A man wrote me the other day to complain about something I had written about my belief that Israel has every right to exist in peace and security. He responded that Israel should not exist at all. He asserted that Israel is simply a western colony implanted in the Middle East that is as "authentic as white Rhodesia" was.
He argued that every Israeli is from somewhere else and that what we call an "Israeli culture" is really just European culture with influences from Sephardic Israelis, "who are really Arabs", as well as from the indigenous Palestinians.
As is often said by anti-Israel polemicists, he invoked the crusader colony that occupied Palestine for 200 years and then vanished. One way or another, he said, Israel, too, will disappear, rejected by the region the way a human body rejects an incompatible implant.
To me, the whole argument (and the impulse behind it) is laughable and could only be made by someone who has very little knowledge about Israel.
Like it or not, Israel is no more a European colony than the United States. While once the various peoples that compose Israel were simply settlers, being Israeli today is as distinct a nationality as any in the world.
Although Jews visiting from the United States or Europe often say, "I feel so at home here," that is only an illusion. Without speaking the Hebrew language and knowing the unique local culture, no one can be at home there who has not lived there a very long time.
Visitors to Israel often say that it is impossible to tell Israelis from the Palestinians. And, with the exception of the ultra-traditional among both peoples, that is true.
But no one ever says that about the American, French or Russian Jews, not even after they have been there 20 years or more.
An Israeli is an Israeli. It is amazing but a distinct new nationality was created over the past century. Seven million people speak Hebrew as their day-to-day language; before 1887 not a single person did.
The creation of this nation and nationality was an amazing achievement. Despite all its faults, it is hard to imagine a Jew from previous eras who would not be struck with pride and wonder by the accomplishment.
It does seem like a miracle, although it really is the result of hard work by remarkable men and women and a series of historical accidents, some horrendous beyond belief.
But now, Israel's current leadership is jeopardizing the whole enterprise.
In short, they are behaving in a manner as suicidal as Binyamin Netanyahu claims the Iranian regime behaves.
How else to characterize a series of attacks in Iran (widely attributed to Israel although no one really knows) or the "crippling sanctions" inflicted on the people of Iran by the United States, under the aggressive and single-minded pressure of AIPAC, the Netanyahu government's lobby. How else to characterize the absolute refusal by the United States, under pressure from the lobby, to engage Iran diplomatically with the goal not merely of preventing an Iranian bomb but of fully normalizing relations (as Iran proposed in 2003),
Any doubt that Netanyahu and the lobby want war can be eliminated not just by the fifth assassination of an Iranian scientist in the streets of Tehran this week but by an AIPAC-drafted resolution that calls on the president to deal with a nuclear Iran through no means other than war.
Introduced by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the resolution states that should Iran develop nuclear weapons, the U.S. response must be a military attack, even nuclear war. Read how Sen. Graham explains the legislation.
Some have suggested that -- should economic and diplomatic pressure fail to force Iran to abandon its pursuit of acquiring nuclear weapons -- the next best option is for the United States to accept and then contain a nuclear-armed Iran. That would be a catastrophic mistake.
The resolution we intend to introduce will put the Senate on record as opposing containment in the strongest and clearest terms, detailing why the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran cannot be 'contained' like the threat of the Soviet Union.When it comes to addressing the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, all options must be on the table - except for one, and that is containment. ... Containment is failure, and failure cannot be an option.
Imagine. The only option the lobby-initiated Senate resolution would prohibit is the very policy that prevented the world from being destroyed during the Cold War. It is also the option the United States applies in the case of every other nation with nuclear weapons, including North Korea.
Of course, the resolution is unconstitutional. Congress cannot prevent the president from engaging in diplomacy. It certainly cannot force the Commander and Chief to engage in a war that could likely be nuclear.
Imagine if Congress could have forced President Kennedy to go to war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis rather than resolve the crisis through diplomacy. If it had, it is quite possible that none of us would be here.
Nonetheless, this is what the so-called "pro-Israel" lobby is promoting: ruling out diplomacy in favor of war.
It is insane.
Surely the Israeli government (if not the lobby) understands that a military attack on Iran would lead to strikes on Israel, engineered by Iran, its allies, and regional proxies.
Hezbollah alone has thousands of missiles on Israel's northern border that can reach every inch of Israel. Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, which is hanging by a thread anyway, would be unlikely to withstand popular support for some kind of military response. Hamas, on Israel's southern border, would attack. As for Syria, Bashir Assad might attack Israel just to divert attention from the revolution that seems on the verge of sweeping away his regime.
Additionally, the nearly dead peace process would be buried. Israel might survive the war and its aftermath, but it would never achieve peace or security with a Muslim world that would never forgive a "preemptive" attack on a fellow Muslim state.
In short, those who are advocating an attack on Iran by either Israel or the United States are cavalierly trifling with the survival of Israel, a nation that was built by dreamers and pioneers who wanted nothing more than a secure spot on earth where Jews would control their own destiny. That vision was achieved.
But now it is being jeopardized by those who have a different dream: not the security of a Jewish state but its right to regional hegemony.
