Home

I know what Benjamin Franklin said. And I used to believe it, too. I used to think that there can be no such thing as a good war and a bad peace. But since 2005, when Israel forcibly removed all the brave and industrious people from Gush Katif, we have had first-hand experience with a bad peace.

For the past three-plus years, missiles have been raining down on civilian population centers, such as Sderot, killing and injuring scores of people of all ages and leaving the people of Sderot to live their lives in fear, never far from a bomb shelter.

And now, Hamas has missiles, supplied by Iran, that are capable of hitting areas even further in from Sderot. They are now regularly hitting Ashdod, Ashkelon, Eshkol, and even the big city of Beersheva. During my first trip to Israel (which lasted for three-quarters of the year I was supposed to be there for) I lived in Arad, Ashkelon, and Jerusalem. So I spent a lot of time in both Beersheva and Ashkelon. It's hard enough to hear about missiles hitting Sderot and other places I've never been, but to hear about missiles hitting areas I've been to is so much harder.

What I don't understand is why people are so critical of Israel for defending her people. I don't understand what it is that people expect of us (as Jews). For centuries, we were good citizens in other lands (including Spain, France, Germany, Russia, Poland, for example). We helped stimulate the economy (in many times and places, it was the Jews who assisted in foreign trade because Jews often had friends and relatives in other countries and this facilitated travel and trade), we fought in their wars, we, for the most part, were law-abiding citizens. And what did all that get us? Pogroms, murder, hatred, blame. We were targets of the religious leadership and targets for the governmental despots. All we have ever wanted to do was to live our lives in peace, free to worship our own way. But few countries in the course of the past 2,000 or so years since we were exiled from our land have permitted this. We were always labeled "outsider," "god murderers," "different," "evil".

So, in 1948, after centuries of longing and decades of promises, we finally were permitted to found our own land once again.

Now, though, people are disregarding the danger. They are convincing themselves (and others) that all problems in the world will be solved if only Israel would return to the pre-1967 borders. By doing this, they are not only putting Israel in danger, not only putting Europe in danger, not only putting the United States in danger, they are putting the entire world in danger.

So I know what some of you are saying -- "She sounds really paranoid." But people in Europe have disregarded these warnings and are now reaping their "rewards". By trying to be nice to the Muslims, by allowing them to settle in their lands, they are quickly losing control of their own countries.

The Muslims come to these countries and don't integrate themselves into the culture. I'm not saying that they should lose their identity as an ethnicity or a religion. I'm saying that they don't even abide by the laws of the land. (As means of comparison, Jews, while maintaining our ethnicity and religious beliefs, strive to be part of the society we live in. This is not to say that there are no Jewish criminals -- recent events prove the contrary. But most Jews, like most people in their "host" countries, abide by the laws of the land). There are cities in each Western European country that even the police are afraid to go into. The governments can't control the populations and cannot protect women and girls from their fathers, brothers, husbands, etc. The people living in these cities contribute little financially to society -- they have no jobs, pay no taxes, etc. What they do contribute are children, children who are raised to hate. And their influence is growing. The governments of these countries are afraid to offend them for fear of massacres of their own civilian populations.

I've been saying for quite some time that it really doesn't make any sense to try to placate the Islamofascists. Firstly, no matter what you do, they will not be placated unless everyone in the world becomes Muslim or dies. Secondly, by attempting to placate them we appear to them to be weak and, instead of being satisfied with what we have given them (for example, the entire Gaza Strip and the opportunity to govern this area in their own way) they are convinced that if they can get this from us they should ask for more. They interpret our motives as surrender, not compromise (especially since we never ask them to compromise). They are like Hitler in 1939 -- asking first for the Sudetenland and next for Poland. But, unlike 1939, everyone is a Neville Chamberlain and no one is Winston Churchill.

So where does this leave us? We need to support Israel's right to liberate Gaza from the terrorists. We need to support Israel in their fight to protect the citizens of Sderot, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Beersheva, and the south from random continual missile attacks. We need to realize that Israel is not the "bad guy". And we need to remember that supporting Israel is supporting ourselves and the world.