The Cry of Israel's Heart
By Tzippe Barrow
CBN News - Jerusalem Bureau
January 12, 2008
CBNNews.com - JERUSALEM, Israel - Israelis rolled out the red carpet Wednesday to welcome visiting U.S. President George W. Bush.
Awaiting his arrival at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport were an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) honor guard, a marching band, a red carpet and a host of welcoming diplomats.
But in spite of all the pomp, more than half of the population opposes Bush's two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
America's president wants to establish a Palestinian state in Israel's biblical heartland, Judea and Samaria, by uprooting as many as a quarter of a million Israelis from their homes and communities.
All this for a people who refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, at least not as a Jewish state.
Recognizing Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people creates a problem for the descendants of some 548,000 Arabs, who left their homes in May 1948 at the behest of the invading Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq.
Bullets, they were told, don't distinguish between Jews and Arabs. Better to leave until we defeat the Jews, put an end to this Jewish state and then you can return to your homes. It shouldn't take long at all, they were told. But God had a different plan.
Fast Forward 60 Years
Against enormous odds, the modern State of Israel not only survived, it prospered. Today, Israeli companies compete favorably in the world market in diverse sectors, including agricultural, information technology, medical science, military, and security services -- just to name a few.
But the same isn't true of the Arab population.
The Arabs who left Israel in May 1948 have been consigned to squalid refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries. All these years, their Arab brethren kept them in limbo to be used as leverage against Israel.
Today, the Palestinian Authority, backed by member nations of the Arab League, wants to convince influential world leaders that Israel must receive millions of so-called refugees, thereby effectively bringing about the end of the Jewish state.
And there's an additional incentive.
Islam teaches that once land has been under Muslim rule, it is eternally claimed for Allah. The Ottoman Turks ruled Israel from 1516 to 1917, thus superseding Judaism's biblical claim to the land, so far as Islam is concerned.
Israel Welcomed Jewish 'Refugees'
When more than 860,000 Jews living in neighboring Arab countries were brutally kicked out of homes and their assets seized, there was never a question of where they should go.
Unlike the Arab countries, Israel didn't hold their fellow Jews at arm's length. The fledgling government scraped together funds to pay for their flights to Israel. Once they arrived, the government helped them begin life anew in their homeland.
Jerusalem 2008
Tuesday evening, thousands of Jews formed a human chain around Jerusalem's Old City. A seemingly endless throng of people, many of them youth, held hands, laughed and sang songs in the rain.
They stood for hours, handing out the gold ribbons that have become the symbol of the eternal, undivided capital of the Israel.
On the front page of Wednesday's edition of The Jerusalem Post, Just Peace for Israel posted the following message.
PRESIDENT BUSH
How did we lose you?
In your December 1998 visit here you told us that some of your driveways in Texas were longer than Israel's nine-mile, pre-1967 waistline.
In January 2008, you have returned to urge our retreat to that same indefensible border, one that would make our entire coastal population hostage to the guns and rockets of our sworn enemies.
After 9/11, you and your advisers embraced the added value a strong, democratic Israeli ally brought to America's valiant struggle against radical Islam.
In 2008, you ask that same ally to discard its most critical territorial assets, truncate Jerusalem, its capital, and become complicit in the creation of a sovereign jihadist entity in Judea and Samaria.
Mr. President, the Palestinian Authority, its Fatah and Tanzim gunmen and al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades haven't the slightest intention of living "side-by-side in peace" with Israel. Their leaders - including Mahmoud Abbas - have categorically rejected the very existence of a Jewish state in their midst.
Mr. Bush, why are you pressuring a weak and extremely unpopular Olmert government to place Israel in the direst jeopardy it has ever known? Why would you render meaningless the blood America has shed in the battle against radical Islam by handing radical Islam the incomparable gift of a jihadist in the Land of Israel?
Mr. President, the Nation of Israel lives. We will not abandon our legacy!
That pretty well sums up the sentiments of many of us here who are praying that President Bush will remember God's promise to Abraham, for Israel's sake, as well as America's.
"I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:3)
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