THE STATE OF ISRAEL

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

The purpose of this article is to present the truth about the modern nation of Israel. The intent is also to clear up a number of lies that are told about this nation and her people.

Biased news. For example, news headlines almost monthly report that Israel has bombed the Gaza strip or some other Palestinian area and killed a few people.

However, the news stories usually fail to mention that the Palestinians regularly launch rockets into Israel, explode bombs in Israel, and rape and kill Israelis around the world. Now and then, the Israelis retaliate in self-defense and to discourage the continuing rocket attacks.

In fact, Israelis treat the Arabs living in Israel so much better than the Arabs treat Hebrew or Christian people living in their nations that there is no comparison.

Many Islamic people live and work very peacefully in Israel, and much prefer Israeli rule to the way people are treated in the Arab nations that surround Israel.

The UN Role. The United Nations supposedly is a group that promotes peace in the world. However, many of their members regularly support the Palestinians, a group that has openly declared they wish to destroy another nation - Israel. Any news, resolutions or condemnations coming from the United Nations must be understood in this context.

Israel is not heavily homosexual nation. This is another lie regularly spread by the media and other new sources.

THE NAME

The name Israel comes from the Old Testament of the Bible. It is the name that was given to Jacob, the third patriarch of the Hebrew faith on earth. He was given the name after he wrestled with an angel to save a man. The meaning of the name ‘Israel’ in Hebrew is one who wrestles with angels to do the right thing (Reference: Genesis 32:28-29 and 35:10).

BASIC STATISTICS

Geography. Israel is a tiny sliver of land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The land area of Israel is about 20,770 km² or 8,019 square miles. This is extremely tiny – about the size of the American state of New Jersey. Israel occupies 1/6 of one percent or about 0.2% of the land area occupied by the 22 Arab nations that surround her.

This is important to know because it means that Israel is very, very small in terms of land area. The biased news media can make it sound like Israel is a gigantic threat to the region, which is not true at all. In fact, there is lots of room in the Middle East for everyone to live together peacefully.

Politics. Politically, Israel is a parliamentary democracy, and the only nation with democratically elected leaders in the Middle East. People of all religions are welcome there and live there, and have their own political parties.

This is unlike the surrounding nations, which are all dictatorships. They do not allow religions other than Islam to be practiced, and imprison and kill Christian or Hebrew people on a regular basis.

THE FOUNDING OF ISRAEL

Efforts to set up a homeland for Hebrew people where they could live in safety, and without persecution, began several centuries ago. This movement was called Zionism. There is a lot of nonsense about Zionism on the internet and elsewhere. It was not about dominating the world, or anything like that.

Zionism was a movement to establish a safe place for anyone who wishes to practice the Hebrew religion. Jewish people had traditionally asked for this in their daily prayers. Below is a very brief history of the founding of this nation.

As early as 1799, the French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, thought of establishing a Jewish state in the ancient lands of Palestine.

In 1847, Benjamin Disraeli, a respected prime minister of Great Britain, wrote a novel about a Hebrew homeland called Tancred.

In 1862, Moses Hess, a friend and coworker of Karl Marx, published an important book, Rom Und Jerusalem. Anyone can look at these books to see what Zionism was about.

The man most associated with the desire for a Hebrew homeland, however, was Theodore Herzel, who lived from 1860 to 1904. Although he had a short life, he wrote an influential book called The Jewish State in 1896 that gathered a lot of attention to the idea of a Hebrew state.

Little was done about the idea until the end of World War II. At that time, there were millions of Jewish refugees who had fled Russia, Germany and Eastern Europe due to the Nazi terror of extermination against people of Jewish descent.

Many nations were asked to take in the refugees, but few wanted them. Some refugees came to the United States, but even this large, open-minded nation took in just a few hundred thousand of them.

The United Nations was new, having been formed only two years before. They took up the issue of what to do with the Hebrew refugees.

A compromise was finally reached by which a part of a small sliver of territory in the Middle East that was a British colony called Palestine would be given over to the Jewish people as a haven and sanctuary nation. Anyone born to a Jewish mother would be accepted as a citizen of the new land.

