Israel Must Live

by Nadene Goldfoot

Israel and Judea were two Jewish states that existed long before Jesus was born. By 70AD the last of them were vanquished by the Romans, though some Jews remained while many were marched off to Rome as slaves. For over 2,000 years we have prayed that we would not forget Jerusalem, and hoped to be there again.

After roaming the world for all these years, settling in places and feeling comfortable for a while, then finding our presence unwelcome and having to pick up and move again or be killed, we are supremely happy to have regained our homeland, named Israel in May 14, 1948. It took the many pogroms in Russia and finally the Holocaust of the WWII to make us realize that it was imperative that this generation move us back again, or we would be wiped out forever.

Our welcome home was the hardest ever with the Arabs turning against us and attacking the minute we were declared a state by the United Nations. To everyone's surprise, our Holocaust survivors and new immigrants pulled together and fought off the attack, and all other attacks since then. There hasn't been hardly a day gone by that the citizens of this country hasn't had to be mimicing the Spartans, becoming soldiers as well as civilians, ever wary of terrorist attacks and outright wars with the goal of wiping Israel off the map.

The hardest thing I cannot understand is that the world sees the Palestinians as the oppressed ones. Have they not wanted to see that they are the ones doing the attacking and the threatening to wipe Israel out? The people themselves are being oppressed, but by their own leaders, not the Israelis who are doing more than their share of trying to be fair with them. In fact, Israelis feel no animosity towards the Palestinians. At the same time, the Palestinians have been brain-washed into believing that Jews are evil and must be wiped out, and their leaders swallow hook, line and sinker the old Protocals of Zion, a Nazi doctrine filled with lies about Jews.

The United Nations should have been the place to solve problems, but has become the meeting place for the Arab world where they continue their hatred towards Israel. People have no time nor interest in reading about the history of these two peoples, and care less, only greedily swallow the propaganda that they hear about the Israelis.

It seems that our ability to protect ourselves has caused people to hate us. Yes, we now have a strong army, but does the world realize that it takes every person in Israel under 18 to be in it, men and women? We number only about 5 million people and 2 million Arabs that make up the population of Israel. That we even have Arab citizens should make people wonder, for we cannot go to other Arab countries and be citizens there, though we did have many living in Arab countries before the birth of Israel who were living as 3rd rate citizens in most of them. It was a better situation than being killed in the holocaust, but not great. We all yearned daily for our own country. We yearned for over 2,000 years. There was no body of people ready to help us establish our country again. We organized and did it ourselves, with the U.N.'s acceptance.

The reason that Israel has had to do things that have become propaganda pieces, like mow down a palestinian home, is to try to stop terrorism. They could have rounded up people and shot them, as Arab countries have done, or gassed them like Iraq did, but destroying a home was the worst they wanted to do to people. They just didn't do it for fun.

Like the son who complained after killing his parents that he was an orphan, the Palestinians attack the Israelis and then complain about their hardships. If they didn't have hardships, they couldn't get the world's attention. I think they do these things on purpose.

Now Iran is calling Israel names and saying they will wipe out Israel. It's a big threat taken very seriously by Israel. At Israel's 60th birthday, we are all worried about the continuation of Israel's existence. We've waiting so long to see its creation and know from history what can be for us. We've given the world so much in the line of industry and medicine. Yet there are people who could care less if we exist or not, and many who wish we didn't.

Israel is a tiny speck in the world. The Arab countries are bountiful taking up a large land mass. Don't let this little speck that is an endangered species die. The first step needed is understanding that Israel is not the bad guy, but has always been the fall guy or scape goat in this world. They have been trying to do the right thing, and share the same ethics as the rest of the Western world, but are battling an enemy that wants their destruction, not their neighborliness.

Upgraded 3/27/19