Every day I hear and we read in various articles, “If only Israel would stop building settlements, welcome back 5,000,000 Arab refugees, and treat the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza well, there would be peace.” After all, it was the UN, Europe, and the USA that imposed a Jewish state on a peaceful land.”
Every point in the above paragraph is wrong. The people advocating these ideas (with a few naïve followers as exceptions) know they are outright fabrications. There CAN be peace in the Middle East, but the price cannot be the destruction of the State of Israel.
“OK, OK, let’s go back to the 1949 Armistice Lines and negotiate from there.”
Friends, Israel has come close multiple times to doing just that. She has offered a shared capital in East Jerusalem, up to 92-97% of lands acquired in 1967 for a new Palestinian State, and given the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt, Gaza back to the Palestinian Authority, and made many other overtures. Every time (1978, 1993, 2000, 2008, 2015) peace is offered, Palestinian leaders find a reason to refuse and call for more terror.
“What about the descendants of the thousands of refugees from 1947-1949? Shouldn’t they be able to return to their original villages? After all, they were exiled by war.”
Well, the number of direct refugees is disputed (400,000 were displaced, half by war, half by believing they would return in weeks after the Jews were destroyed). Israel cannot absorb millions of hostile Arabs into her nation. This is why a new Palestinian State should be created! The Arab nations have deliberately refused to assimilate these refugees, working with the former KGB to fabricate a Palestinian national identity in the 1960s. By the way, Palestinian Authority President Abbas has already declared that a new state will be, “Jew-free.” (Echoes of the Nazis) This is in contrast to the two million Arab citizens in Israel.
Is there any hope?
Yes.
The hope is that a handful of courageous and influential Arab leaders will build on the Camp David Accords and the Abraham Accords, and call for recognition of Israel as a legitimate home for the Jewish people, renounce terrorism, and negotiate a way forward.
“This sounds great! There must be peaceful Muslims ready to do this!”
Here is the catch: the moment Arab Muslim leaders renounce Hamas and Hezbollah, dismantle the Palestinian Jihad, and say yes to a Jewish nation, they are targets for assassination. The West forgets a few inconvenient facts about Islamic history:
- Islam has never produced a true pluralistic society where women and men of all faiths or none are complete equals.
- Anwar Sadat made peace in 1978 and was killed in 1981 by radical Islamists.
- Generations of Muslims in the Middle East have been brainwashed concerning the Jews, seeing them as inveterate enemies and less than human. Reading the school curricula is chilling.
- Antisemitism is a demonic stronghold that reappears globally every generation. Jihadists are emboldened by Western criticisms of Israel and underlying Jew-hatred.
Is there a way forward? Yes! If millions of people of conscience rise up in support of Israel’s right to exist in safety and condemn all forms of antisemitism. If every person of conscience will refuse to accept a symmetry of evil and call out the evil found in Hamas, Hezbollah, and all that justify the killing civilians, it will make a difference. It is time to hold the USA government accountable for their wishy-washy policies and have our State Department end its century of institutional antisemitism.
Courageous Muslim leaders, with the support of millions of freedom-loving allies, and the full economic and military support of the West, can create a new era of peace.
Praying today for the Peace of Jerusalem.