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ejuks@hotmail.com Minneapolis, MN, USA

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ISRAEL MUST SURVIVE:
REFLECTING ON THE HISTORY OF ARAB ISRAELI WARS (PART 1)

took some time off my busy summer schedule to express my thoughts on the current Israeli - Hezbollah war in Lebanon and to trace the history of Arab-Israeli wars as a way of reconnecting with the past. This paper intends to show solidarity with Israel in time of difficulty and to point out that in spite of what Arab Muslims feel about Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob still loves Israel and stands by her at all times.

As we are all aware, it is over six years that Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon and the world declared Hezbollah the victor who succeeded in pushing Israel out of Southern Lebanon. By unilaterally withdrawing from Lebanon, Israel's political objective was lost. Consequently, Hezbollah became the first non organized militant group to defeat Israeli.

As events turned out last month, Hezbollah overplayed its hands by invading a sovereign territory of Israel and killed eight soldiers capturing two. This act was done almost the same time Hamas a terrorist group; dug a tunnel through the former occupied territory and captured an Israeli soldier killing others. Israel responded with artillery bombardment of Gaza and southern Lebanon and Hezbollah responded with Katyusha rockets.

Since then the fighting has resulted in colossal damage of Lebanon's infrastructure and killed over a thousand people mostly civilians and displaced almost 800,000 people. On the Israeli side, the entire northern towns of Israeli have been evacuated and business suspended. Haifa an industrial city also has suffered its worse barrage of rockets is a ghost city. In all, almost one hundred Israeli's have been killed.

Yet no one has been able to create a viable ceasefire or a truce. When I reflect on past Middle East wars and the so called peace conferences that include United Nation's resolutions that clamor for cease fires, these folks forget that the Arab Israeli problem began many centuries ago during the time of antiquity which comprise the Old Testament Scripture. This was when Abram was married to Sarai but his wife couldn't conceive on time and Sarai gave Abram the go ahead to have a child by Hagar their maid-servant. The name of the child is Ishmael and the Bible gives the meaning of Ishmael in Genesis 16:12 as follow:

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And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

At the time of God's promise, Sarah conceived the child of promise and bore Isaac whose son Jacob later became Israel in keeping with the word of the Lord. But not before the coming of Ishmael whose descendants became the Arabs and Israel's descendants became Jews. There is no doubt that these two group of people Jews and Arabs come from one ancestral father Abraham but what is puzzling is how Ishmael's attitude of violence is replicated by the contemporary descendants of Arab Muslims. It leads me to the point that if the incendiary postures and animosities were not resolved in those days; there is little chance that it would be solved today. No level of diplomacy would have its way because like Sarah and Hagar, they are dialectically opposed to each other. As events would have it, both nations evolved through strife and struggle and the struggle for land and legitimacy has outlived every century and generation. The Old Testament Bible records numerous battles that Israel fought against the Philistines (enemies) and the surrounding pagan nations. This paper would leap frog to the beginning of the modern state of Israel.

After Adolf Hitler and his Nazi surrogates decimated six million Jews from the late 1930s to the early 1940s, the United Nations felt a moral responsibility to create a land in the present day Palestine where survivors of the Holocaust can call home. The initial opposition was from Arab nations and the UK, the dominant colonial power in the region. Both rallied together to discourage further immigration of displaced Jews to Palestine. Some ships that brought holocaust survivors were not allowed to dock because the UK government feared that uncontrolled immigration would create a problem for the Arabs. Given the horrors of Nazi atrocities against the Jews, the opposition against Jewish immigration to Palestine was short lived as both UK and heartless Arab nations couldn't dissuade members of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council from showing sympathy to Israel. As time went on more and more people began to see the genocide and horrific atrocities against the Jews and felt sympathetic to do something for this despised people. The reaction was not amazing, common sense dictates that the cold blooded murder of six million individuals for no just cause other than for being Jews was preposterous and compelling to attract sympathy but not with the Arabs who wished the Jews to be annihilated. This sympathy led to action in the United Nation(s) Security Council and the General Assembly and the Soviet Union was a strong supporter for the creation of Israel.

