Israel: Front Line of Western Civilization/& Jewish History/ Contributions to the world

There is much controversy today over whether or not Israel has a right to her land..Truly there was a time when a war between peoples constituted who got the land..we have only to remember Alexander the Great or the Napoleonic wars, or in more recent times the British Empire and yes, even the US when our ancestors settled here, the Indian was consigned to reservations.

Many Jews settled in the land called Israel in the early 1900’s. Some tried to farm the land and it was not too cooperative. Some Arabs were there too. The land was hard and difficult..It was a desert. Soon (you can read the history below) they became a Jewish Nation once again. War immediately broke out and the Israelis won. The Culture for what we now call the Palestinians was to walk away from a conquering army. They were not welcomed nor wanted by Egypt or other arab countries from which they had left to settle in Israel.They were going to be used by those nations as a cause..It would not be good for them to get too comfortable somewhere else..Of course remember, that some did not walk away as was the custom..They stayed and took part in the democratic process eventually. The land that was a desert became green…democracy and the economy flourished. Peaceful muslims took part, won elections. Please read below and the history.links further down.

Here’s a great piece from The Objective Standard, “Israel and the Front Line of Civilization,” by John David Lewis:

I just returned from a speaking engagement at Tel Aviv University (pictures from the trip are on my website). My honorarium was four days of sight-seeing in Tel Aviv, Abu Gosh, Jerusalem, En Gediand Masada, and a series of meetings withwriters, policy analysts, academics and writers. I came back with one overriding conclusion, which stands for me stronger than it did before my trip: Israel stands at the front-line of the war between civilization and barbarism. As Eric Hofferwrote over forty years ago, “as it goes withIsrael, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us all.” (“Israel’s Peculiar Position,” LA Times 5/26/68)

Israel is America’s best friend in the world today. It is Western in every fundamental respect: Its secular government has prevented both civil war and tyranny since its founding; its citizens’ rights are largely protected; its press is free and open; its court system is independent of executive fiat; and its economy is vibrant. It has its share of lunatics, but they have not taken over the culture. It is “middle-eastern” only in location.

While driving through Israel, one cannot help but remember that the area can become a military front at any moment. A sign in the road points left to Ramallah, home of Yasir Arafat—you can drive there (we did not), but an Israeli soldier will soon stop you to warn that the army cannot protect you if you go further. Straight ahead is the road to Jerusalem, which is just a few miles away. It’s all so close.

In less than half hour’s drive, the seacoast climate of Tel Aviv changes to the desert climate of Jordan. Bedouin camps—temporary structures, some with camels in front—squat between towns with high-tech industry. Jerusalem itself is deeply permeated with religious fanaticism of all kinds, and with neighborhoods defined by ethnic identities. The line that divided Israeli tanks from those of Arabs during the numerous attacks on Israel is a street—you can walk down it.
On the highway—a modern road built by the Israelis—I see towns surrounded by trees. The trees were nearly all planted by the Israelis. This is something little known in the U.S.: The Israelis have planted tens of millions of trees in a desert that had never before been planted, and they remain committed to plantingin the Negev Desert, especially near Beer Sheva. Trees did not exist here before 1948. The so-called “Green Line” originally dividing Israel from its neighbors is called such because it literally is a line of green.

At one point we come over a hill, and there are two towns ahead. The one on the left is an Israeli “settlement”—to use the popular phrase in the western press today—and on the right is an Arab town. To the left is a sea of trees among the buildings, and to the right, none. What the press and politicians in America call “illegal settlements” are Israeli towns, with factories, high-tech industries, and homes—built on hills where there was previously nothing but sand—bringing economic life and civilization to the desert.

There can be no basis for calling these towns “illegal” because, prior to Israel’s establishment of civilization in the area, no law and no government existed there (so-called “International Law” notwithstanding). It is also little known in the United States that when the Israelis announce their intent to withdraw from these areas, thousands of non-Israeli inhabitants—Muslims and Arabs—pick up and move to Israeli-controlled areas (Daniel Pipeshas recounted some of this). Life under Hamas is hell, life in Israel is good, and most locals know it.

As usual, Israel is blamed for the inability to make peace with a foe that is dedicated to destroying her. American Secretary of State CondoleezzaRice expresses a dominant view in the U.S. State Department when she rants against Israeli towns as an “impediment to peace.” Yet observe the Palestinian leadership’s response to Rice: “With the arrival of that black scorpion with a cobra’s head, Condoleezza, I began to worry that she would use her venomous fangs and hiss to kill this initiative and new spirit that we should protect” said Hamas Minister of Culture ‘Atallah Abu Al-Subh,in remarksaired on Al-Aqsa TV on June 15, 2008.

The deepest cause of the conflict between Israel and those purporting to lead the Palestinian people is philosophical: the deep inculcation of jihad into the minds of Palestinian youth, in the form of a violent ideology that has nothing to offer except the destruction of Israel and claims to paradise as a reward for death. Samples of this ideological material have been collected at the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center; follow the link to “Captured Material.”

Until the motivations for jihad against Israel are admitted, confronted, and repudiated, the causes of war will remain in place, festering in the minds of each new generation of children. All else—the “settlements,” the check-points that prevent non-Israelis from freely partaking of the Israeli economy, the claims to economic devastation, the “historic connection” to a soil that the Palestinians never planted—is pretense. To see this, all one need ask is why Israel’s return to the 1967 borders would remove a cause of war, given that Israel was attacked when she held those borders. And, of course, for Israel to retreat to those borders now would leave foreign enemies a few miles from Tel Aviv. This would be national suicide for Israel, a new holiday for Hamas, and the end of civilization in the Middle East.

