[U.S. News] Mort Zuckerman - The State of Israel and its citizens are confronted by the greatest peril in the nation's history. Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, seek to "wipe Israel off the map." A world so bored with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so used to quick fixes, so confused that it has succumbed to the most specious moral equivalency, makes no distinction between the inexcusable, indiscriminate violence of terrorism and the very different, unavoidable defensive violence of the authority responsible for protecting its citizens. It's the difference between the arsonist and the firefighter. The TV pictures are framed not in terms of the survival of Israel or the security of the state but of self-determination for the Palestinian Arabs, with Israel seen as the bully oppressing the underdog. The truly brutal reality is that Palestinian maps still do not show the State of Israel. When President Obama speaks about daily humiliation of Palestinian Arabs, he ignores that every Israeli is searched numerous times during the day; that Jewish schoolchildren have to be protected by perimeter fences and armed guards; that guards are required in cafes, restaurants and movie theaters. Arab villagers do not need to have guards at their shops, cafes or restaurants. Why? Because the Israelis do not target the innocent. It is extraordinary that a gullible world now regards Israel as rejectionist, yet it is Arab leaders who have rejected everything over the decades. Arab leaders converted the West Bank territory they came to control into a launching pad for an intifada that killed more than 1,000 Israelis and ultimately forced Israel to return to the West Bank at great cost and build a security fence against terrorist infiltration. This conduct turned upside down the priorities of the Roadmap for peace, which stated that prior to Israeli concessions the Palestinians would be obliged to demonstrate a commitment to curbing terrorism, eschewing violence and its incitement.
2009-06-16 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive