened them. They did so believing God was with them. The five thousand years of Jewish history has been one long test of their love for a harsh, demanding God. After two thousands years in the Diaspora, following the European genocide in the last century, Jews returned to Israel, determined to reclaim their homeland and they did. The early Zionists who had preceded them, those who believed that a Jewish homeland was necessary in the face of the enduring anti-Semitism, built the foundations of the modern Israel by buying, acre by acre, farmland from the Arabs who lived there. For years they encouraged other Jews to join them in nation building and, following World War II when many displaced Jews had no where else to go, they choose Israel than a life among their countrymen who had sold them into slavery and death. The land to which they returned was not a nation. There never was a Palestinian nation. It was a designation on a map drawn by the British whose colonial policies gave them control of the area. In time they yielded to the demand to cede control to those for whom the claim to the land reached back through the millennia. Now the Israelis find themselves, once again, under attack by Palestinians and threatened by other Arab neighbors. It comes during their holiest day, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a date remembered as the beginning of an earlier war. Attacking Israel on this day betrays the utter contempt, the total lack of tolerance Moslems extend the Jews. It all began when an Israeli leader toured the Temple Mount, a place sacred to Jews, evoking new rioting by Moslems denying the sovereignty of Israel and the right of any Israeli to walk anywhere in his homeland. It has become a battle for Jerusalem, the only capital of the Jewish State, ancient and modern. Moslem claims on Jerusalem are a gossamer veil to hide their dark desire to drive every Jew from the city and the land. Daniel Pipes, writing in the October 6th Los Angeles Times, says the time for Israelis to gird up their loins and visit on their enemies the only thing they understand, the violence they have visited upon them, returning it in full measure. “Israel’s policy of good will has baffled Palestinians and other Arabs,” says Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum and authority on Islam. “Sometimes it conveys weakness. Sometimes good will appears as a frightening deception. In either case, Israel’s soft policy results in a diminished willingness by its enemies to compromise. Rather than seek partial gains through negotiations, Palestinians are increasingly resolved to win all through force.” That should be obvious to anyone paying any attention to the events unfolding now in Israel. The only answer is to meet such force with even greater, more relentless force. That is the only choice left to the Israelis because the negotiations are a meaningless farce. As I write this, I believe it will be their choice. Americans may believe they don’t have a stake in the events unfolding in Israel, but they do. The United States has long been the guarantor of Israel’s security. In previous wars on Israel, the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the US came to the aid of Israel. Will Bill Clinton? His Vice President is running for the highest office with a Jew as his running mate. His wife is running for Senator from New York, but has signaled she leans toward with the Palestinians (a position she now denies). The ancient question arises again, Quo vadis? © Alan Caruba, 2000 See our latest columns: View expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Political USA.
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