Israel is indestructible
Jewish inhabitants have sprung back from every setback
Sixty- five is an age when life’s battles are supposed to be behind you. Last Monday, April 15, Israel celebrated its 65th birthday but the battles of this miraculous bit of land in the Middle East are far from over.
In his poignant tribute to Israel’s 65th birthday published in the Jerusalem Post, David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, sums up Israel’s situation as thus: “Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only UN member whose right to exist is regularly challenged ( and) whose elimination from the world map is the aim of at least one other UN member state ( Iran).”
Harris writes: “No other country is the target of such non- stop, wellfunded and highly organized campaigns to discredit, delegitimize and demonize a sovereign state ... no other country has its right to self- defence challenged as Israel does, even though it acts no differently than any other nation would if confronted by periodic terrorist assaults and deadly missile and rocket attacks.”
Yet the miracle that is Israel continues to flourish. It remains a rock- solid democracy in the midst of tinpot dictatorships fanatically bent on destroying it instead of focusing on creating a society of peace and prosperity for their own terribly oppressed people. For if anyone has failed the Palestinians, it is their own leaders, not Israel.
Israel is a place where the mandate of the Jewish people — tikkun olam, or repairing the world — goes on ceaselessly: World- class scientific research and development in health, communications technology and many other disciplines continues for the betterment of all humankind, even as Palestinian rockets fall on Israeli towns. In fact, when it comes to accumulating Nobel Prizes, Israel ranks second in the world after Switzerland.
In Israel, Christians, Muslims and Jews are free to worship in peace. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the followers of any religion other than Islam risk death for worshipping in their faith. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where gays and lesbians can live without fearing for their lives, and where women are free to set their own course in life, unencumbered by the patriarchal tribal traditions that keep their faces covered and their activities severely limited elsewhere.
Yet whenever the subject of peace talks comes up, it always seems that the onus is on Israel to make the overtures to the Palestinians, despite the fact that the history of the region is one of overtures rebuffed, ceasefires violated and the most generous of peace proposals rejected.
It is an understatement to say that it is very difficult to talk peace with an enemy — Hezbollah and Hamas — whose charters call for the killing of all Jews in Israel. And it would not be too much of an overstatement to say that the day these groups lay down their weapons forever, peace will swiftly ensue.
Israel will survive because its Jewish inhabitants have always sprung back after every setback, every murderous reign of terror wherever they have lived, including the Holocaust, and they have come back stronger. Israel is indestructible because its people have proven themselves indestructible throughout the thousands of years they have wandered the planet before finally coming home to themselves in Israel.