Why I support Israel
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Israel acts because the world won't defend it | Daniel Finkelstein - Times Online.
If you feel Israel is at fault (and it's hard to find any other view in the MSM in Britain) I would refer you to Daniel Finkelstein's excellent piece today in The Times. He references the meeting at Camp David in 2000, when an Israeli offer brokered by President Clinton should have finally ended this conflict and seen Clinton go down in history for something more than his creative use of Havanas. It didn't because the Palestinians and their sponsors don't want peace. They will settle for nothing less than the annihilation of Israel. If you don't believe me, read Hamas's Charter and Google President Ahmadinejad's utterances on the subject. As Finkelstein says;
That is why, though I was suspended from my school for selling the Free Palestine newspaper at its gates as a 16 year old, I stopped supporting the Palestinians long ag. I lost all remaining sympathy with them when they celebrated 9/11 in the streets. That is why I have made clear my support for Israel, the IDF and its operation Cast Lead. That is why I think, like the kindly teacher in Finkelstein's anecdote, many well-intentioned Brits should revisit their views on this subject.
Large numbers of Middle Eastern Jews were forcibly expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was created. Not unsurprisingly, they went to Israel, also in the Middle East. So now who are the rightful owners of any particular patch of ground in the Middle East?
As for "white" South Africa, it is a historical fact that "whites" were in South Africa before negro tribes pushed south by the Bantu expansions. The original inhabitants of course were the pygmy and aboriginal peoples, many of whom interbred with the original "white" settlers to produce the so-called "coloureds".
And of course, anyone arguing that "whites" are colonists who should have no right to continue to live where they and their families have lived for centuries is really recycling the old National Front argument that non-whites should be forcibly repatriated to their original homelands. After all, really, what's the difference?
Posted by: David B. Wildgoose | Friday, January 09, 2009 at 04:36 PM
Thoughtful replies... "During the years of the Palestine Mandate, from 1922 to 1947, large-scale Jewish immigration from abroad, mainly from Eastern Europe took place, the numbers swelling in the 1930s with the notorious Nazi persecution of Jewish populations. Palestinian demands for independence and resistance to Jewish immigration led to a rebellion in 1937, followed by continuing terrorism and violence from both sides during and immediately after World War II. Great Britain tried to implement various formulas to bring independence to a land ravaged by violence. In 1947, Great Britain turned the problem over to the United Nations."
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/ngo/history.html
So there you have it. It is a UN responsibility. The UN should be restraining Palestinian terorists.
Posted by: Kinderling | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 12:32 PM
My tuppence worth on this intractable problem . . .
Once one acknowledges the right of Israel to exist, one has to acknowledge their right to defend themselves against a gang of very ungentlemanly chaps. The fact that a bunch of settlers basically stole the land of the Palestinians with the connivance of the international community is awkward, but we have a fait accompli.
Yeah, I can understand why the Palestinians are furious about it 60 years later, and want to fight. (If the UK had lost a war in the 1940s I suspect and another country had taken our land, some people would still be fighting a rearguard action and trying to drive the hun into the sea.) I can even (just about) understand why the Palestinians vote for a bunch of total clowns.
So I respect the right of Israel to fight against a bunch of terrorist thugs, even if it means that innocent people die. I also respect the right of the Palestinians to fight to try to get back their land. (Though I think that the way that Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP, etc have done it over the decades has been both morally wrong and stupid.)
What I don't respect is westerners saying that Israel has a right to exist, but then wringing their hands and complaining when they try to defend themselves against Hamas.
Posted by: John | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 10:42 AM
No way Tom, even in the best democracy less than half the population in Gaza voted to take a hardline stand against, and in antagonising, Israel - innocent people are dying and nobody is motivated to stop the Israeli bullies...
Technological superiority, 1st world vs 3rd world, years of sanctions, disregard of UN and peer sentiments - these are a few of the advantages Israel employ - unfairly.
Let's ignore it, and by that I mean the removal of all European and US support - no money no arms, the Libertarian stand would be to cut them off and let them solve it. But as it stands Israel has a massive (European/US) advantage whose bias is irresistible.
Posted by: Polaris | Thursday, January 08, 2009 at 12:48 AM
Defending Israel's right to exist is like defending White South Africa's right to exist. It's a colony. A colony of EUROPEANS.
There won't be peace in the Middle East until the land, all of it, is returned to it's rightful owners. The ones who owned it before boatloads of Europeans showed up and claimed it on the basis of a book written two thousand years ago.
Posted by: Crushed | Wednesday, January 07, 2009 at 06:47 PM