TARGET OF VIOLENCE

So long as Israel is a target of violence as it has been since its founding in 1948, Israel must alone determine its defensive posture.

The ruling government of Gaza, Hamas, an Islaamist fundamentalist terror group, has been lobbing deadly rockets on to Israeli soil since it took over the "Gaza Strip" in June of 2007. It has allowed Islaamic Jihad and other Islaamist terror groups to fire rockets at will across the border aimed at civilian populations. It has captured an Israeli soldier and it has allowed and enabled snipers to shoot over the border at Israeli targets. Hamas has ammassed war materielle smuggled from Egypt through tunnels dug under their common border. Hamas is in total control of the Gaza Strip and its population. It is beloved by the Arab population and is almost totally supported in it's aim to destroy Israel.

To the chagrin of many in the Islaamic world, Hamas entered a truce agreement with Israel a little over six months ago. Although rockets continued to rain down on Israel, Hamas itself ceased these deadly acts. Then, after a clear decision not renew that truce and a tremendous increase in deadly fire, Israel, acting in self-defense, began bombing Hamas targets on December 27, 2008.

The Arab world and their anti-Israel allies began to cry.

Zionism was founded in the late 1800’s as an ideology with a material goal, the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people. Though questions arose over many years about the place of that home, there was never a question about the establishment of a geographical entity, a nation by definition that Jews from any place in the world could live without question and without restrictions.

The biblical land of the Jews that became the State of Israel in 1948 was in a territory modernly called Palestine. The land was predominantly occupied by Arabs. Jews, most of whom were religious, lived there from biblical times in ancient towns and cities.

World Jewry contributed money over the decades from the beginning of the Zionist Organization to purchase land and to establish towns and cities and settlements of various kinds to create that homeland for Jews who came to live there as pioneers or religionists. Zionism called for Jews in the Diaspora to come to Israel to live or to support the establishment of the state through prayer, money, political activity in their home countries, by sending their children to learn or live in Israel, and by any means that could be found, be themselves part of that movement to establish the homeland for the Jewish people in the land of Israel that became the State of Israel.

Religious, ethnic, and territorial conflicts arose almost immediately after the Zionist Organization and other Jewish Zionist movements influenced Jews to settle in Palestine. Although Jews lived there for many centuries, even millennia, they were caluminified as intruders if they came as Zionists rather than Jewish religionists. Arabs attacked Jewish agricultural settlements and murdered Jewish settlers and travelers throughout Palestine. Riots against Jewish landholders broke out and more Jews were killed by Arabs in the hope and belief that such attacks would prevent more Jews from coming to Palestine.

After World War I and the League of Nations approval of the Balfour Declaration that stated that the Jewish People had the right to establish a homeland in Palestine and up through May of 1948, after the United Nations voted to approve the Partition Plan that allocated portions of Palestine to the Jews and the Arabs, Jewish settlements were under intermittent small scale attacks by Palestinian Arabs. When the British government withdrew its army after more than two decades of occupation of the “Palestine Mandate,” the Jewish population declared the establishment of the State of Israel. Within days, five Arab armies attacked the new nation. After a year of warfare, a truce agreement was signed. Israel survived. Since then, Israel has fought five wars with its Arab neighbors. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel.

Jews living in the countries of the Arab world left their homes under threat of violence after the 1948 war. Palestinian Arabs fled from their homes during that war out of fear of violence and at the exhortations of the invading Arab countries to remove themselves from the lines of fire and with the promise of acquiring the homes and lands of the Jews who would be thrown into the sea by the invading Arab armies. The fates of the two groups of refugees are markedly different. A substantial number of Jews fled to Israel which worked to absorb them. Others fled to countries around the world that allowed them to immigrate. The vast majority of Palestinian refugees remained refugees in camps in the surrounding Arab countries.

Israel remains a target of Arab violence to this day.