The High Holidays and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Al Chait Shechatanu...We Have Sinned Against You

by Gerald A. Honigman

Jews begin the Ten Days of Awe, which fall between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each new year, with a confession of sins committed in the eyes of G_d. As I write this, we are once again at this season.

During this time, it is required that transgressions committed against fellow human beings be addressed as well. Without a true turning of the heart in attempts to rectify both, however, the confessions and fasts associated with the High Holy Days remain meaningless words.

In terms of Arab-Israeli politics, Jews have been accused of countless sins by much of the world today. But, as is noted in terms of yet another Jewish holiday, Passover, while it is regrettable that any hardship had to be suffered even by enemies who would destroy us, as we symbolically remove drops of wine from our cups at the Seder dinner to diminish our joy of deliverance, we offer no apologies for wanting to put an end to our two thousand year-old nightmare of massacres, forced conversions, expulsions, ghettoization, pogroms, dehumanization, inquistions, dhimmitude, demonization, Holocaust, and being labeled either killers of G_d by the Christian West or "Jew Dog" killers of Prophets in the Muslim East by doing what was necessary for our own survival...working, with G_d's timely help, for the rebirth of Israel. The Prophet Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones arrived just in the nick of time...

At a time when Arabs and their fellow jihadists and hypocrite supporters elsewhere offer no confessions and ask no forgiveness from neither G_d nor man for blowing up buses, restaurants, hotels, and schools, or deliberately targeting innocents, subjugating, enslaving, and massacring millions of non-Arab peoples (Kurds, Black Africans, Jews, Copts, Berbers, and others as well) just in the last half century alone, on behalf of the Arab nation and what they claim as "purely Arab patrimony," Jews can honestly say that they have truly tried--repeatedly--to reach a just solution to their problems with Arabs. To any objective observer, this is not debatable.

While wanting to put an end to their own perpetual nakba (as Arabs like to refer to the rebirth of Israel--"the catastrophe"), Jews nevertheless agreed to one compromise after another over the past century so that Arabs could gain their 22nd state. Those of us who are knowledgeable are tired of reminding the world (and each other) that this included Arabs being granted the lion's share of the original 1920 Palestinian Mandate itself with creation of purely Arab Transjordan--today's Jordan--from 80% of "Palestine" (the name the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Judaea after the Jews' second major revolt for freedom in 133 to 135 C.E.) in 1922. Just a few years ago, Arabs rejected an offer which would have eliminated most of the Israeli settlements on disputed--not "purely Arab"--lands and would have turned over some 97% of those lands to Arab control. That Arabs want their new, additional state to exist in place of Israel, not along side of it, has always been the problem. So "occupation" and "settlements" are not the core issues of the debate. Since Arabs see all of Israel proper in those latter terms, however, we have an even more serious dilemma in these regards.

This problem has always involved Arabs not granting anyone else but themselves political rights in the region...with the possible exception of some of those whom they successfully Islamized centuries earlier. While this holds true for Turks, Afghanis, Pakistanis, and Iranians, for example, this is largely not the case with Kurds, Black African (Muslim and non-Muslim) Sudanese, and Berbers. For the latter, the issue becomes more of a clash of nationalisms than of religion with the Arabs' still ongoing forced Arabization process still under way centuries after they burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in their imperial Caliphal conquests of the region. And while they demand that others confess and address their "imperial" sins, Arabs see their own conquest, forced imperial Arabization, colonization, and settlement of other peoples' lands (including in the Mandate of Palestine, where most Arabs were newcomers themselves in the last century) simply in terms of their own just due.

So, as the New Year of 5766 begins, Jews have lots--both individually and collectively as a people and community--to work on to make better both before G_d and man. The latter will include continuing to try to find an honorable solution to problems involving Arabs. But, to do this, we must have true partners for peace, ones who recognize our rights as well as their own, and understand that others besides themselves are entitled to a bit of justice in the region.

Unfortunately, this is not how Arabs have ever dealt with any of their own national competitors. As just two other timely examples, consider the current plight of Kurds in both Syria and Iraq or Black Africans in the Sudan. Furthermore, everything that Arabs say, write, teach, and preach to their own people works against this from ever happening. Under such circumstances, no amount of Israeli concessions will ever be "enough."

Until such a day arrives, however, Israel must do what it must do to thrive, not just survive. Arabs see the recent unilateral Israeli retreat from Gaza simply in terms of victory and Jewish weakness.

