Defending the Truth

Israel Has a Moral Right to Its Life
Thursday, June 20, 2002
By: Yaron Brook and Peter Schwartz

Why reason and justice are on Israel's side.

As yet another appalling suicide bombing takes place in Israel, killing 19 people and wounding dozens more on a bus packed with schoolchildren in Jerusalem--as Hamas claims credit for the massacre--America's policymakers still insist on seeking an "even-handed," diplomatic solution.

In the past 18 months, Israel's six million citizens have suffered 12,480 terrorist attacks. They have buried more than 400 victims--a per-capita death toll six times that of America on September 11. Yet, in an abhorrent act of injustice, Israel continues to be pressured by the United States into making concessions to Yasser Arafat, the archpatron of those terror attacks. In the long run, this means that Israel is being pressured into sacrificing its basic right to exist.

We should be supporting Israel's right to take whatever military action is needed to defend itself against its nihilistic enemies. Morally and militarily, Israel is America's frontline in the war on terrorism. If America is swayed by Arafat's latest empty rhetoric, and allows him to continue threatening Israel, our own campaign against terrorism becomes sheer hypocrisy and will, ultimately, fail.

Consider the facts and judge for yourself:

The Israelis and the Palestinians are not morally equal

Israel is the only free country in a region dominated by Arab monarchies, theocracies and dictatorships. It is only the citizens of Israel--Arabs and Jews alike--who enjoy the right to express their views, to criticize their government, to form political parties, to publish private newspapers, to hold free elections. When Arab authorities deny the most basic freedoms to their own people, it is obscene for them to start claiming that Israel is violating the Palestinians' rights. All Arab citizens who are genuinely concerned with human rights should, as their very first action, seek to oust their own despotic rulers and adopt the type of free society that characterizes Israel.

Since its founding, Israel has been the victim

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has had to fight five wars--all in self-defense--against 22 hostile Arab dictatorships, and has been repeatedly attacked by Palestinian terrorists. Arafat is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Israeli schoolchildren, the hijacking of airliners and the car bombings and death-squad killings of thousands of Israeli, American, Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Today he ardently sponsors such terror groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al Aksa Brigade.

The land Israel is "occupying" was captured in a war initiated by its Arab neighbors. Like any victim of aggression, Israel has a moral right to control as much land as is necessary to safeguard itself against attack. The Palestinians want to annihilate Israel, while Israel wants simply to be left alone. If there is a moral failing on Israel's part, it consists of its reluctance to take stronger military measures. If it is right for America to bomb al-Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan--and it is--then it is equally justifiable for Israel to bomb the terrorist strongholds in the occupied territories.

Hatred of Israel, and of the United States, is hatred for Western values

Like America's war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the Arab-Israeli dispute is a conflict between opposing philosophies. On the one side are the forces of mysticism, medieval tribalism, dictatorship--and terror; on the other side are the forces of reason, individualism, capitalism--and civilization. Arafat and his sympathizers hate Israel for the same reason that Osama bin Laden and his sympathizers hate America, i.e., for embracing secular, Western values. No "peace process" is possible with such enemies.

This is not an ethnic battle between Jews and Arabs, but a moral battle between those who value the individual's right to be free and those who don't. Those Arabs who value individual freedom are enemies of the Arafat regime and deserve to be embraced by Israel; those Jews who do not value individual freedom deserve to be condemned by Israel.

Israelis have a right to the land

Only Israel has a moral right to establish a government in that area--on the grounds, not of some ethnic or religious heritage, but of a secular, rational principle. Only a state based on political and economic freedom has moral legitimacy. Contrary to what the Palestinians are seeking, there can be no "right" to establish a dictatorship.

As to the rightful owners of particular pieces of property, Israel's founders--like the homesteaders in the American West--earned ownership to the land by developing it. They arrived in a desolate, sparsely populated region and drained the swamps, irrigated the desert, grew crops and built cities. They worked unclaimed land or purchased it from the owners. They introduced industry, libraries, hospitals, art galleries, universities-and the concept of individual rights. Those Arabs who abandoned their land in order to join the military crusade against Israel forfeited all right to their property. And if there are any peaceful Arabs who were forcibly evicted from their property, they should be entitled to press their claims in the courts of Israel, which, unlike the Arab autocracies, has an independent, objective judiciary--a judiciary that recognizes the principle of property rights.

