Part Three: "We need to be even-handed."

            Just another heads up: By necessity, today’s posting has a minimum of Scriptural references. I’m basing what I’m about to write mostly from my own common sense and what I know about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

            I've used this phrase before in the first posting on Israel, but this is a good time to make sure we understand the term moral equivalence. This is used by conservatives (like me) in protest against a tendency by those on the Left. The Wiki article (which itself indulges in moral equivalence) actually has a pretty decent definition: “Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to criticize any denial that a moral hierarchy can be assessed of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides.”

            During the Cold War, whenever anti-Communists criticized the horrible human-rights record of the Soviet Union and China, people sympathetic with Communism would turn around and say “Well, we have our own problems too! What about segregation? What about this or that injustice in our court system? What about the dictatorships we support just because they’re not communist?” That’s the mindset of the Left. We were fighting an existential conflict with an evil system that systematically murdered about 100 million of its own citizens—as a matter of policy. Some of the actions we took during the Cold War were morally questionable or even unjustifiable. In our fight against the Soviet Union, sometimes innocent people got hurt or even killed. We did make alliances with some pretty bad people. But we also did some questionable/unjustifiable things during World War Two, including allying ourselves with the Soviet Union in order to fight the Axis, the more immediate threat.

            The problem is that in this fallen world, there are often no easy solutions, only trade-offs. The choice before everyone during WW2 and the Cold War wasn’t between Paradise and the United States, but between the forces of (relative) freedom and goodness and a thoroughly evil system that routinely murdered millions of its own people, not to mention deprived its citizens of even the most basic human rights. If one side failed, the other one would prevail. By hurting one, you were objectively helping the other.

            Part of the problem with people on the Left is that they can’t see a very important distinction (which we’ve discussed before): To them, there’s no obvious difference between a good nation that sometimes does bad things vs. a thoroughly bad nation. Hopefully I’m not displaying too much bias, but I think we’re a good and decent nation that sometimes has done bad things. If you disagree, then you’re probably more sympathetic to the Leftist view on things, which compares the U.S. not to other countries but to their own idea of Utopia. It doesn’t measure up against Paradise, so it’s not worth protecting.

            I look at nations like I look at people. Before God’s ultimate standard, none of us are righteous before him. But does that mean that he makes absolutely no distinction between someone who tries to follow him and who frequently stumbles vs. someone who never makes the effort? David was a good man and good king who sometimes did horrible things. To say that he was no different from King Ahab, as far as I’m concerned, is nonsense on stilts.

            So what does this have to do with Israel and the Palestinians? The reason I’ve gone off on this diatribe is because the Left tends to fall into moral equivalence when it comes to this conflict: “There are atrocities on both sides, so there’s no real distinction to be made between the two.” Um, yes, there are actual differences.

·         One side is a vibrant nation which values life. One side names its street signs and town squares after suicide bombers who’ve blown up discotheques, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and funerals.   

·         One side is a functioning democracy with freedom of religion (for the most part), freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of travel, freedom of the press, etc. The other. . . isn’t. It’s pretty much a dysfunctional society with none of the freedoms I just mentioned.***  

·         One side does its best to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage. The other side purposefully fires rockets from schools and residential neighborhoods in the hope of getting civilians killed, so they can trot out the bodies of children in front of the cameras. It has a policy of hiding behind women and children in order to use them as human shields.

·         One side has mothers who—like most mothers throughout history—mourn when their children are murdered. One side has mothers who publicly celebrate suicide bombers and hope that their children will one day be martyrs and blow themselves up and kill Jewish children.

·         One side, when international crises and disasters happen, sends relief by the planeload and truckload. The other side sends nothing.

·         One side constantly improves the world by inventing new technology—especially medical technology—which brings new life to countless millions every day. The other side exports nothing but suicide bombers.

·         One side has a non-controlled media which is free to criticize the government and call for a change in national direction. The other side throws dissenters off of buildings.

·         One side has an independent judiciary and fully functional court system, complete with protections in place for people accused of a crime, and whose legal system doesn’t even have a death penalty. The other side’s “due process” is usually a knock on the door in the middle of the night and a bullet in the back of the head. You can especially expect such “due process” if you express any sympathy for the “enemy.” I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to be tried in an Israeli court, which has the same protections as our court does. If an Arab feels like he’s been mistreated, there’s an Israeli court that’ll hear him, and often he’ll win his case and get justice. Try getting any type of justice on the other side.

·         One side values its daughters and gives them full equality before the law. The other side treats them as second-class citizens and has a bad habit of killing its daughters for the sake of “honor.”

·         I’m not a fan of homosexuality. Homosexual behavior is condemned repeatedly by God in his word. So I’m not a fan of homosexual “pride” parades, which one side in this conflict permits with no difficulty. But as much as I hate homosexuality, I serve a Savior who loves homosexuals, and that means I don’t approve of people being murdered because of their sexual proclivities. The reason I bring this up is because one side allows "gay pride" parades. The other side murders any homosexuals it finds.

·         One side hears from all points of view as to how to deal with the conflict. The other side trains its people—from kindergarten on up—to see the Jews as animals and sub-human and only worthy of death. The only problem they have with Hitler—quite frankly—is that he didn’t finish the job, or they deny that the Holocaust ever happened at all. The only place in the world where Mein Kampf is popular is in the Arab/Muslim world.

·         One side has no such thing as a second-class citizen and doesn’t discriminate against anyone because of race or religion (Fun fact: 20% of Israelis are Arab, and they enjoy the full privileges of any citizen in Israel and have members in the Parliament). The other side has Sharia, which by very definition discriminates against women and religious minorities.

·         Only one side officially calls for the outright elimination of the other side, an established, sovereign nation which is recognized by the U.N. and has existed so for 65+ years.This is the only country in the world whose very existence is called into question in polite company. 

            I can hear the howls of protest now: “But what about when Israel was created?! They stole the land and did horrible things!!!” Yes, some Jews did some questionable or even unjustifiable things when they were trying to get Israel established. If you look at our own history, there’ve been plenty of individual incidents in which people were treated unjustly. I’m not going to delve into the topic of Israel’s founding in this venue, only point you to two sources: The Case For Israel by Alan Dershowitz, a liberal-leaning law professor at Harvard who goes into all this. Or if you'd like, he's made a 5 minute video on the origins of Israel:

Suffice it to say that the case that Israel “stole the land” or committed systemic atrocities against the Palestinians and other Muslims is on pretty shaky ground.
            Let me also say that the case for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is no more illegitimate than say, Pakistan. Do you know how Pakistan was created? See here if you're not familiar with it. Anyone who A) knows the history of  how Pakistan was created out of India and B) questions the legitimacy of existence of the nation of Israel and C) doesn't question the creation of the nation of Pakistan, well, I have some suspicions. And when you read the history, quite frankly you’ll notice that most of the wounds on the Palestinians have been either self-inflicted or the fault of their fellow Muslims.  

            But can we leave that aside for a moment? We’re not living in the middle of the 20^th century. As of this writing, we’re in the first few decades of the 21^st.  And as I look at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as it is right now, I see one side as (mostly) very good and the other one as (mostly) misguided at best and genocidal at worst. And I can’t be “even-handed” on that. As Winston Churchill put it, “I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.”

            And now for your edification I’d like to present a short 5-minute video explaining the Middle East conflict by Dennis Prager.

***Check out this article in the Washington Post about Muslim attitudes towards the death penalty for apostasy (leaving Islam). The Palestinian Authority had a 66% approval rate for killing someone if they leave Islam.