The world's demand, for example, that a miniscule Israel fight with one hand constantly tied behind its back must be rejected by Israel's leaders...even when such demands come from its "friends." Not that long ago, as just one of too many examples, when Israel carefully targeted a Hamas training camp right after the latter blew up two more buses filled with children and other Jewish innocents, none other than the so-called Palestinian Arab moderate, then Prime Minister/Arafatian chief marionette Ahmed Qurei', endorsed further barbarism against Jews as being "justified" because of the Israeli assault. Using his logic, murderers should never be pursued nor dealt with. So, even in "moderate" Arab eyes, Jews are supposed to just allow themselves to continuously be slaughtered with no response.

What Israel actually needed to do here was to follow the above assault on the murderers of its innocents quickly, with even more devastating blows. Cutting off the head of the snake is important, but the body can't be neglected either...especially since those heads grow back.The day of the Hamas funeral comes to mind, with hundreds more Hamas members and their supporters crying out during the procession for additional Jewish blood and firing weapons into the air. Many with Jewish blood already on their hands were likely in that procession. There's another way of describing such gatherings: one big target.

Will such Israeli counter measures make Arabs hate Jews any more? Well, nobody likes to have their own nose bloodied, but these folks are already dedicated to the Jews' destruction--both individually and collectively. The only thing that prevents more of their barbarism is Israel's non-stop counter measures...as we've recently seen renewed.

So Israel must fight--somewhat at least--to win and must ignore the hypocrites elsewhere who will condemn it. The latter would have leveled Gaza years ago if subjected to the same treatment Jews have been told to constantly endure.

If Fallujah and Syrian border areas are deemed fair targets for American Air Force fighter bombers day after day in Iraq because we believe our enemies are located there, then what are hundreds of Hamas folks, dedicated to Israel's destruction, crying out for "revenge" and announcing their planned intentions to butcher more Jews? Unlike a huge, three thousand mile-wide America, thousands of miles away from its Iraqi Arab enemies, tiny Israel faces these problems right in its own very backyard. While 9/11 also changes this reality a bit, it's still far better to be in America's position than in that of Israel's. Any innocent Arabs killed as a result of their support of those who are openly dedicated to the murder of Jews and their sole state are not "innocent."

On the other hand, women, children and others aboard Israeli buses, in restaurants, and such are not dedicated to the murder of Arabs or denial of Arab rights. Yet they are the targets of choice of Arabs.

The problem has always been that Arabs have seen their rights as being exclusive and negating those of others. There is no room for a true "compromise" with this mindset...only for a temporary hudna--ceasefire--until the time for total conquest better presents itself for the Arab cause. Under these unfortunate--but very real--circumstances, five million Jews cannot afford to simply fight a war of attrition with an Arab world that is numbered in the hundreds of millions, with one of the highest birthrates anywhere. Arafat loved to talk of the Arab mother as being his best weapon. Sick...

As I've written earlier (but worth repeating), while I hate to stoop to such thinking, taking out fifteen murderers after a like number of Jewish innocents have been massacred and scores more maimed, is a losing tactic. Killing hundreds of them, however, on the other hand, sends quite a different message. A few well-placed, two-thousand pound bombs during the next Hamas or Islamic Jihad funeral procession is certainly at least as justified as anything America has been doing in its own fights in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. And when Hamas follows through with the next inevitable attack, the Israeli response must increase exponentially.

This is not to say that all hope must be given up regarding a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israel conflict. But it is to say that deceiving ourselves along the suicidal lines of a Burg, Beilen, Peres or such "peace" (i.e. accepting millions of "returning" Arab refugees, an Israel in its United Nations' imposed, 9-mile wide armistice line existence, etc.) will only lead to the demise of the Jewish State. Remember the response, above, of the "moderate," Ahmed Qurei'. His fellow Arafatian successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is of the same mindset.

Of all of the real sins that Jews must seek forgiveness for during this Holy season, we must remind ourselves that the rebirth of the Jewish State and our struggle to survive are not to be counted amongst them. And the latter requires decisive action, not just words. A security fence, for example, which does not allow for the protection of Israel's main airport comes to mind as does the same which does not grant Israel at least a minimally adequate protective buffer zone between itself and millions of Arabs still sworn to its destruction...a buffer, by the way, envisioned by UN Security Council Resolution #242 itself.

What other nation would be asked to forsake such things?

For those who think otherwise, well...they can read my mind. They already know what I will tell them.

Issues related to the survival of the Jewish people in their sole, reborn nation are not debatable, especially given the repeated attempts by the Jews to reach a fair solution to their problems with the Arabs, and also given that it was a murderous and dehumanizing, millennial anti-Semitism practiced by much of the rest of the world which, ironically, led to the very rebirth of the Jew of the Nations in the first place.

May we all be blessed with a new year in which all people will reach out to find better, more equitable ways to live with each other.

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