Israel in the Face of Aggression

From Professor Michael Curtis, at American Thinker:

At the outset the obvious should be stated, as Abraham Lincoln stated it in his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865. There was no moral equivalence between the two sides in the Civil War. One side would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.

There is no moral equivalence between the objective of the terrorist group Hamas to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible and the response of Israel to stop the flow of thousands of rockets directed against it. The directive to massacre all Jews is unmistakable in the Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) broadcast of July 20, 2014. It called on Jihad fighters “to enter settlements (towns in southern Israel) to kill them all… they are all invaders, they are all criminals… have no mercy on them.”

Nor is any moral equivalence present in the desire of Israel to settle the Arab Israeli conflict by peace negotiations without conditions, and the refusal of Palestinians authorities to do so.      

On one side of the equation is the focus of Hamas, whether its political or military wings or its religious council (Majlis al-Shura), on destruction, and continuation of violence, even massacre, against Israeli citizens, rather than concentration on building a progressive prosperous society, in spite of obvious problems. The fighting in Gaza has revealed the wastage by Hamas of the human resources and the material, bought from funds given by the international community.

The funds have been used to buy sophisticated machinery and thousands of tons of cement and other materials in order to obtain rockets and to build a network of underground tunnels from which to attack Israeli civilians. The network of the tunnels, of which so far 32 have been destroyed, has cost at least $90 million. Each tunnel has used amounts of construction materials that could have been used to build 86 homes, seven mosques, six schools, or 19 medical clinics. In addition, 160 exploited children have died while being used to build them.

On the other side, if not without blemish and being subject to objective and appropriate criticism, is the constructive record, the process of nation building, of the State of Israel. Since 1948 this has continued in spite of the relentless hostility of the Arab world, of bigoted bias, discrimination, and use of double standards by the “international community,” and the deceptive Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood that projects Palestinians as the most grievous victims in the world.

That process of successful nation building with all the diversity -- religious, ethnic, and economic -- in Israeli society, continues even though unacknowledged by much of the media, mainstream churches, human rights activists who decry Israel’s attempts at self-defense. Little or no attention is paid to the remarkable innovative activity of Israel, in areas of high tech companies, medical research, pharmaceuticals, health care, cyberspace, drip irrigation, electronics, or academic scholarship.

Of the making of books on Israel there is no end, but, in view of the Hamas brutality and hatred, it is refreshing to read a new book, Israel since the Six-Day War, written by Leslie Stein, the Australian historian. It provides an up-to-date broad survey,  precisely and clearly written, of the struggle of Israel to overcome the Arab aggression against it and survive as a Jewish state. Based on secondary sources, the book, though it has a long chapter on social and economic developments, is essentially concerned with Israel’s actions and policies in dealing with the threats against it and the efforts to reach peace with the Arab states and the Palestinians.

Those threats have been based on hatred of Israel, and often of Jews. That hatred has been inculcated from Palestinian kindergartens on. Schoolbooks show maps of “Palestine” that include all of what is Israel. It is sickening that Palestinian groups engage in Holocaust denial or distortion. Palestinian Authority broadcasts have denied the Holocaust death camps and excused them as “disinfecting sites,” and that Hamas documentaries explained that it was Jewish leaders who planned the Holocaust...

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