Member-only story
Because they have innocent civilians in Gaza shielding them. Because they’re counting on world opinion restraining Israel’s determination to defeat them.
Israel belongs in Palestine. So do the Arabs. But reckless leadership has kept the flames of enmity and violence alive in Arab hearts and minds for more than a hundred years.
And the cost has been enormous. Not only in lives lost but in opportunities missed.
Jews never conquered the vast territories that Arabs did in times past when they reached into North Africa and Spain which they held for centuries.
Arab minds and their creativity gave us enormous advances in the sciences and humanities. But then the lights dimmed and other peoples took the lead.
Why shouldn’t Israel be in Palestine?
Both Arabs and Jews have inhabited that land since the beginning of recorded history.
Jews have migrated all over the world, and they have faced hatred and persecution in nearly every place they have gone.
All the while they longed to return to Palestine.
The migration back to Palestine started before WWI and then grew steadily, even against opposition of major powers like England. Then came the Holocaust and the horrors of it hardened Jewish resolve to return to their ancestral home.
When the United Nations consented to the creation of Israel in November 1947, borders were drawn that allowed for Jews to coexist with their Arab neighbors. But such was the…
