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The Times - Israel acts because the world won’t defend it
The scenes from Gaza are heartbreaking. But the whole conflict could be avoided if the Palestinians said one small thing, by Daniel Finkelstein

After a quick story of his aunt and mother, and Anne Frank and her sister (whom world opinion did not save):

The origin of the state of Israel is not religion or nationalism, it is the experience of oppression and murder, the fear of total annihilation and the bitter conclusion that world opinion could not be relied upon to protect the Jews.

Israel was the idea of a journalist. Theodor Herzl was the Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse… the experience of Jews all over the world in the first half of the 20th century - not just in Europe but in the Middle East too - rather bore out Herzl.

So when Israel is urged to respect world opinion and put its faith in the international community the point is rather being missed. The very idea of Israel is a rejection of this option. Israel only exists because Jews do not feel safe as the wards of world opinion. Zionism, that word that is so abused, so reviled, is founded on a determination that, at the end of the day, somehow the Jews will defend themselves and their fellow Jews from destruction. If world opinion was enough, there would be no Israel.

And:

[T]here can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.

Yet they will not say it. And they will not mean it. For they do not want the Jews. Again and again - again and again - the Palestinians have been offered a nation state in a divided Palestine. And again and again they have turned the offer down, for it has always been more important to drive out the Jews than to have a Palestinian state. It is difficult sometimes to avoid the feeling that Hamas and Hezbollah don’t want to kill Jews because they hate Israel. They hate Israel because they want to kill Jews.

And, oh my goodness:

A year or so back I met a teacher while I was on holiday and fell to talking with him about Israel. He was a nice man and all he wanted was for fighting to stop and to end the suffering of children. And he had a question for me.

Why, he asked, doesn’t Israel offer to give back the West Bank and Gaza? Why doesn’t it just let the Palestinians have a state there? If the Palestinians turned it down, he said, then at least liberal opinion would be on Israel’s side and would rally to its assistance.

So I patiently explained to this kind, good man that Israel had, at Camp David in 2000, made precisely this offer and that it had been rejected out of hand by Yassir Arafat, not even used as the basis for negotiation. I told him that Israel was no longer in Gaza, having withdrawn unilaterally and taken the settlers with it. The Palestinians had greeted this movement with suicide bombs and rockets. Yet the teacher, with all his compassion, wasn’t even aware of all this.

NRO - Impromptus, by Jay Nordlinger

People often ask me what to read… Lately, several readers have said, “What should I read about Israel, to get the history right? People are always saying that a bunch of zealous Jews just showed up and, for no legitimate reason, kicked out a bunch of peaceable Arabs.”

Right. That’s what I was taught too. Anyway, I always say Joan Peters, Paul Johnson (in his A History of the Jews), Martin Gilbert, Conor Cruise O’Brien. But if anyone can do better — please let me know. What there may be a crying need for is a sound — ultra-sound! — modest-size one-volume history. Something you could take to the bank. A Bernard Lewis-style book. (He has not concentrated on Israel, but rather on the Arab states, Persia, and Turkey.) That would be a serious service.

Well, Michael Medved had a lecture he played on his radio show a couple years ago that was quite eye-opening. He should publish that.