Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1982:“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”
@amitisinvesting Hezballah was raining rockets down on northern Israel. No nation would allow a neighbor to attack its civilian population. Imagine the reaction the USA would have if Mexico launched rockets into Texas
On This Day — June 6, 1948
In April 1948, weeks before Israel's independence, 22-year-old Robert F. Kennedy traveled through Mandatory Palestine & saw Jews fighting for their right to live and have a state & Arabs calling for jihad against the Jews and to prevent a Jewish state.
This day, his dispatch was published in the Boston Post:
The Arabs declared openly:
“We shall bring Moslem brigades from Pakistan, we shall lead a religious crusade for all loyal followers of Mohammed … Whether it takes three months, three years, or 30, we will carry on the fight. Palestine will be Arab. We shall accept no compromise.”
The Jews, RFK wrote, were “fighting for their very lives … with their backs to the sea” and “101 percent morale.”
Most importantly, he captured the irreconcilable core of the conflict:
“The Jews want a homeland of their own. That to them is the sole issue.
The Arabs in command believe that eventually victory must be theirs. It is against all law and nature that this Jewish state should exist.”
This was written before modern Israel existed in any borders.
The conflict was never primarily about borders, refugees, or “the occupation.”
It was about one side demanding a sovereign Jewish state — and the other side’s fundamental, non-negotiable principle being that no such state could ever be allowed to exist.
A 22-year-old Bobby Kennedy saw the truth with brutal clarity in real time.
The world still refuses to see it today.
@adel_alawi@nypost It’s not a war with Lebanon it’s a war with Hezballah who is an Iranian proxy. If Iran would stop telling them to launch rockets at Israel the war would be over but that’s not what Iran wants