FIGHTING FOR LIFE

 

FIGHTING FOR LIFE

If there are doubts in anybody’s mind about the justice of the present war that Israel is fighting, one doesn’t have to go very far back:

The 1970’s were a particularly violent decade for Israelis, who faced constant armed attacks  and tragedy.

Although terrorism has been an ongoing factor since before Israel existed, the 70’s was a nightmare. Palestinian terrorists were sowing terror against Israelis, both on Israeli soil and around the world. The most glaring example was the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, in which eleven members of the team were murdered.

In the same year, Ben Gurion Airport became a slaughterhouse, when three Japanese men - who had been recruited by the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”, and trained in Beirut - stepped off an Air France flight from Rome. Within seconds of entering the airport’s waiting area, the three opened fire, murdering 26 people and wounding scores more.

Israel had hardly recovered from the 1973 Yom Kippur War when, less than a year later, terrorists took 105 Israeli schoolchildren hostage in the northern town of Ma’alot. Israeli forces fought to save the children in the school, but the terrorists murdered 22 of them, along with four adults. 

And in 1975, terrorists took control of the Savoy hotel in Tel Aviv, ending in the murder of eight civilians and three soldiers, after a failed rescue attempt. And so it continues:

From the Oslo Acccords  (Sept. 1993) until September 2000 - Islam Jihad/Hamas/ Fatah claimed responsibility for suicide bombings and other attacks in which hundreds of men, women and children were killed and many more wounded.

During the Al -Aqsa Intifada (Sept. 2000 - Dec. 2005), another 1,100 Israelis were killed and even more wounded.

Since September 2000, Palestinian terrorist attacks have claimed at least 1,479 Israeli lives. More than a thousand more have been wounded, many severely.

Since the Oslo Accords were signed, approximately 1,500 Israeli civilians have been murdered. This number excludes soldiers and police). Countless others were wounded. These figures do not yet include the still undetermined total (estimated at more than 1,000) of Israelis killed in the October 7, 2023, massacre perpetrated by Hamas.

This list includes 21 Israelis killed abroad in terror attacks directed specifically against Israeli targets and three American diplomatic personnel killed in Gaza. It does not include IDF soldiers, police, or other non-civilians.

Today, as so many soldiers (including five grandsons) are sacrificing their lives to defend their homeland against  terrorism on no less then seven fronts, one factor remains unchanged: The world still condemns Israel’s attempts to defend itself. Why is Israel the only country whose right to exist is challenged in international courts of law?

Although they may be in denial, western countries are also undergoing a crisis between civilization and barbarism. In one of his many debates, Douglas Murray (well-known writer and political activist) defined barbarism as “Islamic fundamentalism, jihadism, led by jihadist idealogy”. Obviously, not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.