Israel needs our help

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Ten reasons why we must support Israel:

• First: Because Israel is the clear victim of a new aggression, and the moral thing to do is to support the victims. After Israel left Gaza, Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier and launched rocket attacks. Shortly thereafter, short- and middle-range rockets launched from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah terrorists rained on Israel, inflicting casualties among the civilian population. Several soldiers were murdered. Israel is not attacking; it is defending itself. It has the right and the duty to do so.

• Second: Because if Israel does not defend itself and is unable to protect its citizens, there will be a repetition of the massacre of Jews the world witnessed (with considerable indifference) during the Nazi era. Does anyone doubt how a Palestinian government formed by Hamas and Hezbollah would behave if it manages to defeat the Israeli Army and dominate the territory? The threat to hurl the Jews into the sea is not a metaphor but an ominous promise repeated a thousand times by the most radical Islamists.

• Third: Because defeating and disarming Hezbollah would confer on Lebanon the opportunity to exist as a prosperous, peaceful and free society. Hezbollah, with its aggressive militia armed by Syrians and Iranians (a militia more powerful than the Lebanese Army), intends not only to destroy Israel; it has already destroyed Lebanon, plunging it into a war that most Lebanese did not want.

• Fourth: Because Israel is the only pluralistic democracy, respectful of human rights, that exists in the Middle East. For sure, it's the only democracy where the Arabs, even those who detest the Jewish State, vote freely and participate in Parliament. It is the only democracy where women of Islam study without limitations, enjoy the same rights as men and are not treated like second-class citizens.

• Fifth: Because the only solution to that conflict depends on peaceful coexistence between Israel and an Islamic world that finally, as happened with Egypt and Jordan, admits the right of that state to exist. And it seems that that's not going to happen until there is a clear conviction that it is not possible to destroy the Jewish state -- something that will be even clearer once the enemies of Israel perceive that the whole free world backs Israel's integrity unhesitatingly.

• Sixth: Because behind Hamas and Hezbollah hide the Syrian and Iranian satrapies, two regimes hostile to the West that diverge on religious grounds. Syria is a lay dictatorship; Iran, a religious dictatorship. But they converge in their irrational hatred toward liberal democracies.

• Seventh: Because Israel's economic, political, scientific and social success has the potential to become a model for the region. The more sensible Arabs in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority, when comparing the miserable life imposed upon them by the bullies of al Fatah, Hamas or Hezbollah, with the very superior lifestyle of their Arab-Israeli brothers inevitably conclude that liberty and rationality bring dividends.

• Eighth: Because it's in the whole world's best interest to eliminate the terrorists capable of provoking an escalation of a conflict that might drift into a devastating war. Iran is on its way to becoming a nuclear state, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly said that the Jewish state must be wiped out. No one doubts that, if Iran attempted such a task, Israel would respond in kind. And the result would be a catastrophe for the region and the world.

• Ninth: Because the factor that encourages adventurers to attack Israel is the dual language of Western countries, their indifference and false equivalence, as if the actions of some callous terrorists who encourage suicidal murderers to blow up school buses or fire rockets against the homes of civilians had the same legitimacy as the response from a society that defends itself from those aggressions.

• Tenth: Because the history lesson that taught us the moral foundations of Western civilization are found in the Judeo-Christian tradition was right. In the West, Israel is all of us. And if one day Israel should perish, its death in a way will be our death.

July 26, 2006

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