Do we have a right to defend ourselves in the end? Opinions of an Israeli

An average person, this seems to be a bad word combination on the one hand, but on the other hand, it is not. I am not a politician and not a public figure. I am not even a mother of a soldier (so far). I have been living in this hotspot for eleven years, and the question “do I love this land?” has remained a question for me. Now, I can tell you for sure: “Yes, I do! I love this land and I will never give it away, because we are absolutely alone in this world.”

I used to say, “Oh, Palestinians! Why not live in peace, they also have a right to be a people on this planet!” My eyes opened a year and a half ago when the Israeli government, which was presided over by Ehud Barak, was ready to “establish peace” at all costs. The government was ready (as the press wrote) to give away the Golan Heights to Syria; the Temple Mount, to the UN; and East Jerusalem, to Arafat. The Arabs have not seen such a government even in their best dreams. So what? What did we get in return? Terror.

Even children understand that Arafat, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and others, they do not need peace with Israel. The only good thing for them is the destruction of Israel. What negotiations can there be? There have been loads of them! We have suffered and waited and made so many concessions! So much gasoline has been wasted on weekly “deployment withdrawals” of the troops and on ridiculous bombings of the empty buildings of the Palestinian police! Wasn't Sharon’s government as silent as Rabin-Peres's or Barak’s? What was Arafat’s answer to “the 1678th warning from China?” The answer was terror.

This situation is good for him when the television broadcasts funerals of Palestinian kids. He was deliberately striving for Israel’s military action in order to justify himself in the opinion of the poor and the rich neighbors that had been sponsoring him. They do not know in the world that Arafat is “for peace” only when he goes to the UN, to Europe, or America; when he speaks English. Has he ever used his Arabic language to tell his nationals that they should live in peace with Israel, that there was no need to blow up buses, night clubs, and cafes, that hatred should not be taught to children at schools? No! Twenty years will pass and there will be another Palestinian generation. It will be the time when they have to negotiate, which is not in the plans of the murderer who sends Arab boys to throw stones at soldiers, those boys’ elder brothers – to kill, and then he goes to a hospital and kisses injured and fractured arms and legs of his people.

There is no person among my friends who does not want to have peace with Arabs on the whole and with Palestinians in particular. We are killing them in the wars that they forced us to wage, and we are dreaming of living in peace with them; we want to remain people in this ocean of medieval hatred, because we were reading good books in our childhood, and no one was teaching us that loving your nation implied hatred to another nation.

We treat them in our hospitals, pay social allowances to them, relieve them of taxes and do not recruit them in the army. We supply them with water, electric power, gas, fuel – for them to get to our territory and arrange another massacre. When did anyone wage wars like that? Do we have a right to defend ourselves in the end?

They say that Arafat is winning in every way possible: in the number of the people killed, in the informational war. He does not have tanks and planes, you see, he only has suicidal terrorists. It just so happens that those holy people do not feel sorry for themselves in their struggle with Israeli murderers! This is like a negative film, where black in actually white.

No one is listening to us, no one is willing to understand that Israel does not have another way out. The whole world is screaming: “Stop it! Cut it out!” but may I ask, how long will the people of my country have to walk in streets in fear, how long will they have to bury the killed people, the list of which cannot fit a newspaper centerfold?

I do not believe that the present military operation can be successful on the territories. We will not be allowed to conduct it. Neither Europe, which is filled with anti-Israeli and anti-Semite sentiments, nor America, which acknowledges our right for defense only verbally, will allow us that. Oil and dollars are way more important than Jews and even the Holy Land. We cannot withdraw those 45 thousand guns, which were given to the Palestinian police pursuant to the agreement that was signed in Oslo. We cannot detect and destroy the labs, which produce weapons, arrest all militants. This is not Afghanistan and we are not Americans.

So, where is the way out, you may ask. The way out is in the separation. They separated Greeks and Turkish people in Cyprus and they calmed down over there. The UN has done that. Why not getting together and settling this issue here? We will not give away everything, but we are ready for reasonable compromise. Nobody is willing to remember that Israel does not give away the territories, which were taken during five wars that were launched by Arabs! Who attacked? Who was the aggressor, who got the mug beaten? Is Russia going to give way Kaliningrad to Germany, or the islands to Japan? Are those territories that important for Russia, in contrast to our country, where every kilometer is gold? We have a tiny country and fierce neighbors.

The fight on two fronts will always exist for Jews. The events that we are witnessing now are horrid. No one wants to realize that Israel is being attacked with the blows of the medieval conscience. At the end of the day, if all rich protectors of the poor Palestinian people find money to help the unhappy not with weapon, but with some money, many of them would move over to Palestine. The reason of the conflict would vanish. Egypt, Syria, not to mention Jordan, would not refuse to accept them. Isn’t the liquidation of the threat of the Word War III a great reason?

I see the map of the Middle East: straight “post-colonial” borders of Arab neighbors, and small Israel that can hardly breathe in their iron arms. The ships of the new crusaders are sailing towards its shores.

Rozalia Fridman Israel Especially for PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

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