Is Israel US’s 51st state?
THE EDITOR, Madam:
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, wars have always been recorded by dates and numbers; how long they lasted, and how many were killed or injured on all sides. The war in Gaza has now claimed over 25,000 Palestinian civilian fatalities, about 63,000 injured, and unknown numbers of unrecovered bodies in the rubble. Israel declared war on October 7, 2023, to eradicate Hamas – an acronym of its official name: the Islamic Resistance Movement – in retaliation for the dreadful massacre of about 1,200 Israelis in a terrorist raid on the Gaza border. About 220 Israeli hostages were taken, and about 130 are still held in Gaza; nobody knows how long this war will last, but it certainly didn’t begin on October 7, 2023. The dispute about which religious or ethnic group is entitled to land rights dates back almost 4,000 years when, according to Hebraic scriptures, Abraham moved there with his family which eventually extended into twelve tribes, establishing a Jewish monarchy. About 2,600 years ago, the country was conquered by Babylonians, who destroyed the Jewish temple and expelled most of the Jews to Babylon.
Persians captured Babylon about 150 years after that, with some Jews repatriated to Israel, which came under Greek rule after Alexander the Great conquered Persia 200 years later. Next to claim the territory in the first century BC were the Romans, who renamed it Palestine, as a means of minimising Jewish identification. Islam was first introduced in Mecca about 1,400 years ago, with surrounding lands soon conquered under that religion; Palestine became Muslimruled for the next 400 years, with Jews not fairing too well. Thousands of Muslims and Jews were slaughtered by the Christian Crusaders, who came to liberate the ‘Holy Land’ in 1099, until they were returned to Europe by the Mamluk Sultanate from Cairo in 1277, bringing further decline of Jewish communities. Turks were next to control Palestine in 1517; becoming a thriving province of the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War One, when it came under British Mandate in 1918. This blood-stained timeline of numbers and dates expanded in 1948, when the Jewish Agency for Palestine declared the State of Israel.
Hostilities between Muslims and Jews became Israel’s War of Independence and the Palestinian Nakba, when over 15,000 Muslims were killed, with hundreds of their towns and villages destroyed. More than 750,000 were forced to flee, some into refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, while others sought refuge in the West Bank under protection of Jordan, and to the Gaza Strip, eventually ruled by Egypt. The US backed Israel from the very day they declared independence, giving huge monetary and military support. Here’s a final number for readers to ponder and draw their own conclusions: is Israel really the 51st state ?
BERNIE SMITH Parksville, BC Canada