As an American Jew, the conflict in the Middle East is challenging for me to parse. One the one hand, and as a child who grew up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, I’ve always had great empathy with the State of Israel. First, Hitler tried to remove Jewry from Europe. Then, for my entire life, Islamic nations surrounding Israel continued their anti-Jew crusade, and tried to drive it into the Mediterranean Sea.
The love of American Jews of my generation for Israel cannot be overemphasized. As a child my parents kept, in our kitchen, a contribution box for us to drop our spare change into. This was known as “the pushka” and its nickles and dimes were to be sent to Israel to grow trees to turn the desert into farmland. This instinctive love for Israel has continued into my adulthood, even though I am in no way an observant Jew.
On the other hand, the Palestinians deserve a homeland just as the Jews have one. Jews and Palestinians are, after all, the same people, historically. This is thus a civil war, and as in all civil wars there are tragedies on both sides. My heart does break for the people of Gaza. What has happened to them, and apparently is now happening in Lebanon, is atrocious.
But when I say this war is difficult for me to parse, let me elaborate. There’s a part of me, a stubborn part of my intellectual makeup, that can’t resist thinking that this war would stop immediately if all the Muslim antagonists would cease their efforts to drive Israel into the sea. If they would recognize Israel’s legitimacy and come to terms with her, Israel would immediately reciprocate and stop all military action in the region. But this is something that the Muslim protagonists refuse to do. And after all, Israel is not attempting to Judaize its neighbors. Jews have never been evangelistic. If anything, the opposite is true: Jews like restricting their religion. Israel would love to be at peace with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and so on. It’s the Muslim nations that will not allow a free Israel to exist.
I don’t see why Israel is not entitled to defend her right to exist. Surrounded on all sides by enemies who vow to exterminate her, Israel—a tiny little enclave in a sea of fanatical opponents—has only one defense: her military, including her nuclear arsenal. What do people expect Israel to do? The country stands its ground and fights for existence. The same as you and I would do.
The way I see it, America has sided with Israel for a couple of reasons, but the main one is because Israel shares with America the common value of democracy. That makes Israel an outlier in the Middle East, which is exactly why its Muslim enemies want to wipe it out. They want a religious (Islamic) dictatorship across the world. That is lunacy, of course, but it’s a fact, so each of us has to ask ourselves if we really want sharia law imposed on us. This is not a Republican talking point, it’s realism. That would have dire implications for everyone who is not approved by Islamic law, and we’ve seen, in Iran, Afghanistan and other Muslim theocracies, Islamist jurists are not hesitant to apply maximum penalties against those whom they consider blasphemous. That any Gay person in the West supports Muslims is, to me, crazy.
Has Israel gone too far in Gaza? Are they capable of going too far in Lebanon? Who’s to say, when they’re fighting for their lives? For me, the central point remains as I phrased it earlier: this war would stop immediately if all of Israel’s Muslim antagonists would cease their efforts to drive Israel into the sea.
Judaism praises peace. So too, I am led to understand, does the Koran. Why, then, is Islam so opposed to Israel’s existence? They respond that Israel seized Palestinian lands in 1948. But this war between the two sides has been going on since pre-Biblical times. It’s insane that it persists and now threatens to plunge the world into World War III. It’s all so solvable, because it comes down to a single, simple fact: this war would stop immediately if all its Muslim antagonists would cease their efforts to drive Israel into the sea.
Steve Heimoff