“The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.” Genesis 13:14-17
Israel is a tiny country with a population of around 10 million and a land mass comparable to the state of New Jersey—the fifth smallest state in the U.S. It is 290 miles in length and only 85 miles wide. Israel’s role on the world stage should seemingly be relatively minor, yet hardly a day goes by when events in or concerning Israel do not dominate international headlines. What many today seem to overlook is that Israel didn’t just rise from the rocky land of Palestine in 1948; it has been in existence for centuries although known by various names.
At the end of World War II with all its horrors of the Holocaust, the devastated Jewish survivors in Europe longed to travel to Palestine, their biblical homeland. Their dreams were to be delayed when Britain was placed in control of Palestine by mandate of the United Nations, and with a growing dilemma: How to walk the tightrope between world opinion and the Arabs. After the shock and revulsion of the Holocaust, much of the world increasingly demanded that the Jews be allowed to emigrate to Palestine—thought to be a place of safety for them. Arabs in the region were adamantly opposed to the move.
Greatly frustrated by the situation, the British announced in February 1947 that control of Palestine would be ceded to the United Nations, even then a hotbed of anti-Semitism. In November 1947, the UN offered a plan for partition that would divide the region into an Arab state and a Jewish state, calling for British troops to leave Palestine by August 1948. The Jews welcomed the proposal; the Arabs scorned it. A provisional government was established under David Ben-Gurion in March 1948. Two months later, on May 14, as Egyptian fighter-bombers roared overhead and British troops readied for departure, Ben-Gurion and his political partners gathered at the museum in Tel Aviv and declared Israel’s independence.
The following day, Israel was attacked by the Arab nations that ring her borders. Only through the grace and protection of God was Israel able to survive. Again and again over the years, this tiny island of freedom has suffered assaults directed by evil men dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people.
Today, Israel is more isolated than ever. Security is a never-ending struggle as all of Israel’s neighbors either actively oppose her or at least harbor those who do. Terrorist groups thrive in Gaza, which shares Israel’s border with Egypt and harbors Hamas. Lebanon is home to Hezbollah, which along with Hamas is an Iranian proxy.
Since the reuniting of the city of Jerusalem in 1967, there have been over 10,000 terrorist attacks in the Bible land. There have been more suicide bombings in Jerusalem than in any other city in the world. As my dear friend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly pointed out, the contention is not about a Palestinian state, or the division of Jerusalem, settlements, checkpoints, security fences, or borders. The issue is Israel’s very right to exist as a nation. Their opposition to Israel’s national aspirations has always been tied to the Muslim world’s ultimate resistance to the right of the Jewish people to exist at all.
Peaceful co-existence has never been the goal of the Arabs. Even having Jews living in other lands is not an option for fanatical Islamists and modern-day Neo-Nazis. Their real goal has been the abnegation, and in its worst and most absolute form, the very extermination, of the entire Jewish race. This is why Palestinian children are taught to hate and kill Jews from their first breath and why the Islamic world throws parties in the streets every time Jewish blood is shed. This is why in radical Islamic theology the successful homicidal maiming and murder of Jews represents the highest aspirations many Palestinian mothers have for their children. The demons of hell dance every time a Jew is murdered.
Anti-Israeli sentiment has in fact become the new anti Semitism. It makes Israel the new “collective Jew” which justifies assaults on individual Jews as the extension of the state. This hatred—not any other issue—is the true source of murder and terrorism. The terror wars that Israel fights in the 21st century are not against a particular Arab nation. Rather, the conflict is spearheaded by an unpredictable and often unidentifiable band of terrorists with the ability and mobility to shift from country to country almost at will. Without identifying uniforms, they become invisible, striking without warning. The attacks are meant to instill fear and trepidation among the Jewish populace. This is one of the many reasons the U.S. alliance with Israel continues to be a necessity.