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When I was growing up, black Americans were dealing with the issue of civil rights. One hundred-plus years after the Civil War, they were even then fighting to gain some level of equality in a country that for the most part was still an old-boys network.

Toward that end, blacks began moving to the suburbs. Often, they were met with people who ignored them, ridiculed them, or were even openly hostile toward them. Many black families had to deal with concerted efforts to force them out of neighborhoods where they not only deserved to live by way of financial earning, but also deserved to live by way of the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of the American Dream. Yet, to some, it became the American Nightmare. Countless families had to endure rocks, bullets and cross-burnings. Yet they stayed in their homes, often living in fear.

You might have thought that I was thinking about this because of Barak Obama's inauguration as the first black president of the U.S. But I was thinking a lot about that era because of the recent Gaza war -- the entry of the Israeli army into the terrorist stronghold to end the reign of raining missiles into population centers in Southern Israel. I was thinking about the people who were living in Gush Katif (Israel's community in Gaza) until they were forcibly removed in 2005 because the Palestinians wanted the land and they didn't want any Jews living there. The Nazis, by the way, called that "Judenrein."

The Gazan Arabs use the same logic as the racists of the recent U.S. history. They think that if they make people fear for their lives, those people will move to other places. If the Gazan Arabs attack lands close to their cities, they deduce, the people will voluntarily leave their homes. Then the Gazan Arabs will move in. They have used this logic, by the way, successfully in the past, taking over Bethlehem from a mostly Christian population by terrorizing the community and threatening their clerics and their church.

By moving the inhabitants of Gush Katif out of their homes, Ariel Sharon and his lackeys played right into the hands of Hamas and the entire leadership of the Gazan Arabs. Hamas has turned Gaza into a launching pad, not a residential community for its citizens. The are trying to get the citizens of Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and even Beer Sheva to move, willingly, from their homes by constantly harassing and threatening them with deadly missiles. And if that happens (l'da'avoneinu -- to our detriment) Hamas will then move their artillery to Sderot, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Beer Sheva and start bombing communities near them.

Unfortunately, the Israeli government doesn't have the chutzpah (and I mean that in a nice way) that civil rights-savvy blacks did in the 1960s and 1970s and beyond. The Israeli government is losing a war of attrition, letting the terrorists walk all over them. By giving them land without concessions, by ending defensive wars without resolution or surrender by the enemy, by freeing hundreds of terrorist prisoners to murder again, by kowtowing to world pressure, Israel is putting her own people and guests in danger. Israel, by default, is endangering Israelis and Jews worldwide, endangering East Asians who come to Israel for work, endangering the Christians not just of Bethlehem and Lebanon, but throughout the word, endangering visitors of all faiths, endangering "Palestinian" women and gays (who are systematically murdered in their own communities but find peace and acceptance in Israeli ruled areas) -- in truth, endangering the entire world.

As Woodrow Wilson said, we must make the world safe for democracy. We also need to make the world safe for freedom and justice, not allow the despotic leaders of the world to tyrannize the West. We need to lead by example, by keeping a just society, a free society, safe from erosion. We need to show the world that Israel and the U.S. cannot be cowed into submission, that we cannot be intimidated into removing the liberties our citizens enjoy to suit their Sharia ideals. We need to put God and country first and stand up to the bullies that terrorists are. We need to do this because no one else will do it for us.

Debbie Israel is a graphic artist (see cafepress.com/compugraphd2 for some of her work) and tutor living in Highland Park.