By James Wilson
There are currently two resolutions before the UN Security Council. One condemns Israel for building settlements in East Jerusalem; the other demands Israel return to her pre-1967 borders. They are as absurd as they are wicked.
Israel is building homes on her own land. Jews have lived in an undivided Jerusalem for three thousand years. They are called occupiers of Jerusalem but it was Roman occupiers who expelled them in 70 AD. (Jews returned home following the destruction; they always do.) Roman occupiers named the region Palestine but no nation other than Israel ever existed there; when Islam came to birth six hundred years later Ottoman Turks became the occupiers. Still the Jews clung to their traditional capitol albeit under hardship and persecution.
Near the end of the 19th Century Jews began to return to their homeland in significant numbers. Through faith in the God Yahweh and the resilience that has marked them throughout history they transformed a malarial swamp called Galilee into a premiere agricultural producer and provided a future homeland for brethren surviving the coming Holocaust. Blasted from most of Jerusalem during the 1948 war intending their destruction, they retook their city in the 1967 war attempting their extermination. (Israel has never initiated wars; they just keep winning them.) Being at last in re-possession of their capitol they simply declared and acted on that reality. The so-called Palestinians – who are actually of Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian origin and citizenship – have been begging the United Nations to give the city to them ever since.
And the borders? These lands were reclaimed in 1967 from would-be killers of Israel arbitrarily placed there by United Nations mandate twenty years earlier; UN officials were well aware that genocidal aggression against Israel would immediately follow. By the grace of God Israel defended her indefensible borders.
These are the facts against which the UN Security Council repeatedly sets itself. Before Barack Obama US veto power in the Council was proof against forcing Israel to obey these heinous decrees. Now US support is a roll of the dice. But why – given the facts and the oceans of Jewish blood spilled in the last century alone – would any decent and intelligent person give serious consideration to punishing them further?
Truth is decent and intelligent people back the underdog – Israel. But true believers are unimpressed with facts. A true believer is one who has made an emotional connection to a person, community, or cause. The connection is one of sympathetic identification with its object. Facts are spun to protect the connection; concepts like justice are re-shaped to support the people the true believer has chosen for his sympathy. True believers in the Palestinian cause believe a few million Israelis have bullied, robbed and murdered one billion Muslims for a century because the Palestinians say it is so. They believe Palestinians are impoverished and homeless because of Israeli greed and cruelty, not because their leaders build terror tunnels – another was just uncovered by Israel – with the very building materials donated by many nations (including Israel) for homes and prosperity. True believers are people of faith, but their faith is rarely connected to a real God – or to reality at all.
Palestinian President Abbas is currently taking his case to the Climate Summit meeting in Paris. He says, “The occupation is ruining Palestine and the settlements are ruining the environment. Please help us stop the occupation and the settlements.” He supports a French plan for international control of the region to ensure fairness for all and true believers will find this reasonable.
True believers will believe him but the rest of us are asked to forget he – and the French – advocate international takeover of a sovereign nation that same internationalist body has long recognized as sovereign. That suspension of rationality comes before we even get to wondering why a question of war and peace is argued at a Climate Summit…or why these suddenly environmentally conscious Palestinians reduced Temple Square in Jerusalem to a slum stinking of uncollected garbage before the conquering Israelis cleaned and redeemed it in 1967.
Reality is the Palestinian plight is real and it is horrific. But to accept their argument is like accepting the alcoholic’s claim he is slowly destroying himself because his sober friends and family force him to do it. The Palestinians’ best hope is to accept responsibility for their plight and begin using resources they are given to do good for themselves instead of evil to others. The best hope for the rest of us is to believe and serve Truth instead of becoming true believers impervious to it.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
