Donald Meissner

People often ask me why I am preoccupied with the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet the answer Post-9/11 seems clear: the Jews in Israel have been fighting Muslim extremists since The Hebron Massacre of 1929.

Hebron is a Biblical town, a residence for both Abraham and King David, and a Jewish battleground against the Roman legions; Jews lived there for thousands of years.  The 800 Jews in modern Hebron lived in peace amidst tens of thousands of Arabs, yet the 1929 murder of 67 Jews precipitated the ethnic cleansing of the Hebron Jewish community, relocated to Jerusalem.  European Jews had been immigrating to Israel since the end of the 19th Century, fleeing persecution and pogroms which would culminate with the Holocaust.  This influx of Jewish refugees was intolerable to the Arab population of British Mandate Palestine.

Today we read of rockets falling on a small Israeli town named Sderot, critically injuring two young boys in December.  A supposed cease-fire was obtained over a month ago, but that has not stopped Gaza Arabs from firing rockets every day.  Israel pulled out all of the Jewish population of Gaza in August 2005, hopeful that withdrawal would prove to the Palestinian Authority and the "international community" that Israel has no desire to rule over Palestinian Arabs, and will grant them autonomy whenever and wherever possible. 

Critics of the plan said that it would embolden the terrorists, who would claim victory, having gained more territory from which to launch attacks on Israel.  The controversial separation fence has created an effective deterrent to homicide bombers, thus rocket attacks and kidnapping are now the routine form of belligerence.

What an outrage for a government to ethnically cleanse part of its territory.  Can you imagine that happening in America? All Mormons to Utah, all Baptists to Georgia, all Jews to Brooklyn, NY?  The mere thought is revolting, yet extraordinarily strange things happen in Israel, where the Palestinian faction Fatah, headed my Mahmoud Abbas, was recently re-armed with Israel's blessing, to shore up defenses against the terrorist group Hamas.  Turf battles between Fatah and Hamas are a daily occurence in Gaza.

In the newspapers we read headlines such as "Israel to renew attacks against Palestinians" instead of the actual news: "Rockets launched daily from Gaza critically injure two youths on playground, paralyze small community."

The barren hillsides of Israel/Palestine have plenty of room for Arabs and Jews to live in peace, and Sderot is in pre-1967 Israel, not a disputed territory.  Indeed, Jews and Arabs have lived in peace for many periods of time, and a million Israeli Arabs enjoy the only Democracy, freedom, and women's rights available in the Middle East.

As the United States continues the difficult world war against Muslim extremism, and begins to confront the terrorist state Iran, which conducts a proxy war in Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel, we should express our sympathy and solidarity with Israel, embroiled in a daily battle for its very existence.