Debate: Israel versus Palestine
Side: Israel

A note, I do not refer to Palestine, I refer to Israel, the historic name of the land. When there is an actual Palestinian nation for the first time, I will refer to Palestine. The first issue I want to address is the right to the land. The Jews have been in Israel for thousands of years, at least 3,000. The name Palestine was invented about 70 CE by the Romans, who got the name from the Philistines, the enemies of Israel, in an attempt to humiliate the Israelites. Ironically enough, the name comes from the word meaning foreign invaders, which is what they and most modern Palestinians are. Arabs came and conquered the land 633 BCE. After that though, it was never that important. Very few rulers ever came to visit the land, not even for what we are told is an extremely important religious site at al Aqsa mosque. The only time it became important was when the Christians came during the Crusades after the Seljuks started persecuting pilgrims traveling to their holy sites. The only reason they cared was because it was considered an insult for them to relinquish any land to non-Muslims. After that, a succession of empires ruled the land, and never once was there an independent nation of Palestine. Throughout this time, Jews in the Diaspora were constantly returning to their historic land in small groups. In the 19th century, a trend started where more and more Jews immigrated back home. In 1897, the Zionist National Congress made it official business to start the ingathering of the exiles and establish a national Jewish state in Israel. At the time, the land was desolate. Mark Twain visited there and said that it was a complete wasteland and that he never saw a soul while he was there. It was filled with swamps and desert, almost completely arid. The Jews came and started to irrigate the land, drain swamps, and make the land farmable again. The more settlers came, the quicker progress was made. There were small Arab communities there, but they were not as big as the Jewish community, at least at first. When the Arabs of surrounding nations saw the prosperity of the Jews, they came in hopes of also becoming prosperous. Eventually, due to restrictions on Jewish immigration, they outnumbered the Jews. After World War II, it was deemed vital to fix the growing problem in Israel. The hopes for a Jewish nation drove Arabs mad, for the same reason their ancestors got mad about the Crusaders. It was, and still is, deemed an insult for lands once under Muslim control to become controlled by non-Muslims. In 1947, the United Nations made a partition plan, and gave each people the land that they were a majority on. The Jews accepted this. The Arabs flatly rejected it, and began funding terrorist attacks against Israel. When Israel declared independence, 6 nations immediately declared war on it, and attacked with their well supplied, well trained militaries against Israel’s covertly trained settlers that had only what could be smuggled in under the restrictive British laws. The nations arrayed against Israel had tanks, planes, machine guns, everything Israel didn’t have. Israel won, and even gained territory that it was attacked from and that had been originally making the land they were given indefensible. They welcomed the Arabs to stay, but the other nations told them to leave and that they could return when they destroyed Israel. Needless to say, they failed to do that. Instead of allowing them to return, however, they placed all 600,000 of them in refugee camps (a note on that number, most were first of second generation immigrants, not native Palestinians. That number is far smaller). They never tried to integrate them into their society. Israel, on the other hand, integrated 800,000 refugees from Arab countries into its society easily, despite having less land, less money, and less people than the Arab countries who could not integrate Arabic refugees into their society. The second thing I want to address is who wants peace. Israel has accepted every realistic peace offering made, and the Arabs have rejected every single one. The only peace Arabs have ever accepted is for Israel to return to its original indefensible borders and allow all the Arabs to return to wherever they wanted in the land. Israel accepts terms such as the turning over of Gaza and the West Bank to Palestinian authorities to build their state upon. That is rejected by Arabs. You tell me who wants peace and who doesn’t. Terrorism. This is a sensitive issue in the Mid East, especially in Israel. People accuse Israel of state sponsored terrorism. This is a complete lie. Israel has not once targeted civilians on purpose. I have heard so many times that Israel goes and bombs mosques, schools, hospitals and homes just for the hell of it, or goes around shooting civilians for fun. That is ridiculous. These lies have gotten worse after Operation Cast Lead. Cast Lead was launched against the Gaza strip following years of rocket and mortar attacks against southern Israel, over 8,000 total. Many were launched during a cease fire that only Israel really honored. Hamas, who violently overthrew the legitimate government of Gaza, never honored it as it is in their charter to not acknowledge Israel and to attempt to destroy it at all times. Israel then proceeded to bomb the places the weapons were held and fired from. Hamas had happened to place them in the middle of population centers. They stored weapons in mosques, fired rockets from outside of schools, and they even had their central command underneath a hospital. During gunfire exchanges with Israeli forces, they purposely surrounded themselves with civilians so that they could accuse Israel of killing them. People would run to places they knew were about to be bombed because Israel called the inhabitants to tell them to leave because they had weapons inside. They actively tried to cause civilian casualties in order to charge Israel with war crimes. The final body count is very revealing as to the lies that Hamas tells. They claimed 1414 killed, with 1180 of them being civilians. Israel found only 1166 to be killed, 957 of them combatants and only 295 civilians. Counted in the civilians are some female suicide bombers, a few kids that Hamas had given guns and told to shoot IDF soldiers, and people who deliberately ran to houses that had weapons in order to be human shields. Those people can hardly be counted as innocent, or at least there is good reason they were killed. The actual count of innocent civilians is much lower. Whoever was killed and was truly innocent, that is tragic. However, in war there is collateral damage, and when Hamas was launching rockets from the middle of civilian neighborhoods they are probably more to blame for the deaths than Israel.Many people are also saying Israel isn’t a true democracy. Well, they must be right. I mean, it’s not like Arabs get to vote. Not like they get to visit all of their holy sites. Not like they have equal access to everything Jews do. Oh, wait, they do. I fail to see how Israel does anything wrong to the Arabs. The West Bank is experiencing an economic boom, and the only reason Gaza isn’t doing the same is because Hamas hordes the humanitarian shipments that are sent in. The only blockade is against weapons, nothing else. They just can’t help but try to ship in weapons every day rather than worry about getting food. It is not the Israelis that are in the wrong; it is the terrorist organizations that refuse to accept that the Jews have regained their homeland. When they accept that, and stop trying to destroy Israel, peace can be made. Until then, we are stuck at war.