There’s never an easy time to be a supporter of Israel, but in the last few weeks it has been harder than ever. But one thing never changes: The other side always comes down to challenging Israel’s right to exist.
Yes, these days you have to deal with the lopsided casualty totals.
With no hint of irony, the media keeps reporting that Israel is losing the media war. How could it win? Most accounts give a number of Israeli military dead, while treating all the losses in Gaza as civilian.
When one side’s “warriors” don’t wear uniforms and hide in hospitals and schools, everyone looks like a civilian. How many media stories make that distinction? Damned few.
But the generally unfair treatment of Israel goes a lot deeper. In arguments about Israel and the Palestinians — anytime, now or in a period of relative peace — one thing is always true: The very existence of Israel is constantly up for debate.
It may be your generally nonpolitical Facebook friend posting cutesy videos about “stolen” land; it can be Gawker casually suggesting Israel should be in Germany. Whatever: Israel is always having to defend its right to simply be.
No other country has to defend itself against terrorists, defend its people’s right to defend themselves against terrorists and also defend its right to exist at all.
It goes like this:
“I don’t like what Israel is doing in Gaza.”
“What was Israel supposed to do, keep accepting rocket fire at its cities?”
“If someone took my land, I’d fire rockets, too.”
Simple as that. The line excuses Palestinians for trying to kill Jews and, at the same time, delegitimizes Israel.
Plenty of American Jews support Israel but think the Gaza ground invasion was unwise. But how can they say so, when they’re too busy arguing that no, Israel didn’t steal land from the Palestinians, yes, Jews have lived in the land now called Israel for thousands of years, and so on?
When every discussion has to go back to 70 AD and the burning of the Second Temple, or even before, you can’t even get close to a rational discussion of what’s going on now.
And it’s exhausting to start a debate from the beginning of history every time. It almost seems like that’s the point.
It’s hard to tell what’s worse for Israel, the world’s attention or the world’s blind eye. Last year, 43 separate rocket attacks were launched at Israel. That sound you heard was the world shrugging. Of course, when you question whether Israel should even be a country, it’s easy to overlook 43 attacks in 12 months.
But if the Seneca tribe launched 43 rockets at Albany over 52 weeks, it’s unlikely the world would debate whether America really has a right to exist even though it did displace the Native Americans starting in the 17th century.
And no one would suggest the United States surrender Albany just because it seemed like Senecas were really serious about wanting it.
So why is it a reasonable thing that Israel should give up its land, more than 60 years after it was founded? It’s time that debate didn’t happen on Israel either.
The fact is, Palestinians’ supporters do a disservice to the people they want to most help when they question Israel’s legitimacy.
The idea that Palestinians just can’t live next door to Jews isn’t a pro-Palestinian position: It makes them seem infantile, unable to accept a reality that, sorry, isn’t changing.
Giving hope to the far-out idea that Jews will simply go away, that Israel will cease to exist, does nothing but extend the conflict. The sooner Palestinians accept Israel, the sooner everyone can live in peace. But that means their supporters have to stop arguing for something that’s not going to happen.
When the fanatics of Hamas see the world doubting Israel’s right to exist, it only emboldens them and leads to casualties on both sides. If the goal is peace, the first step is to drop the ridiculous arguments.