Be sure to read the remainder of the essay, at the link.here.

All I can add is that Lewis captures my sentiments perfectly!

See also, “Israel is the Defining Moral Issue of Our Time.”

Related: “‘Clean Hands’ and the Triumph of Evil?“

by Donald Douglas, visit his site at American Power

Hattip to Aurora of Midnight Sun

YOM HA’ATZMAUT

I join Aurora and many others in Congratulations to Israel on her 60th Birthday that she celebrated last month in May. Excellent links, I did not want to change a thing.

The Midnight Sun extends our warmest and most heartfelt congratulations to Israel on her 60th birthday. Your history has been a difficult one, but also one which has exemplified amazing courage and miraculous intervention which could only have been supernatural time and time again.

I highly recommend reading the amazing story of Israel below if you never have:

• 1 of 5, From the Depths of Despair to the Heights of Exaltation
• 2 of 5, How Dark the Night
• 3 of 5, Can These Bones Live?
• 4 of 5, A Nation Reborn Through the Faithful Hand of God
• 5 of 5, Peace Before the Storm

Findalis has an excellent tribute here.

and more great history links here

Jewish Contributions

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000, or about 0.02%
of the world population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:

1910 – Paul Heyse
1927 – Henri Bergson
1958 – Boris Pasternak
1966 – Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 – Nelly Sachs
1976 – Saul Bellow
1978 – Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 – Elias Canetti
1987 – Joseph Brodsky
1991 – Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:

1911 – Alfred Fried
1911 – Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 – Rene Cassin
1973 – Henry Kissinger
1978 – Menachem Begin
1986 – Elie Wiesel
1994 – Shimon Peres
1994 – Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:

1905 – Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 – Henri Moissan
1907 – Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 – Gabriel Lippmann
1910 – Otto Wallach
1915 – Richard Willstaetter
1918 – Fritz Haber
1921 – Albert Einstein
1922 – Niels Bohr
1925 – James Franck
1925 – Gustav Hertz
1943 – Gustav Stern
1943 – George Charles de Hevesy
1944 – Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 – Felix Bloc h
1954 – Max Born
1958 – Igor Tamm
1959 – Emilio Segre
1960 – Donald A. Glaser
1961 – Robert Hofstadter
1961 – Melvin Calvin
1962 – Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 – Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 – Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 – Julian Schwinger
1969 – Murray Gell-Mann
1971 – Dennis Gabor
1972 – William Howard Stein
1973 – Brian David Josephson
1975 – Benjamin Mottleson
1976 – Burton Richter
1977 – Ilya Prigogine
1978 – Arno Allan Penzias
1978 – Peter L Kapitza
1979 – Stephen Weinberg
1979 – Sheldon Glashow
1979 – Herbert Charle s Brown
1980 – Paul Berg
1980 – Walter Gilbert
1981 – Roald Hoffmann
1982 – Aaron Klug
1985 – Albert A. Hauptman
1985 – Jerome Karle
1986 – Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 – Robert Huber
1988 – Leon Lederman
1988 – Melvin Schwartz
1988 – Jack Steinberger
1989 – Sidney Altman
1990 – Jerome Friedman
1992 – Rudolph Marcus
1995 – Martin Perl
2000 – Alan J. Heeger

Economics:

1970 – Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 – Simon Kuznets
1972 – Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 – Leonid Kantorovich
1976 – Milton Friedman
1978 – Herbert A. Simon
1980 – Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 – Franco Modigliani
1987 – Robert M. Solow
1990 – Harry Markowitz
1990 – Merton Miller
1992 – Gary Becker
1993 – Robert Fogel

Medicine:

1908 – Elie Metchnikoff
1908 – Paul Erlich
1914 – Robert Barany
1922 – Otto Meyerhof
1930 – Karl Landsteiner
1931 – Otto Warburg
1936 – Otto Loewi
1944 – Joseph Erlanger
1944 – Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 – Ernst Boris Chain
1946 – Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 – Tadeus Reichstein
1952 – Selman Abra ham Waksman
1953 – Hans Krebs
1953 – Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 – Joshua Lederberg
1959 – Arthur Kornberg
1964 – Konrad Bloch
1965 – Francois Jaco b
1965 – Andre Lwoff
1967 – George Wald
1968 – Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 – Salvador Luria
1970 – Julius Axelrod
1970 – Sir Bernard Katz
1972 – Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 – Howard Martin Temin
1976 – Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 – Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 – Daniel Nathans
1980 – Baruj Benacerraf
1984 – Cesar Milstein
1985 – Michael Stuart Brown
1985 – Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 – Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 – Gertrude Elion
1989 – Harold Varmus
1991 – Erwin Neher
1991 – Bert Sakmann
1993 – Richard J. Roberts
1993 – Phillip Sharp
1994 – Alfred Gilman
1995 – Edward B. Lewis

The Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military
training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum
deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.

The Jews don’t hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics.

The Jews don’t traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and
death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world’s Muslims should consider investing more in standard
education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the
Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more
culpability on Israel’s part, the following two sentences really say it
all:

If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more
violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no
more Israel.

Source http://www.speptic.com

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