<st half of Christopher Hitchens’ title for his recent piece in Slate is “How Long Will Israel Survive?” The answer to that question is Israel will last because history has demonstrated Jews are survivors in the face of Christianity and Islam. In terms of any kind of peace, that will only occur when the Arab and Muslim world sees Israel beyond something to be destroyed.
Just look at the dichotomy between the commemoration of Israeli statehood on one hand and the “Catastrophe,” nakba, on the other on May 14th. The failure to annihilate Israel in 1948 by Arabs, was not only nabbed with an observance day to bemoan their losses, but the outside Arab countries’ counter – balance with the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, and other Arab counties. If, in fact, no invasion took place as Ben-Gurion hoped, might cooperation and joint statehood be actually seen? I cannot say. What is clear is the Arab world mentality, largely in the governments, is that Jews should not exist at all.
How fitting is it that the Palestinian leaders based their Jewish relationship in that destructive framework well before 1948. In 1934, for instance, Musa al-Alami, the assistant Attorney General in the British Mandate, uttered the land should stay “impoverished and barren for another hundred years…” if Jews succeeded in their plight there. Then, too should be mentioned the heinous Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and his pleas for riots to kill as many Jews as possible in the 1930s because of their massive emigration there. These ‘leaders,’ were hardly effective for the Palestinians except that they concentrated their energies in funneling and creating hate.
Palestinian leadership to prevent Israel continued in Yassar Arafat. The Egyptian born, though claimed to have grown up in the ghettos of his Palestinians, approved and helped finance Israeli murder after Israeli murder. His group carried out the Ma’lot murders, including of children, in May 1974, with a slew of others, yet somehow became a rising star. He was called the “sole legitimate representative” in 1980 by the European Economic Community. Truly then, the measure of this man’s representation of his people is found in his initiating murders of civilians, the Intifada, then his renunciation of terrorism and then say, later, “We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state…” in Stockholm in 1996.
Currently, the Israeli survival question is given an adamant “NO” from Iranian officials and those refusing to confront Iran. Even before Ahmadinejad, the several Iranian funded proxies clear up any doubts that detractors have about the so-called “wipe off the map” misinterpretation. Before him, even in 2005, Khomeini spoke “…[Israel’s] destruction is a must for all governments and nations of Islam.” The cease-fire calls that people carried for Israel not to continue in self-defense in the Summer War were just as much a “No.” Ending that war has only allowed the terrorists to rearm and recruit more heavily. Now, the UNIFIL forces are being chased away by Hezbollah along the border and are finally admitting they are not preventing arms changing hand. There is now close and encroaching war because the last ones (both in Lebanon) were not finished.
Israeli celebration for May 14th is just, and for that matter, so is the celebration by Jews and non-Jews who celebrate its meaning of survival. But, in the upcoming years, the thing to watch out for is another special day in the Arab and / or Muslim World where countries cry over a further failed attempt to obliterate the Jewish state.