Opinion: Israel is here to stay. We will not let Hezbollah destroy us.
By Uriel Heilman,
14 hours ago
MODIIN, Israel – Five times over the past two weeks, rocket attacks from distant lands have sent me running for the bomb shelter in my home in central Israel . When Israel came under attack from about 200 Iranian missiles last week, I huddled together with my wife and children and we sang songs while air raid sirens blared outside our shelter and the room shook from the booms of Israel’s missile interceptor defense system.
Just days before that, we had rocket attacks on two successive days by Houthi militants in Yemen ‒ the second while my three older children were with friends at a local park on a Saturday afternoon. With nowhere to shelter, they ran to a nearby wall and covered their heads with their hands, my 10-year-old son terrified and in tears.
When, during the first of this string of attacks in late September, my children asked why we were being hit by Yemen, a country more than 1,000 miles away that has no apparent connection to Israel, it struck me that the answer is the same for almost all of Israel’s enemies.
They refuse to accept the existence of Israel.
'Death to America, Death to Israel'
That goes for Iran, the Islamic Republic about 600 miles away that trains, funds and supports the proxy militias attacking Israel in addition to launching its own direct attacks on the Jewish state. It goes for Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group that sits on Israel’s northern border. And it goes for militants in Syria and Iraq launching drone and missile attacks into Israel with increasing frequency.
Their rejectionism is not a response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that seeks to annihilate Israel. Rather, for years ‒ decades, even ‒ Iran, Hezbollah and others have made destroying Israel part of their raison d'être.
It’s no accident that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East ‒ a place where women enjoy full rights and being LGBTQ+ isn’t a crime. How ironic is it that Israel’s detractors in Europe and the United States frame their anti-Zionism as standing up for the oppressed while staying silent against oppression and violence against women, gays, dissenters and others by conservative regimes across the Middle East.
The root of the conflict in the Middle East is painfully simple: Israel’s foes refuse to accept it. It has been that way since Israel’s establishment in 1948, when the nascent state fought a war of survival against Arab armies from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere ‒ and then absorbed more than 850,000 Jewish refugees expelled from their homes in Arab countries.
Fortunately, in the decades since, Egypt and Jordan gave up their ambitions of destroying Israel and signed peace treaties with it.
Israel’s enduring enemies don’t merely want to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War. They want to reverse the outcome of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and wipe Israel off the map.
What choice does Israel have other than to fight? Nobody else will bear the responsibility for its survival.
After the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, in 2006, a U.N.-brokered ceasefire agreement committed Hezbollah to disarming and withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon. While Israel abided by its obligations and withdrew its forces, U.N. peacekeepers failed to enforce Hezbollah’s pledges. Instead, the Iran-backed terrorist group built up its military to unprecedented levels and massed on Israel’s border.
Israel does not covet territory in Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Iraq or Syria. Israel wants to live in peace with these countries. But they refuse to give up on their dreams of annihilating the Jewish state. So Israel must respond to their attacks, ensuring they never become capable of destroying it.
That’s what Israel’s response to Oct. 7 is all about.
The rest of the world should applaud Israel and offer it greater operational and intelligence support ‒ not just because it’s the right thing to do but also because these rogues threaten us all.
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Over the weekend, Jews worldwide celebrated Rosh Hashanah , the Jewish New Year, and prayed for peace as part of the holiday liturgy. In Israel, we understand that peace will come only when the country’s enemies accept that Israel is here to stay.
Until then, Israel must be strong ‒ and continue to degrade those sworn to its destruction.
Uriel Heilman , a native of New York, is a journalist living in Israel.
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