I hate to keep writing about the same things, but for now…….

There are a lot of folks bashing Israel today, bashing Israel for its current tactics in Gaza, bashing Israel for its general treatment of neighboring Arabs since the 1967 Six Day War, and bashing Israel for its very existence. As to the first two of these three items, I may agree or disagree with particular commentators. As to the third, I have no tolerance. I refuse to give any respect to, or credence to other thoughts of, those who claim Israel is an illegitimate state. Full stop.

I do not base this on religious claims, or ethnic claims. I have little tolerance for those, too. I base it on hard facts.

These are those hard facts.

1. The land of what now comprises Israel was part of the Ottoman Empire, dismantled at the end of World War I.
2. The League of Nations gave the land comprising Israel and the Palestinian Territories to Great Britain under a Mandate, which included respect to the then current mixed population of Jews and Arabs, and to those Jews coming into the land under the Balfour Letter.
3. During the British Mandate period, there were times when relations between Jews and Arabs was quite bad.
4. After World War II, Britain determined to end its Mandate, and the United Nations proposed a partition of the land between Arabs and Jews, which the Jews accepted and the Arabs did not.
5. The Jews then declared the State of Israel, which the United Nations blessed and seven Arab countries invaded.
6. After the fighting ended in 1948, the Arab nations refused to sign a peace treaty or recognize Israel. The United Nations did recognize the State.
7. During the 1948 war, many Arabs left the land of Israel, assuming they would return after an Arab victory, or were forced out of Israel during the war. When the war ended, many Arabs remained in Israel and today, 75 years later, comprise about 20% of the Israel’s population.
8. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, approximately 700,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries (most going to Israel), and there were virtually no Jews left in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia or Yemen. Talk about ethnic cleansing.
9. Only Jordan and Egypt eventually signed treaties with Israel and recognized the State. The remainder of the neighboring Arab countries still have not done so, and have maintained “a state of war” with Israel for 75 years.
10. Israel took over territory, including Gaza which had been governed by Egypt, after the 1967 War, and Egypt refused to take it back when it took back Sinai in the 1970s. In 2005, Israel ended its military occupation of Gaza, although it retained some control over entry to Gaza for security reasons; Egypt also had control over entry to Gaza.
11. In 2007, a radical group, Hamas, founded by the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and supported by Iran, took control of Gaza, maintaining through its charter the right to attack Jews and destroy the illegitimate state of Israel, creating a Palestine from the Sea (the Mediterranean) to the River (the Jordan).
12. After 2007, there has been sporadic fighting between Israel and Hamas/Gaza, but nothing the like the attack of October 7, which was an invasion of sovereign Israeli territory, and which included the murder of approximately 1400 Israelis (including children and the elderly) in a brutal, inhumane fashion, and the taking over between 200 and 250 Israelis as hostages.
13. The ultimate fact is, had the Arab states accepted Israel in accordance with the United Nations resolutions in 1948, the entire Middle East could have remained at peace, and both Jews and Arabs could have prospered. Again…..full stop.

Any one who wants to criticize Israel after accepting these facts I will accept and, as I said, either agree with or disagree with on specific points. Any one who doesn’t accept these facts is, as Samuel Goldwyn once remarked about someone else, not even worth ignoring. And of course sometimes cannot be ignored. But what they say is worth nothing. At all.