The Hot Potato in Context

Israel doesn't lack for critics!

With a large segment of her own people openly critical of her actions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and most of the non-Jewish world adding its condemnation along with the disapproval of American Jews, Israel, as is often the case, is not short of fault-finders.

Conspicuously, none of her detractors have come forth with a workable alternative.

Admittedly, shooting rioters is drastic and beatings are not palatable — so should Israel quietly wait for the Palestinians to run short of rocks to throw and tires to burn? Is that the way hostile rioters are treated in other countries?

Let me attempt to put the problem in context by some background review and references.

How can we in America truly comprehend the precariousness of Israel's plight? About as well as a man can truly feel what it's like to be pregnant and give birth to a baby.

The United States is the most powerful country in the world. Besides that, it is blessed with a friendly Canada to the north, a dependent and non-hostile Mexico to the south, the vast Pacific Ocean to the west, and the buffering Atlantic to the east.

Yet, with all that power and protection, half our nation is phobic about the perceived danger from a weak and distant Nicaragua as well as Cuba, neither of which is capable of putting us in jeopardy. And after the attack on Pearl Harbor, our nation of 140 million saw fit to intern a few thousand Americans of Japanese ancestry who had manifested no intention of rebellion or even thrown a single stone in anger.

Now look at a map of the vast Middle East with Israel squeezed into a speck of land and surrounded by 60 million Arabs (that's 20 times Israel's population) sworn to destroy her. When Israel has indicated a willingness to enter into peace negotiations, the Arabs' answer has been unequivocal: No recognition. No negotiations. And no peace.

How do you deal with someone who does not even recognize your right to exist?

The Judea-Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza areas were only captured in the 1967 conflict. Since the birth of the state in 1948, the Arab world had by 1967 launched three wars in a determined attempt to destroy Israel. As is obvious from that alone, the issues in the area go beyond self-determination for the Palestinians.

Significantly, the United Nations in 1948 partitioned what was called Palestine into both Arab and Jewish sectors. Areas now in contention (the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as well as the old city of Jerusalem) then were all under Arab control — but that did not satisfy the Arabs.

Before the ink was dry on the U.N. partition document, all the Arab nations attacked Israel in an effort to destroy the tiny infant state.

From 1948 to 1967 Egypt administered Gaza and the West Bank was under Jordanian rule — and the people who are called Palestinians did not achieve autonomy or any iota of self-rule. Before 1948, the place known as Palestine was ruled by Britain; and, for hundreds of years before Britain, by the Ottoman Empire.

And long before all of them it was the land Moses led the Israelites to in the exodus from Egypt.

At no time in history has there ever been a Palestinian independent entity in Gaza or the West Bank. Only Israel and at her dire peril is now being asked to create one.

Since 1948 Israel has welcomed, forcibly expelled from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen and Lebanon. Perhaps in return those countries can now offer safe haven to the 1.3 million Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza. It certainly would solve at least part of the problem.

Financial assistance could be supplied by Arab and Jew alike as well as by the Christians of the world in the interests of justice and peace.

Israel conclusively proved its good faith desire to compromise in the "land for peace" exchange returning the Sinai to Egypt in 1979, sacrificing security and oil in the process. Yet for that simple act of entering into a treaty, Egypt was excommunicated by all other Arab nations and Sadat was assassinated.

In the interest of peace, most Israelis might acquiesce in giving back Gaza and a portion of the West Bank — but how? And to whom consistent with the security and defense of Israel? Both Egypt and Jordan want no part of their erstwhile territory, and the Palestinians don't want them, either.

"...without a body the Jewish soul is left in a vacuum."

And as for an independent Gaza and West Bank, the territories in question simply do not constitute a viable entity. There is no industry or possible economic survival. It would soon turn into a festering site for terrorist activity, even more chaotic and unsettled than Lebanon.

This Israel does not need.

No, I'm not happy with what's going on in the occupied zones. But integral to Israel's existence is the maintenance of order in its territories. Nobody has yet devised an attractive and bloodless method of controlling belligerent rioters bent on aggressive and hostile action, and Israel is no exception.

Less than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the three months of almost daily rioting. Contrast that with the slaughter in 1982 by the Syrians of 20,000 Arabs in the Muslim Brotherhood incident in Hama, or the ten days in 1970 when King Hussein of Jordan killed thousands of Palestinians in putting down a PLO uprising. The difference is that the media has almost unfettered access in Israel and are having a field day with the graphic events.

Perhaps understandably the world holds Israel to a higher moral standard than it does the Arab world. This double standard has been accepted also by our fellow religionists who have an abiding concern about the Jewish soul.

Fair enough in theory, but without a body the Jewish soul is left in a vacuum.

Maybe the world is comfortable with the Jewish People as victim, as pitiful survivors of a Holocaust, and not as militant defenders of its rightful place in the universe of nations. But as Jews, we need not lend ourselves to that position.

Lamentably, the hot potato has caused dissension among Jews everywhere, and that pains me deeply.

Sure, I feel sorry for the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. They are and have been an oppressed people. Yet nothing is gained by any proposed resolution which will jeopardize Israel's safety and inevitably lead to future battle.

And where Israel's very existence is threatened by the unrest, I refuse to criticize from the safety of these shores.