The coverage of a major story like the Hamas attack on
Israel is marred by two things. Prejudice and ignorance.
Israel is treated by its opponents, Hamas, the Islamic
world in general, the far Left, Irish Republicans, the BBC etc, etc unlike any
other country. This is the prejudice.
There is minimal knowledge and a lack of a fair
understanding of the process by which Israel came to be a state and the events
that followed this. The history is freely available, but few know it. This is
the ignorance.
In 1900 there was no state called Palestine. Indeed, much
of the present-day map of the Middle East had yet to be drawn. There was no
Lebanon, no Syria, nor Iraq and no Jordan as well as no Israel.
Jewish people began to migrate to what is now called
Israel from the late 19th century onwards. Many were motivated by Zionism.
But it is crucial to realise that the justification of
the existence of the state of Israel does not depend on agreeing with Zionism.
Some Israelis might think that Israel is theirs
because God gave them the land from Dan to Beersheba. That is a matter of
theology. This may have been the motivation for many Jewish people migrating to
Israel. But Israel exists because of historical and political circumstances.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War One and
Britain and France drew the map of the Middle East. Britain controlled
Mandatory Palestine from 1920 to 1948.
After the Second World War enough Jewish people had
migrated to Mandatory Palestine for the United Nations to decide to partition
Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state (Israel) and a Muslim state (Palestine).
You cannot oppose Jewish migration to the Middle East
while you or your family have migrated to Europe. That is prejudice.
At this point in 1948 the Arab world united with the
Palestinians to try to annihilate Israel. They lost.
After the war there was no Palestinian state. The Gaza
strip was ruled by Egypt and the West Bank was ruled by Jordan.
Many Palestinians were displaced due to the war in
1948 and due to the partition of Mandate Palestine.
But it is important to put this into the context of
post World War Two border changes. Between 1944 and 1950 between 12 to 14
million Germans were displaced from their homes in Eastern Europe. Between 500,000
and 2.5 million died.
Ten to twenty million people were displaced by the partition
of India in 1947 and there were between 200,000 and 2 million deaths.
The borders of the world are massively different from
what they were in 1900. Many new states arose from empires. One of them was
Israel. It arose because of demographic change due to migration. There were in
1948 sufficient Jewish people to justify a state called Israel and sufficient
to defend it.
You don’t have to agree with Zionism to support Israel,
though of course Jewish people have the right to believe in it if they wish.
Compare and contrast what happened to other populations
who were displaced after World War Two. There were between 40 and 60 million
displaced people. How many of them or their descendants are still in refugee
camps? The only people anywhere who are still in refugee camps are Palestinians
who were displaced by the war of 1948. Everyone else made a new life for
themselves.
Imagine if on the border between India and Pakistan
there were refugee Hindus who had lost their homes in what is now Pakistan.
Imagine if periodically they attacked Pakistan with rockets and then randomly assaulted,
abducted, raped and murdered Pakistani civilians. How would Pakistan respond?
It would attack with everything it had and not one
person living in Bute House would say it was wrong for it to do so.
It would have been dreadful for Hindus to have lost
their homes and jobs in Pakistan, but almost no one today thinks about refugees
from Pakistan from the time of partition. The reason is that they are not refugees.
They accepted the loss of their homes and made new lives in India or elsewhere.
Since 1948 the Arab world has periodically united particularly
in 1967 and 1973 to try to annihilate Israel. On each occasion Israel has won
and gained control over the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights in 1967. But Israel
took none of these places from a state called Palestine. It took them from Jordan,
Egypt and Syria.
In war it has been normal throughout history for the
winning side to gain territory. But somehow it is different when it is Israel.
This too is prejudice.
Since the failure of military action against Israel
the focus of Palestinian resistance has moved towards terrorism and irregular
war.
The root of the problem is that neither the West Bank nor
the Gaza Strip are viable as a state. Even if you could form a state from them
tomorrow it would depend on either Israel or foreign aid.
If Palestinians were to recognise the state of Israel as
a permanently Jewish state, there might be a chance for peaceful cooperation
with Gaza and the West Bank for the mutual benefit of everyone. But
Palestinians rejected their best chance of peace in 2000 and in 2008 and
instead chose to terrorism only this time of the Jihadist variety. They still
want to annihilate Israel. How do you make peace with someone who wants all
Jews in Israel to die?
It would have been better by far if Palestinians displaced
by war in 1948 had been integrated into the Arab world. There is minimal
distinction between a Jordanian and a Palestinian either linguistically,
culturally or religiously. Neither had a country in 1900.
But it does not look as if Palestinians in Gaza want peace.
They seem to be desperate people caught in a tiny strip of land without much opportunity
and without much hope. It has grown from a population of around 60,000 in 1948
to 2.3 million. It breeds babies and terrorism, but produces nothing you could
sell.
Yesterday’s scenes will have shocked Israel to the
core. It is like 1973 all over again though on a smaller scale. No Western
country would accept such an attack and nor should Israel.
At some point Israel needs to think about how to
permanently solve the problem. It isn’t enough to continually defeat the Arab
world in war only to endure terrorism and insurgency forever.
Any reasonable historical assessment shows that Israel
has both the right to exist and the right to defend itself. It also has the right
to do whatever is necessary to prevent such atrocities as happened yesterday
happening ever again. It must decisively defeat its enemies.
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