Map of Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli sites

Something about this day. Was it a foreboding when we woke to a dark, heavily raining morning? And then we heard the news. Last night before I shut down my computer after posting my last blog of the night, I had a look at my Twitter feed. There was an announcement that heavy conflict had broken out after Hamas had launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. This has been a tough year for Israel, having to cope with countless terror assaults. Not only incited by the Palestinian Authority through its school curricula teaching children to hate Jews and Israel as 'occupiers' but through the emergence of new terror groups in Jenin launching attacks. As though Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad weren't enough to cope with.

Israel has been forced to balance the safety and security of its presence in the Middle East after reclaiming its ancestral territories and human rights in its re-establishment as a Jewish state, an authentic indigenous place of haven for Jews the world over as citizens while at the same time absorbing the presence of others, non-Jews ranging from Christians to Arabs, Druze, Kurds, Circassians, Baha'i and Africans who have migrated to the country from their war-ravaged countries. Arab Palestinians represent over 20% of the population, with equal citizenship rights enabling them to elect members of their own to the Knesset. 

 

But the very fact of Israel's existence -- on land that Palestinian Arabs who migrated from Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East into Israel to live amongst Jews who never left to become a part of the great Jewish diaspora when Jews were forcefully dispersed during the Roman occupation thousands of years ago -- continues to see Palestinians resentful, raging against Israel's presence, declaring the land rightfully theirs, not that of Jews indigenous to the land. Peace has never really settled over Israel. From its legal and United Nations-supported declaration of statehood returned in 1948, it has suffered a succession of military challenges by neighbouring Arab countries, all rebuffed.

In the last several years, a number of Arab countries; The United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan have joined Egypt and Jordan in signing peace agreements with Israel, under the Abraham Accords. It appears that Saudi Arabia is seriously considering joining them; in essence agreeing that Israel has a right to exist in its native geography. The Shi'ite Islamic Republic of Iran, the region's hot spot for aggression and violence, a major sponsor of terrorism, plans to destroy Israel, sponsoring and enlisting actions of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Inciting violence against the state with a long-range plan of its destruction, Iran views the potential of Saudi Arabia signing a formal peace agreement with Israel as a legitimization of its presence, by the most influential of the Sunni-majority Arab states in the Middle East, an agreement that could pave the way of all further resistance to Israel's presence vanishing in an accord of like minds looking toward future security and mutual prosperity. What better way to shock Arab nations away from accepting Israel's presence than to incite a war where Jews are forced to defend themselves by killing those Arabs attacking them?

This morning came the news that Hamas had lobbed thousands of rockets yet again into Israel from Gaza. That Hamas terrorist operatives had infiltrated Israeli army bases by stealth overnight, as well as Israeli border towns, to attack and kill Jewish soldiers and civilians alike, some being taken as 'prisoners' into Gaza, to be used as collateral for prisoner exchanges. Terrorists entered homes in border towns to kill the inhabitants, people in cars were summarily shot to death. Women were caught, raped and murdered. 

Hamas' own publicity arm took countless videos of shocking assaults of civilians being slaughtered, of Jewish women and girls abducted after being raped, of Palestinian terrorists wielding submachine guns stalking through the streets and houses of Israeli towns, shooting wildly, dead bodies lying everywhere on the streets. Documenting, in essence, their depraved atrocities, every one of which represents a crime against humanity, war crimes.

Crimes that should being shame to any community whose members might be involved in such malevolently horrible actions, but which within the Palestinian community becomes a reason for joy and jubilation, a resounding success by those who portray themselves to the world community at large as hapless victims of Jewish imperialism, who deserve compassion and support against the existence of a Jewish state. An attack on human decency, on the very concept of people of different origins, tribal affiliations and religions being able to live in decent peace among one another.

A condition of which Israel is a shining example, and of which the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain a narrative of human depravity as they celebrate the deaths of those they have been inculcated with hatred toward by their leaders. For a Jew to appear in a West Bank city is to invite violence and death. Yet in Israel, over two million Arabs live in  peace and security among Jews in a Jewish state. 

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