Cherub Nicholls

Israel:

Fighting Terrorism and the Propaganda of Occupation

They have said, "Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more."

For they have consulted together with one consent; they form a confederacy against You…

Who said, "Let us take for ourselves the pastures of God for a possession."

(Ps 83:4, 5 & 12).

As 2008 came to a close, the big news on the last five days was Israel's air assault against Hamas facilities in Gaza. This news event cogently overtook months of reporting on the global economic crisis which had dominated the airwaves since mid-September, when major financial institutions in the United States, in Europe and also in Asia, collapsed. Following this unprecedented failure of the economic policies of the major industrialised countries, the news media have continually told tales of woe. Their grim reports on the pathos of those most affected by the crisis have left many viewers with revulsion. Now that we have entered a New Year folks are desperate to leave the problems of conflict and economic failures behind. But the question is: Would this be possible?

The "last days of '08" military actions taken by Israel returned that country to its rightful geopolitical position as a powerful non-Islamic state in the midst of peoples who wish to see this ancient people disappear from its historic homeland. (This homeland is called Israel, with an undivided Jerusalem as its capital. In our last web posting we dealt extensively with the fact that Jerusalem was and is to this very day the "City of God," and that this city ought not to be a part of any future peace deal… that would be anything but peace.)

The growing Iranian influence in the region, with its multiple stooges, does pose a serious threat to Israel's national security. So when Israel launches retaliatory strategic strikes at its enemies, it ought to be allowed to complete the task, for "cease-fires" are simply phases which allow the enemy to rearm and redouble its efforts. This was the case recently with Hamas during the last conflicted cease-fire deal it made with Israel (June- December 2008).

Israel is engaged in fighting a war on two fronts: militarily, against terror attacks - and ideologically, against claims of occupation.

World of Double Standards

The international media have sensationalised Israel's responses to the Palestinian terrorists to the point that they all drop everything to run to the region so as to provide first-hand coverage from there. Yet in tandem with this conflict is another one, in Africa.

On Tuesday, December 30, news reports were that some 380 Palestinians had been killed, most of them terrorists. Conversely, the reported killings of more than 400 persons by Ugandan rebels went virtually unreported. These people were killed on Christmas Day while they were attending a Christmas concert in a Roman Catholic Church. The rebels of the Ugandan Lords Resistance Army (LRA) allegedly committed the massacres in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (The DRC). Where is the outrage? Where are the media?

Furthermore, a Yahoo News report added that "Tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly two million displaced in Uganda in two decades of fighting between the Ugandan government and the LRA, which is notorious for abductions of children to be used as soldiers and sex slaves."¹

Meanwhile, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Dore Gold addresses the question of Israel's engagement in Gaza in a paper titled: Did Israel Use "Disproportionate Force" in Gaza? In this article Gold posits:

Israeli population centers in southern Israel have been the target of over 4,000 rockets, as well as thousands of mortar shells, fired by Hamas and other organizations since 2001. Rocket attacks increased by 500 percent after Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. During an informal six-month lull, some 215 rockets were launched at Israel.

The charge that Israel uses disproportionate force keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetrate. From a purely legal perspective, Israel's current military actions in Gaza are on solid ground. According to international law, Israel is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it. ²

Gold further argues that on December 27, 2008, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman issued a statement saying that while the Secretary-General recognized "Israel's security concerns regarding the continued firing of rockets from Gaza," he reiterated "Israel's obligation to uphold international humanitarian and human rights law." The statement specifically noted that he "condemns excessive use of force leading to the killing and injuring of civilians [emphasis added]."

A day later, Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, "strongly condemned Israel's disproportionate use of force." French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, also condemned Israel's "disproportionate use of force," while demanding an end to rocket attacks on Israel.Brazil also joined this chorus, criticizing Israel's "disproportionate response." Undoubtedly, a powerful impression has been created by large Western newspaper headlines that describe massive Israeli air strikes in Gaza, without any up-front explanation for their cause.³

We have seen the global response to controversial leaders like President George W. Bush. People like to believe that while they may themselves not be doing the right thing, in keeping with God's divine mandate for mankind, they at least believe they hold a very high standard when it comes to conflict. They pick and choose which conflict to support, and then they decide how much leverage ought to be administered for a resolution to that conflict. Haven't you noticed that in the case of Israel everyone gets on board to tell this sovereign state how to protect its citizens?

Israel's conflict with the Arabs has been ongoing since the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948. Ever since, Israel has fought wars with those states on its borders until Jordan and Egypt decided to recognise the right of Israel to exist and signed peace treaties with Israel. The Palestinians are still to learn this basic principle if they are to enjoy prosperity on Israel's boundaries. On the other hand, those who seek a "quick fix" measure to the conflict vis-à-vis diplomatic means ultimately believe that the conflict can be resolved by some very simplistic measures.

The Occupation Message

Former Prime Minister and current Israeli Leader of the Opposition Benjamin Netanyahu, in his book, A Durable Peace, states that "With each year's harvest of propaganda, the reality of the Arab world's war against Israel began to recede in the popular mind, leaving only the image of Israel against the Palestinian Arabs... In a nutshell, the new chain of reasoning went like this: All the problems in the Middle East are rooted in the Palestinian problem; that problem itself is rooted in Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. Ergo, end that occupation and you end the problem."⁴

Netanyahu contends that this elegant construct, non-existent before Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, came into being with amazing speed. By the 1970s, it had made its way from Arab to Western capitals.⁵

He also points out that: "New arguments would have to be marshalled to justify continued hostility against Israel. And what better proof of Israel's innate aggression could there be than the incontestable fact that it had come out of the war (the Six-Day War in 1967) a bigger country than when it entered it? All the territories that the Arabs had lost in 1967, territories that had been used by Arab leaders as staging areas for a war that they themselves had brought on, were now held up as examples of unbridled Israeli expansionism. The consequences of Arab aggression were thereby presented as its causes."⁶

News for You

Bible readers will agree that there is enough evidence in the Scriptures to prove that the word of God is true. The promises He made to various individuals: He kept them all. You may even be able to testify to God's interventions in your personal lives and to the promises He made to you and kept. Well, then, why do you doubt God's promises to Israel? Here is what God told the prophet Jeremiah concerning Israel: "For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up."⁷ Be assured that God will defend Israel from its enemies round about. The Arabs will not prosper, though they persevere in the notion that they will run Israel out of the region.