OPINION:
After Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the devastating military response, demands for a cease-fire and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel emerged organically. The media seemed equally clueless in failing to teach some history to newly minted college students. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, you need to know where you’ve been to understand where you are.
For centuries (this year is 5783 in the Hebrew calendar), Jews have been living in a large area of the Middle East that in the Bible has been called Judea and Samaria, the land of Israel, Canaan and Palestine. They occupied that area and Jerusalem for thousands of years alongside Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Jordanians, and other settled peoples. The area was mostly desert. There were no established borders — only people seeking an agrarian existence.
Fast-forward: From the early 14th century until the end of World War I, the area was controlled by the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. After losing that war, the empire of mostly undeveloped land was dismantled. Victorious Western powers — primarily Britain and France — colonized the Middle East and Africa. Countries that didn’t exist before were named and had their borders drawn.
The League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, gave Britain the mandate to divide the desert between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River to accommodate Jewish and Arab populations. In 1947, the U.N. proposed specific partition borders.
The new government of the new nation of Israel accepted. The surrounding Arab states objected to any partition. They organized to destroy Israel. They lost that 1948 war. Many Arabs fled to the Egyptian-controlled Gaza area. The campus cry “from the river to the sea” is a revived refutation of the U.N. mandate to apportion land among Jews and Arabs who had no right to ownership.
Fast-forward again: After losing the 1948 war, the Arabs started (and lost) wars in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006. The so-called Palestinian people did not attack. There was no Palestinian nation to wage war.
Enter Hamas, a terrorist organization with a short history. Established in 1987 as an Iranian proxy group, Hamas’ raison d’etre is wiping Israel off the map. This decades-old hatred of Israel laid the foundation for the Oct. 7 roasting of babies in ovens, slicing heads off civilians, and gang-raping women to justify their claim to land for the so-called Palestinian people.
The Arabs in Gaza can call themselves whatever they like. But unlike Jordanians, Iranians, Syrians and others, the people of Gaza have never lived in a country called “Palestine” that had a functioning government with internationally recognized borders.
Hamas forced the government of Israel to defend its country once again. (Hamas has attacked in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021.) Since the enemy has built an urban tunnel network for war, Israel’s current retaliatory attack has necessitated blowing up Hamas’ hiding places for the estimated 30,000 Hamas criminals who have been hiding weapons and themselves in schools, hospitals, mosque and underground.
Civilian deaths are unavoidable. Hamas strategically puts them in harm’s way.
Predictably, there is talk of a “proportionate” Israeli response. Israel’s population is under 10 million. It is a country the size of New Jersey.
The 240 Israeli hostages taken out of the country are the equivalent of 8,000 Americans kidnapped one night and taken to Mexico. The 1,200 innocent people killed by Hamas is equal to 40,000 Americans killed in one day by terrorists.
What would be the “proportionate” response to those crimes? What is the proportionate response to throwing a liquid accelerant on people while alive and lighting them on fire so they’re burned to a crisp?
How many Arab women should be gang-raped and dragged through Tel Aviv to even the score? If you haven’t seen the images, go to HamasTerror.com for 60 seconds of horrific violence.
Then, elect either a proportioned response or wiping that evil off the face of the earth.
• Rick Berman serves as president of RBB Strategies.
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