The Arab people in the neighboring lands hated this idea. However, they were outvoted in the United Nations. They vowed to destroy the new nation immediately if the plan was implemented.

Due to the refugee crisis, the plan went ahead and the State Of Israel was officially formed in 1948. To understand this much better, watch the movie, Exodus (1960), starring Paul Newman. It is based on a historical novel entitled Exodus by Leon Uris.

THE WARS

True to their promise, soon after its founding, the nations around Israel including primarily Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, attacked the new nation. It was a brutal and vicious attack on mostly unarmed refugees who just wanted to get away from the Nazis.

It is important to say that many Arabs do not want to spend their time, energy and money fighting Israelis. They would prefer to raise families, tend their flocks or build businesses, and live in peace. However, their leaders, with the help of Communist Russia, have repeatedly incited them to violence and lied to them about supposed Israeli treachery that is not true.

In the first war of 1948, the Arab armies almost succeeded. They outnumbered the Israelis about 20 to 1. If the fighting had continued for another few months, it is likely that Israel would not have survived. However, swift help mainly from the United States turned the tide and Israel survived.

Skirmishes between the nations continued unabated, but there was no full-scale war again until 1967. Here again, seven Arab nations attacked Israel all at once in an attempt to destroy the young nation. Their fighters outnumbered the Israeli soldiers at least 10 to 1. They also had better weapons supplied mainly by the Russians, who were then called the Soviet Union or USSR.

Though the Israelis fought well, the Arab fighters overwhelmed the Israelis. Once again, however, outside help at the last minute, mainly from Great Britain and United States, turned the tide. The Israeli nation survived and actually won some extra land such that has proven very helpful for them because it forms a natural boundary to help defend the nation.

The next war was called the Yom Kippur war. Seven Arab nations all attacked Israel at the same time on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, when most people stay at home and pray. Once again, the Arabs overwhelmed the Israelis, who came very close to losing. Outside help from the United States, mainly, again saved them.

All this has made the Arab nations very angry with the United States, which now has a treaty to support Israel in time of war.

THE ARGUMENTS OVER THE LAND

The Arab nations say the wars with Israel are all the fault of Israel, since Israel occupies their land illegally. Israel says it is not Arab land and it is not illegal. The land was given to them by a United Nations agreement voted upon by over 100 nations.

The Arabs say the land belongs to the Arabs, and it has been theirs for thousands of years. The Israelis counter this by saying that if one wants to look at history, this land belonged to the Jewish people long before a small number of Arabs settled there.

To prove this, the Israelis cite the Biblical history of the Jewish people in the land of Canaan. Also, many modern proofs also exist in the form of artifacts and ruins, such as that of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, that have been discovered by anthropologists who have excavated in and around Israel.

The debate goes on, but this solves nothing. The reality is that the Arab leaders will not accept any compromises, although many have been presented to them.

The fighting is over a sliver of land that occupies 0.2% of the land of the Middle East. The land does not have any oil or other valuable natural resources.

RECENT ATTACKS

Since the Yom Kippur war, the attacks from the Arab world have been terrorist attacks. These are not full-scale, all-out war. Instead, they take the form of setting off bombs and sending rockets loaded with explosives into Israel. Arab men also rape Israeli women and attack Israeli citizens all around the world. This is continuous and never stops.

Every American president in the past 40 years has attempted to help negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and her neighbors to stop the constant terror attacks against Israelis. They have included land and financial compensation for any Arabs that were displaced when Israel was formed in 1948. Each of the agreements has been rejected by the Arab leaders.

IS ISRAEL EXPANSIONIST AND WARLIKE?

Israel has chosen to defend their nation and nothing more. They have never sought to conquer other lands. They have expanded their borders when they won a war, but a lot of this land was given back later, in the hope that this would appease the Arabs. However, it did no such thing!

In fact, after the Yom Kippur war, Israel gave back the entire Sinai Peninsula – an area three times the size of Israel itself - in return for a peace agreement with Egypt. Israelis want what most people in the world want – to raise families and live in peace.

I am told that any nation that does not support Israel and Biblical principles will be severely punished in the near future. I hope everyone is listening.

For many more details, read Reclaiming Israel’s History by David Brog.

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