Palestinians are not "freedom fighters"

The Palestinians want a state, not to secure their freedom, but to perpetuate the dictatorial reign of Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Arafat's "police" brutally expropriate property and silence opposing viewpoints by shutting down radio and TV stations. They systematically arrest, torture and murder peaceful dissenters. To call the militant Palestinians "freedom fighters"--when they support the subjugation of their own people, when they deliberately murder children in the streets or gleefully praise such depravity--is a mind-numbing perversion.

Palestinians have consistently sought to destroy Israel

In 1947 the Palestinians rejected the U.N.'s offer of a state larger than the one they are demanding now. Instead, they joined in a war aimed at wiping Israel from the map. Today, that hostility has only hardened. For example, in a televised public sermon, a Palestinian Imam declared: "God willing, this unjust state [of] Israel, will be erased." Palestinian textbooks are filled with vile, anti-Jewish propaganda, such as this exhortation from a fifth-grade Arabic language text: "The Jihad against the Jew is the religious duty of every Muslim man and woman."

A Palestinian state under Arafat would become a base for terrorism

A Palestinian state headed by Arafat would be a launching pad and a training ground for terrorist organizations targeting, not only Israel, but the United States. Forcing Israelis to accept a Palestinian state under Arafat is like forcing Americans to accept a state the size of Mexico, 12 miles from New York City, ruled by Osama bin Laden. As long as the Palestinians sanction aggression, they should not be permitted their own state.

Arafat's meaningless words will not restore life to his terror-victims--past or future

No rhetoric by Arafat can change the fact that he is a hater of freedom and a destroyer of innocent human life. Imagine Osama bin Laden being enticed by American diplomats to announce: "We strongly condemn operations that target American civilians, especially the last one in New York. We equally condemn the massacres that have been, and are still being, committed by U.S. occupation troops against Taliban civilians in Kandahar, Shah-i-Kot and Tora Bora." Would any sane individual thereby endorse an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the creation of a Taliban state, headed by bin Laden, alongside America? If not, why should Israel be expected to act so suicidally?

America, for its own benefit, must allow Israel to uphold the principle of self-defense

The growing demand for Israel to negotiate with Arafat comes from an unprincipled, range-of-the-moment mentality. Surrendering to extortion--which the "land-for-peace" catechism endorses--is profoundly immoral and impractical. In the 1938 version of "land for peace," Nazi Germany was appeased by being allowed to take over Czechoslovakia as part of the Aryan people's "homeland"; the result was to encourage Hitler to start a world war.

The Arab-Israeli conflict could become a dress rehearsal for a wider, global conflict. If America now stops Israel from retaliating against Arafat, the father of international terrorism, how can it ever justify retaliation against its own enemies? If we force Israel to appease Arafat, we will be broadcasting, loud and clear, that terrorism can bring America too to its knees.

We should urge our government to recognize that there is only one means of achieving long-term Mideast peace: upholding the principle of a free society, which entails the endorsement of Israel's sweeping retaliation against the scourge of terrorism.

The U.S.-Israeli Suicide Pact
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
By: Elan Journo

The Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah axis is fully responsible for initiating the war on Israel, but the Islamists' aggression is the logical product of U.S.-Israeli policy. The longstanding commitment of Israel and America to "diplomatic engagement" with Palestinians and Islamists--a euphemism for appeasement--is suicidal.

For decades America has urged Israel to placate and surrender to our common enemy. The U.S.-endorsed "Road Map to Peace," like the "Peace Process" and sundry initiatives before it, rationalized Palestinian terrorism as the result of a legitimate grievance. If only the Palestinians' wish for a civilized, peaceful state were fulfilled--Washington deluded itself into believing--terrorism would end. And fulfilling this wish requires not smashing their terrorist infrastructure, but showering them with land and loot.

But the majority of Palestinians actually seek the destruction of Israel, and the slaughter of its people. Because they embrace this vicious goal, hordes of Palestinians idolized arch terrorist Yasser Arafat for waging a terrorist war to wipe out Israel and establish a nationalist dictatorship. They abetted Arafat's terrorism and celebrated his atrocities. They served as cheerleaders or recruits for terrorist groups--and when they had the chance, they embraced the even more militant religious zealots of Hamas. It is no surprise that, according to a recent poll, 77 percent of Palestinians support their government's kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and that 60 percent support the continued rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.

