Sabine Sterk – The Wars of Israel
The people of Ancient Israel experienced wars and persecutions from the first time ancient Israel was founded by Avraham. The land was conquered and ruled by so many different kingdoms, tribes, and enemies that you easily can lose track of it. To have an idea, of the long list of nations trying to rule over Eretz Israel some names:
Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Caliphates, Crusades, Mamluks, Ottomans, Brits.
Of course, due to so many wars, the people of Israel were spread among the world, in the Diaspora, and even there the life of the Jews, the Israelite’s, was full of hardship and persecutions. The most known and horrendous attempt to eliminate the Jewish people was Hitler’s plan for the ‘final solution’.. the Nazi death camps.
So when after the second World war, the Holocaust survivors returned to the land that was assigned to them under the Balfour declaration, they expected to live in peace in the new land, the modern state of Israel, to develop her. Unfortunately the hostile, also relatively newly founded Arab states, like Jordan, Syria, Iraq, didn’t like the Jews to return to their ancient Homeland and started conflict after conflict and war after war.
They created also the “Palestinian” – Israeli conflict, in the war of 1948/1949, The Israeli independence war, they called the Arabs living in the land of the new state to leave, so they could thrive the Jews into the sea, massacre them and when that would be finished, the Israeli Arabs could return. (650.000 left, most of them voluntarily) Well, fortunately, the Israelis that have no other land, fought like lions and won. The conflict of the ‘Palestinians’ started. Israelis can write a long list of wars against them in the history books:
1948 Independence war, 1956-1960 Reprisal operations, 1956 Suez crisis. 1967 6-days war, 1967-1970 war of attrition, 1973 Yom Kippur war,
1982 the First Lebanon war, 2006 second Lebanon war, In between several intifadas, December 2008- January 2009 first Gaza war, 2012 operation pillar of defense, 2014 operation protective edge, the second Gaza war.
It is a horrible list of wars and if you think of the pain, trauma, sadness, despair behind these wars, you can not wish anything else than that the people of Israel finally can live in peace, that the dead didn’t fall in vain and the wounded and traumatized didn’t suffer in vain. But i feel also a huge gratitude to the Heroes of Israel, those that were fighting and their commanders that lead their men to victory and saved Eretz Israel.
However, with horror and sadness, I see what is happening in the world again. There is a new war, the war of the worlds, the war against a virus, Covid-19 and instead of unification between the nations of the World, (after all we all fight the same war now), again there are lies spread, hate spread, and who gets all the blame? The Jews. The antisemitism is rising sky high and despite all Israel is contributing to the world, they are the black sheep again. In this time of crisis, another group seeks justice, black people, people that accuse white people of the past of slavery, forgetting that the tribe’s culture of these people started the slavery in the first place and the “white” men only can be accused of trading in people that were captured by their black brothers from another tribe. Horrible and a good cause, but why on earth, the hate is spread to the Jews and the Israelis? Why on earth the “Palestinians” that in history were the Jews, who got that name by the Roman empire, that was delegitimizing Israel in that way, are connected to the cause of the movement “Black life Matters” aka BLM?
Hatred to the Jewish people is as ancient as the world, it is horrible and we, modern humanity should make it a priority to finally stop this shameful attitude towards the Jewish people.
I believe and hope we can do this together, but the saddest and unbelievable hate is hate that is spread by Jewish people against Israel, against their fellow Jews that are only longing to live in peace and harmony in their own homeland, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.
It is Time To Stand Up For Israel, It is Time to show the heroes of Israel that they are not alone. The People of Israel are alive and always will be.
Am Yisrael Chai
