I have a reputation as one of Israel’s staunchest supporters. That reputation is due to several factors:
As an American journalist of Arabic heritage I have done my best over the last 20 years to shatter the myths surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict – misperceptions based largely on effective lies purposeful distortions and relentless propaganda efforts by Arab and Muslim regimes and their apologists among haters of America and Israel throughout the world.
As a freedom-loving Christian American journalist who had the opportunity to put my own boots on the ground in the Middle East it is obvious that the Arab and Muslim world is dominated by tyranny fascism and anti-Semitism – hardly a world we should want to see expanded.
As a journalist I found that Israel was the only country in the Middle East that respected the free press. This again became obvious recently to us at WND when our own Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein was prevented from traveling to Syria because he is Jewish.
The Jews a people who have survived the deaths of many empires that tried to destroy them – including but not limited to the Egyptians Romans Babylonians Persians – have only one homeland Israel continuously occupied by them for 4 000 years and never a nation-state belonging to any others.
Yet despite all this I am through defending Israel – at least the regime currently in power in Jerusalem this useless coalition seemingly hell-bent on committing national suicide.
Next week Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a man I once considered – like I once considered his predecessor Ariel Sharon – a reasonable rational level-headed defender of his country is set to visit Washington with his hand out.
He is asking for an initial commitment of up to $10 billion in direct U.S. aid to implement his plan for national retreat appeasement of the global jihad and a new sellout of more than 200 000 Israeli civilians who have made their homes in historically Jewish lands in Judea and Samaria at the behest and recommendation of earlier Israeli governments.
Olmert is coming here to seek administration and congressional support for a new round of disengagement – this time from 90-95 percent of what we often call the West Bank and even including large sections of the city of Jerusalem once regarded as the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
He does this fully knowing that last summer’s evacuation of the Gaza Strip has been an unmitigated disaster for the Jewish people Western civilization and freedom in general as the terrorists from Hamas – kissing cousins of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda and Iran’s Hizbullah organization – now control the territory and more than ever threaten the lives of Israeli citizens.
He does this fully knowing that Hamas is preparing to establish a Taliban-like state through the Palestinian Authority – including the new territories ethnically cleansed of Jews.
He does this fully knowing that these newly abandoned lands will like Gaza be used as terrorist staging grounds and forward operating bases that will threaten not only Israel but neighboring Jordan and Lebanon as well and eventually liberated Iraq.
So I’m through making excuses for Israel. I’m through trying to understand the incomprehensible moves of a self-flagellating nation. I’m through trying to point out the moral rightness of a state and a people who themselves fail to discern right from wrong. I look at Jerusalem today and I weep.
I know I speak for many Jews and Christians throughout the world who see Israel’s surrender as a cowardly betrayal a sign that the Jewish state puts more faith in Washington and international diplomacy than in the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.