But even as Palestinians mounted more attacks, Washington pressed Israel for more concessions--and bolstered the terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority with millions of dollars in aid. The U.S. forbade Israel from laying a finger on Arafat, and extended this tender solicitude to Hamas leaders. Washington actually whitewashed the blood-stained Arafat and his crony Abbas as peace-loving statesmen and invited them to the White House. And when Hezbollah now fires rockets at major cities in northern Israel, President Bush demands that Israel show "restraint."

Depressingly, Israel has continually relented to American pressure to appease our common enemy. It has prostrated itself before the Palestinians, with flamboyantly self-sacrificial offers of land-for-peace; it has withdrawn from southern Lebanon, ceding ground necessary to its self-defense; it has withdrawn from Gaza, leaving its southern cities at the mercy of rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory.

Such U.S.-endorsed appeasement by Israel, across decades, has enabled Hezbollah and Hamas to mount their current attacks. Yet America remains undeterred in its commitment to appeasement.

The U.S. is now trying to woo Iran with endless offers of economic "incentives," if only Iran promises to stop chasing nuclear weapons. Evading Iran's lust to "wipe Israel off the map," evading its funding of Hezbollah and Hamas, evading its avowed enmity to America, evading its decades of fomenting and orchestrating a proxy terror war against American civilians--evading all of this, Washington deludes itself into believing that paying Iran off will, somehow, wipe out its hostility.

Inevitably, this encourages Iran to continue its aggressive support for terrorists and its fervent quest for nuclear weapons. Merely by prolonging the negotiations endlessly, Iran gains time to acquire a weapon to wield against its neighbors, to provide to Hamas and Hezbollah or to other proxies to use against the United States. And were Iran eventually to accept some deal, American aid would merely be sustaining Iran's regime--and, inexorably, a covert nuclear program.

We are teaching the Islamic totalitarians in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that their goal of destroying us is legitimate; that aggression is practical; that the more aggressive they are, the more we will surrender. U.S.-Israeli policy has demonstrated that we lack the intellectual self-confidence to name, let alone condemn, our enemies--and that we lack the will to deal with threats mercilessly. It vindicates the Islamists' premise that their religious worldview can bring a scientific, technologically advanced West to its knees.

To protect the lives of our citizens, America and Israel must stop evading the nature of the enemy's cause: our complete destruction. We must stop appeasing our common enemy--and embrace self-defense as a matter of intransigent principle. To put an end to the current rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza, America should urge Israel to annihilate the annihilators: Hamas and Hezbollah. And to thwart Iran's nuclear ambition, America must use as much military force as is necessary to dispose of that catastrophic threat and the regime responsible for it.

I agree totally. It's time to anihilate those who wish to anihilate Israel. Total destruction of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Mullahs. Total.

I don't usually post articles. I think the last one that I posted was dispelling 15 myths about evolution prpagated by creationists, or something similar, from Scientific American. At any rate, I think the articles sum up the situation nicely.

This is a quote from Dr. Brook in a speech he gave a few years ago in Los Angeles.

You know, Dylan, that Jimmy Carter does NOT agree with you!

Jimmy Carter is a pathetic, peanut eating, liberal moron.
I can't stand him.

Because Jimmy Carter didn't have any barbs on his berries to confront the people who kidnapped our people for over 400 days, one of those criminals now sits in the president's chair in Iran. I remember the double digit inflation, the unemployment, the "misery index". A lot of you never heard about that. I was there. We had a misery index from the government telling how bad things were and the dip shit piss poor excuse of a man would not do a damn thing about our misery. Then Ronald Reagan gets sworn in and the hostages are released during his inauguration speech. Those assholes knew Reagan was coming after them if they didn't release them.

Now you see him on talk shows and writing books to try to repair his failed presidency just like Clinton is doing. The last 2 democrat presidents were utter failures. No question about it. One was as impotent as a castrated bull and the other was a sexual predator who was impeached for obstructing justice and lying to a Federal Grand Jury. Nice job democrats. We can hardly wait for your next offering to mankind.

I think Jimmy Carter is the last person who should be giving advice on how to handle problems in the Middle East, since he didn't do so well.

Did you hear the interview yesterday? To hear him tell it, he has all the answers if everyone would just listen to him. He's a sad sad joke and he's doing all he can to repair his failed legacy. It really is pitiful.

Maybe it was a mistake to form Israel in the first place.
What was the land being used for before it was formed? Who was living there?