As Gen. Ephraim Sneh, one of Israel's leading Iran hawks admits: the rush to war is not about Israel's survival but its ability to do whatever it wants to do whenever it wants to. In Sheh's word, "We cannot afford a nuclear bomb in the hands of our enemies, period. They don't have to use it: the fact that they have it is enough."
Enough to risk the annihilation of Israel?
Fortunately, America's leaders don't think that way. We have lived under a nuclear threat since Stalin's Soviet Union developed atomic weapons in the late 1940's. In 1965, we had to accept the idea that our worst and most irrational enemy, the nation we then called Red China, had the bomb. And now there is North Korea, the craziest nation on earth, and Pakistan which openly and defiantly colludes with the world's most anti-American terrorists.
We live with that.
We choose containment over national suicide. I have no doubt that virtually all Israelis (and Iranians, too) share our penchant for survival.
Something is wrong with the Netanyahu government and its cutouts here. They have forgotten the number one injunction of the Torah: "Therefore, choose life."
In other words, choose diplomacy, not war.
Follow MJ Rosenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjayrosenberg
Sorry if they are more successful than your Arab friends, but that isn't hard. Sorry if they won't evacuate territory which the Arabs once attacked them from, but the evacuation will only happen if the Israelis believe that the Arabs won't use the evacuated territory to attack Israel from. Based upon recent history (Gaza, Lebanon), the Arabs probably don't have peaceful intentions in mind for the west bank. Sorry if the Israelis have more support in the American political system than your Arab dictators (didn't stop the arms sales to Saudi Arabia, did it?), but the American people feel a kinship with Israel, which is the real reason Israel is so highly regarded by Congress.
Hegemony? Come on Rosenberg, how about less hyperbole?
I rather do think on occasion that the US (as is Canada where I am) do have about as much legitimacy as a European colony imposed upon North America and the natives.
But to speak to the topic of Israel, demographics will predict the future. Arab Israelis will outnumber Israeli - Israelis in the future and vote for an agreement that leads to peace. The Israel of today should muster the political willpower to see this future and make a deal sooner rather than a deal later - which would be on much worse terms.
Iran-- who has NO territorial dispute with Israel(!)-- raised the "external enemy" manipulation of its populations to high art.
Back to reality
Israel made with those Arabs who are willing to make peace:Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan and no increasingly Saudi Arabia.
Israel maintains mutually beneficial cultural and scientific and economic ties with
In 1979, the mullahs ordered the storming of the US embassy, and then held 52 US diplomats hostage for 15 months. Remember?
Israel had nothing to do with this.
Iranian hostility to the so-called "great satan" has continued unabated since.
It's Iran that has hedgemonic goals - they don't even hide their ambitions.
See, for example, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/irans-goal-of-regional-hegemony/story-e6frg6zo-1225868866287
"On May 15, we were subjected to a tirade by Ayatollah Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi, leader of Iran's Hezbollah party ...... The need of the hour, intoned the ayatollah, was for a "Greater Iran" that would assume hegemonic control over much of the Middle East and Central Asia (stretching from Afghanistan to Palestine, according to the broad-brush ambitions disclosed by his polemic)."
The US sided with the Shah and took him in when the people of Iran wanted him out. that is when the hostages were taken.
The US was on the side of Iraq in the Iran Iraq war.
Israel has been the insider to take out Iranian scientists.
Unless the Israelis figure out how to live in the neighborhood, they will eventually be removed.
You may not like that but that is the cold harsh reality. That is, Israel's belligerence will only work for a little while and eventually the neighbors will have enough power to bend Israel to their will.
It is far better to negotiate a reasonable agreement now than to force the issue and suffer when the Arabs hold a knife at the Israelis throats and tell them what they will submit to.
Israel can NOT win every battle forever. It will eventually lose and when it does, it will lose EVERYTHING.
Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, I pray for our President tonight.
I pray that you should give him the wisdom of Solomon, to lead this nation into war against the enemies of righteousness.
I pray for the good men and women in Washington DC, that they will stand in righteous boldness for this righteous cause.
I pray in the name of Jesus that every power and principality of darkness will be brought to confusion when this war begins.
I pray God that the enemy shall be destroyed, and that the angels of Heaven shall go before the US and British forces, bringing deliverance to that part of the world, and most assuredly, deliverence to Israel. Amen
John Hagee's War Prayer with Benny Hinn Oct. 24, 2011
You are old enough to know that this was propaganda intended for American audeinces. There was no overtures. Obama lied to you
Israel by far is NOT suicidal, especially after WW2 events, the Jewish people realized that no one gives a hoot about them and their lives; the same goes for Netanyahu’s government, which the banished labor old guard hates as much as MJ and his ilk hates. Yet, the freely elected government of Israel manages pretty well despite all odds and the naysayers, some of the comment here about comparing Israel to its backward neighbors is laughable.
All the bleeding heart here pretending to care and show how human they are, are nothing but pretenders, I did not see any of you yelping much about the HALF MILLION non-Muslim Sudaneses massacred in Darfur, or the thousands killed in Libya, Syria and the Kurds in Turkey by their own esteem freely elected governments. Yet when it comes to Israel all the bad epitaphs and labels of vilification are being drawn out of the dictionary….
Last, Israel and its people knows that it is better to be alive and called a bully, then dead and called an INNOCENT VICTIM.