This is an extended response to the article entitled "What Israel Means to Me" by Amitai Etzioni reprinted a few days ago. I could not make up my mind to post a long comment and then the article disappeared.

And What This Article Means To Me

It means another apologia for a country that, no matter what, is considered above criticism.

"On July 16, an Israeli aircraft fired on a civilian home in the village of Aitaroun, killing 11 members of the al-Akhrass family, among them seven Canadian-Lebanese dual nationals who were vacationing in the village when the war began. Human Rights Watch independently interviewed three villagers who vigorously denied that the family had any connection to Hezbollah. Among the victims were children aged one, three, five and seven." -- Human Rights Watch Report

When an Israeli child is killed by a Katyusha rocket, it's an offense against nature; when the Israeli airforce blows 60 Lebanese women and children to kingdom come, it's "a regrettable incident." Where is the outrage in Israel, at these senseless deaths and at this horrific suffering? A pathetic few protesters, regarded with contempt by the great mass of the Israeli populace. Words cannot adequately express the extent of my disgust at this moral relativism and at the utter lack of conscience that produced it. I am physically ill just thinking about it.

Historically, the Hebrews wrested Palestine by violence from is original inhabitants. They, in turn, were kicked out by subsequent conquerors. "Israel" existed as a nation -- as an organized political unit -- for a scant few decades more than two millenia ago. By an historically remarkable turn of events, the desires of a few European-hating Jews meshed with the desires of Jew-hating European governments eager to solve their "Jewish Problem" by expatriating their Jewish populations. A violent seizure of land in Palestine was effected. In the 1920s, Ben-Gurion stated flatly that the Jews in Israel would pretend a desire for peace with the Arabs until the the new Jewish State was well-armed and well-established enough to drive them out. Since the first "commandos" landed and started killing inconvenient Arabs, it has been the intention of successive Israeli governments to drive Arabs out of "Eretz Yisrael." Olmert continues that tradition.

"Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah" -- Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon

"Every village from which a Katyusha is fired must be destroyed" -- Israeli general, quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth

"One who goes to sleep with rockets shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't wake up in the morning" -- Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the UN

At bottom, the "elephant in the room" is that the Israeli Zionists and their apologists regard Jews as "God's Chosen People" and believe that it absolutely does not matter to God what they do to non-Jews. Lebanese or Palestinian -- killing the innocent non-Jew is a PR problem, devoid of moral implication. Exactly out of this moral void comes the utter failure of the Israeli state. As the above quotations indicate, there is nothing "accidental" about the killing of civilians in southern Lebanon. Women and babies sleeping in an apartment building 300 meters from a Hezbollah rocket launcher will be killed, as a matter of course. Restrictions of that killing are imposed by what Israel calculates it can get away with as a political matter, in the context of the larger world. The Israeli government restrains its prediliction for fullblown, scorched-earth slaughter out of concern for its foreign aid packages. The country wouldn't survive six months if the US closed the money spigot.

I have sympathy for the innocent killed, in the case of Israel vs The Rest of the World, -- the innocent being 12 year-old Palestinian boys shot off the porch by indifferent Israel soldiers, Lebanese babies with their heads ripped off by Israeli bomb shrapnel, or young Israeli children blown to bits while riding on a bus, when a suicide bomber explodes himself. I have no sympathy with retired terrorists, self-styling themselves "commandos" or "freedom fighters," who in their day killed civilians with as much indifference as Hezbollah and the present Israeli government.

Nor do I sympathize with modern Israelis who, from the comfort of their apartments in Tel Aviv, endorse the continuous murder of non-Jewish families as a means of "protecting" Jewish families. To them, I say: You will continue to live in fear until you stop the killing. And that is as it should be. It is God's justice for a stiffnecked people who have turned their backs to God: "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."