I’d like to wish you all a Yom Ha’atzma’ut Sameach, a happy Yom Ha’atzma’ut, happy Israel Independence Day, celebrating 76 years of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, a fulfillment of many of the prophecies that we read in the Jewish prophets. We’re not totally there, but we are getting there. Hopefully we’re on the right track, keep the faith.
I’d like to talk about one misconception that’s really very dangerous for Israel, and that’s the entire understanding of the Palestinians. The understanding of the West is that the Palestinians are willing to negotiate and accept a state in part of what we consider to be the land of Israel, a state which would be demilitarized and would live side by side in harmony with the Jewish state of Israel. As great as that sounds, unfortunately, that’s not true.
In fact, the Palestinians had the chance to have that state, in fact, on several occasions over the past 30 years, and they rejected that because there are reasons why they don’t want that kind of westernized, idealistic state. One of those reasons is that their state, what they want Jerusalem to be the capital of their state, and since Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, then it’s impossible for us to give them that. But without that, they will never accept a state.
But beyond that, there’s a concept in Islam called jihad, and as much as apologists will try to explain that jihad is sort of a spiritual battle for Islam, unfortunately, most radical Muslims or extreme Muslims, or as we would probably say orthodox Muslims, consider jihad to be literal, and that means an armed struggle to defeat the enemies of Islam. And that, of course, includes Israel. It also includes America and all of the western and even eastern countries that are not Muslim.
However, what makes this a little bit more intense is that while jihad applies to the entire world, the entire non-Muslim world, and they’re working on that in western Europe, but the Middle East is even more intense because Muhammad and his followers actually conquered the entire Middle East, and they ruled it for probably close to 1500 years. In fact, they still rule over all of the Middle East except for one piece of land, and that land is the state of Israel that has existed for 76 years.
So for the last 76 years, Islam, as represented by the Arab states of the Middle East, have been on a jihad to destroy the Jewish state and kick the Jews out into the sea, although they might let us live there as second-class citizens as they did for hundreds of years in their own countries before kicking us out.
This jihad is a religious principle. It goes way beyond any sort of western type of ideology that can be modified and compromised, and therefore the Palestinians can’t compromise because they’d be compromising on their religious principles and their nationalistic principles, which sort of come together. Now, you might say that, well, the Palestinians aren’t radical Islamists, not like Hamas or the Islamic jihad.
Unfortunately, especially now, more than 80% of Palestinians surveyed, and these are the ones living in the West Bank, or as we call it, Judea and Samaria, support Hamas. And especially the younger Palestinians, which comprise the majority of Palestinians that are actually becoming a much, much greater part of the entire population, they support Hamas. They support the ideology, and they are becoming radicalized.
Therefore, they cannot accept a Palestinian state in only a portion of what we call the land of Israel, that is demilitarized, defanged, and cannot continue a jihad against the Jews who are ruling a part of the land that they consider to be Muslim.
Now, there are other countries also, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq. I leave out Iran because they’re not Arab, but yes, they are Muslim, so they’re also included in this jihad, that some of them have made peace with Israel. I think that the reason for the peace stems from not love of Israel, but fear of Israel, or at least the realization that they cannot militarily defeat Israel. And they’ve tried, they’ve tried multiple times. The last time was the Yom Kippur War, where Egypt and Syria tried to wipe out Israel and were sadly defeated. After that, Egypt then decided to make peace with Israel, in which they got the Sinai, so they got all of their land in exchange for peace, which nowadays basically comes down to not waging war against Israel. Saudi Arabia is also moving towards hopefully normalizing relations with Israel, not because they love Israel and not because I believe they don’t want to take back that piece of land and put it back under Arab rule, just because they can’t militarily conquer Israel. They also have a common enemy in Iran, and frankly, they’re more afraid of Iran than they want to destroy Israel. Israel is also a great potential economic, technological partner for them, so they can benefit, they can make money.
But the Palestinians, which now are sort of guided, spearheaded by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and of course, there’s Hezbollah in the North and Iran financing and controlling all of this, they want the destruction of Israel. They want to take over not only a portion of what they call the West Bank, they want to take back Jaffa, Ramla, Lod, Akko, Haifa, all the villages and all the places that they left, some voluntarily and some forcefully, when Israel was created in 1948. They want those back. They’ve never forgotten them, and they teach that in their schools. And of course, they want Al-Quds, which is Jerusalem.
So at the end of the day, the United Nations and the West can attempt to impose this Palestinian state, which would be suicidal for Israel. But our saving grace is that the Palestinians will never accept a compromise. So as much as the West wants to will a Palestinian state onto the Palestinians, at the end of the day, the Palestinians will never accept it.
So that’s our saving grace that we can negotiate for years. At the end of the day, we’re never going to give up Jerusalem, we’re never going to give up Jaffa or Akko or Haifa or Tel Aviv, for that matter. So the Palestinians are never going to be satisfied.
And if, God forbid, they do accept a Palestinian state, that Palestinian state will very soon, shortly after, be taken over by Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or other sort of Islamic parts. And the Jihad will then continue with the benefit of them having borders and airports and weapons and ways and territory, which is that much closer to wiping out Israel.
Now, will Israel be able to overcome that? Of course we will, because this is our destiny.
Our destiny is to be in the land of Israel, ruling over that land, governing over that. And the Palestinians are welcome to be a part of that, and to live there in peace, like the Arab Israelis who live and are citizens of Israel and have a great life, and frankly don’t want Hamas or Islamic Jihad or some sort of Palestinian state, they want to live in Israel. But unfortunately, the concept of Jihad, combined with this ultra nationalism, is never going to allow there to be peace, or a Palestinian state which is committed to Jihad.
On this 76th birthday of the state, of the modern state of Israel, in the same land as our ancestral state of Israel was, the land of Israel, let’s just hope that, one, the West comes to its senses and understands that Western thought does not equal Arab Muslim thought, that the Muslims in the Middle East have a much different outlook and equation of how this is going to turn out than the Western nations. Let’s pray that Israel maintains its power and is able to subdue the evil terrorists, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the other terrorist factions, and all the Arabs and Palestinians that are seeking to destroy them. And let’s hope that we can finally bring peace to the land, where we can all live in peace in the Jewish state of Israel.
So, happy Independence Day, and let’s hope for another, for hundreds and hundreds more years of independence and peace, and hopefully into the messianic era, where the entire world will finally be able to live in peace and prosperity.
