RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/25/why-the-world-has-turned-against-israel/

“It is up to Israelis and Palestinians to work out how best to resolve the conflict between them. That’s what self-determination means. What we in the West can do is to support the principle of national self-determination itself. In that respect, the fact that Israel has made it to 75 years, despite the formidable odds against it, should be celebrated as a remarkable achievement.”

Given the hatred Israel evokes from Islamists, regional powers and Western leftists, it is remarkable it has survived for so long.

To be sure, Israel has also had substantial international support at times. From the late 1960s onwards, it could rely on America as an ally – although that backing seems to be waning today, particularly among Democrats. It is also often forgotten that left-wingers used to be staunch supporters of Israel. Indeed, from Israel’s foundation in 1948 through the 1960s, the left generally celebrated Israel as an expression of Jews’ right to national self-determination. This began to change in the 1970s, as sections of the left increasingly came to view Israel as an imperialist power. It was only in the 1990s, however, when Western elites started to reject the idea of national self-determination, that support for Israel on the left really began to erode.

The outside world’s perception of Israel has changed enormously in its 75-year history. These changes owe at least as much to developments in the West as they do to developments in Israel. In particular, it seems clear that waning support for national self-determination in the West has made it harder for Israel to justify its existence.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-price-israel-pays-for-its-existence?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

April 25th  is Israel’s Remembrance Day. This is when the nation commemorates all those who have fallen in battle defending it against its attackers, and remembers also all those Israeli civilians who have been murdered by Arab terrorism.

Since the State of Israel was established in 1948, 24,213 men and women have been killed in military service and 4,255 men, women and children have been murdered in terror attacks. To put these losses in proportion, in 1948 Israel had 806,000 people; today, its population is approaching 10 million. In America, the population during that period has risen from around 130 million to 336 million, and in the UK from 50 million to 67 million.

Today is an emotional day for Israel. This morning, when the siren sounded at 1100, traffic in the streets came to a halt and people stood and bowed their heads. Thousands of Israelis have visited the cemeteries to remember slain family members, recite prayers and join in the nation’s collective mourning and respect.

This annual demonstration of solidarity in grief over the dreadful price paid by Israel’s never-ending struggle to survive always generates high emotion. Today, this has been heightened still further by the terrible divisions laid bare during the last four months of uproar over the government’s judicial reform programme — which today also produced a few protests at these most solemn events.

This evening, Israel will pass seamlessly from a day of extreme sadness to the start of Independence Day, when it celebrates the rebirth of the Jewish national home in Israel. For Israelis, rejoicing over that astonishing achievement is necessarily anchored in the awareness that is never far from the surface — that the price they have paid to be citizens of their own country has been agonisingly steep.

That price is still being paid, as Israelis continue to be regularly attacked and murdered and their young conscript soldiers continue to be sent into harm’s way to defend their country against enemies bent upon its extermination

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-75-year-odyssey-from-left-to-right-jabotinsky-begin-bibi-religion-zionism-3f63d8fe?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

How did Israel, a liberal cause at its founding 75 years ago, become right-wing? You could begin the tale in 1935, when a Jewish state was still far from assured. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the father of right-wing Zionism, despised by the socialist mainstream, made a promise and a threat to David Ben-Gurion, the Labor Zionist leader of Palestine’s Jewish community:

“I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our ‘state’ will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: Give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way), and I’ll take it. . . . In the will I leave my son, I’ll tell him to start a revolution, but on the envelope, I’ll write, ‘To be opened only five years after a Jewish state is established.’ ”

That Jabotinsky’s heirs kept his promise and threat allows us to trace the nation’s journey from left to right as the world’s most successful postcolonial state.

In 1944 right-wing Zionists revolted against the British, the colonial power blocking desperate European Jews from immigrating to Palestine. Ben-Gurion, focused on a postwar settlement, opposed the revolt. His forces betrayed hundreds of members of the Zionist underground to the British. This turned Jew against Jew and could have easily spiraled into civil war. But it didn’t. “There will not be a fratricidal war,” said Menachem Begin, successor to Jabotinsky. “Perhaps our blood will be shed, but we will not shed the blood of others.”