Interesting post at an interesting blog run by Yaacov Lozowick for the Israeli State Archives, What’s a Proportional Response?
Here’s a fascinating document from December 13th 1955, in which the Ministers’ Committee for Security and Foreign Affairs discussed a clash which had taken place two nights earlier on the north-eastern coast of the Sea of Galillee: IDF infantry units had assaulted the Syrian positions the length of the coast (about ten kilometers), killing some 50 Syrian troops and capturing 30; six Israelis had been killed in the action. The commander of the action had been a young Lt. Colonel named Ariel Sharon; there are lots of pictures of the event here, and further details in Hebrew are here.
There are many interesting themes in the document, and I expect to come back to some of them in the next few days. Today I’d like to look at Ben Gurion’s explanation for the background of the action:
We’re in a difficult situation with the Arabs, because when they wish to destroy or murder, they don’t have to kill hundreds of us at a time. Instead, they make our life miserable day by day. Maybe they can’t do otherwise, since they’re afraid to send an entire military unit against us. So they send a small squad, and the squad crosses the border and waits for nightfall. Under cover of darkness they wander around until they find an object or a person, and they destroy it or kill the person. Their intention is to do this for years and wear us down…
We can’t do what they do, even if we wished to, because we can’t kill civillians, say to start killing Arab civilians we meet along the way…
So we have two options. We can resign ourselves to this situation, or we can not resign ourselves to it. This government was created to not resign itself to such a situation.
1955.
Not much has changed. It’s never been about the 1967 borders, and it isn’t today. It’s about the elimination of Israel and wearing Israel down over time.
That’s the context in which you need to view anti-Israeli Lawfare, boycotts, rocket fire, and U.N. votes.
Update/Related: West Bank university celebrates terrorism in “art exhibit”
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Israel, a bright light in the midst of lands clothed in darkness. May she continue to burn bright and clear.
There is no rational reason for so much hatred by so many people for so long a time against Jews.
(And don’t give me any static about no rationality for any hatred. B.S.)
Whether rational or not, Jew-hatred is a core belief among Muslims, right from Islam’s outset. Lots of documentation on this topic exists (see Robert Spencer for more), but a very recent one is The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, by Andrew Bostom (2012).
Here is a description of the book from the Amazon page, “This comprehensive meticulously documented collection of scholarly articles presents indisputable evidence that a readily discernible and uniquely Islamic antisemitism has been expressed continuously since the advent of Islam. The contributors show that the “Koran” itself is a significant source of hostility towards Jews as well as other foundational texts.”
http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Islamic-Antisemitism-Sacred-History/dp/1591025540
Western “leaders” are deliberately ignoring this intractable problem, a problem that ensures that there will never be peace in the Middle East, and the reason for that lies ENTIRELY with the Muslims.
Let me preface my remark by noting that I am Jewish.
Hating Jews is NOT the defining attribute of radical Islam or the Arab world. They kind of hate everybody at this point. Start with women (which is 50% of the planet), throw on Western nations, ethnic groups like the Slavs, and pretty soon you have a sizable majority of the planet’s population and nations.
Heck, they are even pissed at themselves: Sunni vs. Shiite.
Now, most Muslims are supposed to be pretty damn nice as individuals, and the Muslims and Arabs I know personally seem to fit the bill. But, as a group, they tend not to play well with others.
The strategy against Israel has never been either subtle or covert.
It is the same strategy used against any democracy by a militant and ruthless enemy…”bleed them; exhaust them”.
Even the U.S. faced the prospect of a war-drained populace toward the end of WWII, and it was something Marshall worried about. If Japan resisted enough, would the American people push for a conditional surrender to see an end to the war?
For the Arabs (and broader Islamists), the trick is to try to get Israel into a sticky war, bleeding it of its economic vitality since so much of the nation mobilizes.
That is why they constantly poke and provoke.
“This government [the State of Israel] was created to not resign itself to such a situation.”
We phrased it differently but the objective of liberty is the same, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [and not seeking the consent of those [Muslims] who would restart the Final Solution at a moment’s notice]”.
No other country from within the British and French Mandates has had its mandate borders assaulted to the absurd degree Israel has been gerrymandered. The borders of all other, and I do mean ALL, countries from within the mandate adhere to the mandate borders dividing them. The UN did not try to partition the borders established by the San Remo Accords as amended in 1922 for any of the other emerging nations…but it tried with Israel. In 1967 Israel took back Judea and Samaria and their borders today reflect the British Mandate borders of “Jewish Palestine.”
A united allied front, including Arab states, with Israel exercising vast restraint by not reacting to the missiles from Saddam’s Iraq, to restore the Mandate borders of Kuwait versus Iraq, and protect the border of Saudi Arabia. The San Remo 1922 borders stand for every country from the mandates, so why not for Israel? The 1967 border aka the Jordanian occupied “West Bank” was an armistice line, period, not a national border.
Israel exists. The mindless savages whose real goal is to exterminate all Israelis need to accept the fact that Israel exists. As it is defined today, post 1967 and 1973. Period.
Among other things, they have a selective appreciation of “fairness”.
“It’s never been about the 1967 borders.”
But that would mean Palestinians have always raised their children to hate Jews and Israel rather than to hate the 1967 borders.
I wonder if there is any evidence of this?
LukeHandCool (who doesn’t wonder very hard)
Not all, but many suffer from a supremacy complex. Perhaps that’s why they join forces with the communists, socialists, and other left-wing interests (i.e. minority rulers). They share an ideology and are allies of convenience.
“What’s a proportional response?”
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. – Conan
The original is purportedly from Temujin – Genghis Khan. 🙂
Thanks for sharing this illuminating information that shows an unbroken thread from the past.
George Will said it best about the perpetual snit fostered by the “Palestians” and their backers (Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc.): “Its not that Israel is being provocative, its that Israel’s BEING is provocative.”