It seems that by creating Israel to exist along side her Arab neighbors, it was a natural expression of reality worthy to start a long process of resettling the Jewry into the hostile region of the Middle East. Reacting to that creation, David Ben Gurion in his wisdom declared Israel an independent state to the great chagrin of Arab governments in 1948. The vehement opposition of the creation of Israel was followed by the burning of Jewish property murders and attacks on Israeli's unprecedented since the Holocaust. Recall that before Israel became a state, peaceful loving Jews had lived in the Holy land and occupied lands and went about their normal businesses. From time to time when conflicts or riots occurred, these Jews were persecuted and suffered loss of life and property from time to time under different Arab sheiks and their supporters. The 1920 and 1930 riots as well as the Jerusalem riots all attest to the suffering of the Jews in the early part of the nineteenth century.

Sadly, the creation of Israel culminated in the 1948 Arab Israeli war. This left her alone to defend her territory without visible help from the world. The declaration of independence placed a burden on the Israeli society to fight for survival. Yes the quest for survival was necessitated because fundamental Islam is a violent religion which plays up emotions for violence and the creation of Israel became one reason why war was inevitable.

The quest by Arab states to destroy Israel was futile as the underground military forces Igun in alliance with Kibbutz farmers and other shadow Jewish groups merged under leadership of David Ben Gurion to form the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to combat Arab armies. Other notable personalities in the quest for a standing Israeli army were: Yishak Rabin, Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, Ezer Weizman and Menachem Begin to mention a few were original fighters against the Arab adventure. With armies all over Arab world pushing towards confrontation and aggression, a tiny group of Kibbutz farmers, youths and experience combatants who survived the Holocaust or served in the Second World War rallied under the Israel Defense Force to encounter the formidable Egyptian, Iraq, Syrian and Iranian armies. As shown in the map, the entire Arab league vowed to crush Israel; hence, they donated men and material including cash in an effort to destroy Israel.

How Israel was able to withstand belligerencies from all sides remains the most puzzling mystery of modern warfare. That Israel repelled and defeated Arab armies in 1948 showed that with God on Israel's side, she must survive and keep fighting for survival.

The countries in the above map form the Arab league. They supported governments that were fighting to annihilate Israel but our God did not allow that to happen. In the second map below combat armies came from all sides in an attempt to squeeze Israel, but IDF were equal to the task and repelled them. While cease fire was in place, Arab armies couldn't move and Israel army consolidated their positions as they awaited fresh supplies of munitions and donations from Jews around the globe. Looking at the map below, is it not madness to drive Israel to the Sea? Faced with formidable enemies Israel fought and fought and held their lines.

In order to exact her sovereignty, Israel emerged strong after the cease fire in 1949 and fought the Egyptians troops stationed in the Negev and successfully pushed the remaining Egyptian forces back to Egypt as she attempted to build her nascent nation under "Field Marshall" David Ben Gurion. In spite of this feat, Arabs kept threatening for war and simultaneously adopting terrorist tactics to the consternation of peace lovers.

One of the obstacles to peace is the so called the right of return. Please recall that the 1948 Arab Israeli war was the starting point of refugees in that region. Arab governments issued instructions and even facilitated by giving logistics to Arabs to flee their homes. Most of them fled in droves to neighboring countries before the major offensive against Israel. Their reason was to give them the opportunity to destroy the Jews once and for all. These residents heeded their call and left. The bulk of them formed thousands of refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and other parts of the Middle East. Sadly, Arab rulers miscalculated and took the small size of Israel for granted.

The loss of the war in 1948 meant that Arab refugees could not return to Israel because of fear of reprisals and out of sheer cowardice wouldn't want to live under a Jewish government. Those that stayed behind formed East Jerusalem, Nazareth and other parts of Galilee and the present West Bank. On the contrary, Jews in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East were either killed or deported to Israel to face the uncertain future of instability and economic loss. How Israel was able to absorb the mass of humanity following the years of independence is also another subject of puzzle.

To be continued

Ejuks is a Christian apologist. He is also a University of Port Harcourt alumnus and three (ATS) accredited Seminaries in the USA and Canada.