[The Buzz Cut is a recurring VIP column at RedState in which Buzz relates his personal experiences serving our nation in uniform and his observations about the state of our union and our world. Buzz has worked at all levels of our military and government, including the White House. This the second in a four-part series where we look at exactly what’s going on in Israel, Gaza, Iran, and the surrounding region from someone who’s spent much of his adult life serving there.]
See Part 1 here.
In this series, we’re exposing the truth, the reality of the evil that prevails in the Middle East, from someone who lived it for decades as a US Air Force pilot and has seen it up close and personally. I’ve served in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, and Pakistan. I will provide you the absolutes (and some handy talking points) about today’s conflict, exploring the foundations of the State of Israel, the true nature of the region referred to as “Palestine,” the reality of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the ultimate nexus that is Iran. We’ll explore the complicity of the American Left, their anti-Semitism, their underwriting of terror globally, and the potential for a bloody slog in an upcoming ground war in Gaza by Israel’s Defense Force.
Today, we’re looking at the history of Israel and its right to exist.
Never, in the history of the region, has there been a nation of “Palestine.” The region referred to as Israel has been many things: the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Mandate among them. But it’s never been a nation of Palestine. Let me repeat that: There’s never been a Palestinian state. And there weren’t “Palestinians” until the 1960s, as we’ll explore later. There has been, and is, a nation of Israel.
Here’s the factual chronology of the history of Israel:
Prior to the two world wars of the last century, the region now known as Israel was mostly uninhabited, uncultivated, and swampy. In other words, the Arab landholders of the region didn’t want it. It was cheap real estate that only the Jews saw value in. So, between WWI and WWII, Jews began purchasing land — legally — from absentee landlords living in Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Paris, and elsewhere. Jews, hoping to avoid confrontation with their Arab neighbors, purchased land largely unpopulated and inexpensive.
The State of Israel was created peacefully, orderly, and legally through the United Nations. In fact, the area was not created from Palestinian lands, since there were none, but those of the Ottoman Empire, who had ruled the area for 400 years. The Turks lost ownership of the region as a result of aligning themselves with Germany during WWI and the post-war realignment that took place as a result.
It was also after WWI that the present states of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq were created by the countries of England and France as they diced up the area as spoils of victory in war and created state boundaries for the first time in the region. The new Arab states didn’t want fellow Arabs and the inhabitants who would later be called “Palestinians” to migrate to their territories. As we speak today, they still refuse Palestinian immigration.
In 1947, the UN partitioned a portion of the remaining lands into a two-state solution: a state of Israel for the Jews and a state for the then-homeless Arabs abandoned by their Arab neighbors. The Arab Higher Committee called for Arab Muslims to leave the area so they could launch an attack. The leaders of the newly formed Arab states rejected the UN’s mandate, didn’t buy the establishment of a Jewish state, and immediately launched a war intended to extinguish Israel in 1948…and they lost. Israel has, essentially, been at war ever since. If you’ve ever visited, Israel is on war footing 24/7, 365. And remains so today, as is evident with the Hamas attacks on innocent civilians recently.
In 1967, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan again attacked Israel in what is known as the Six-Day War, and Israel again prevailed. In the war’s aftermath, Israel occupied the captured territories of Sinai, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, although they chose not to officially annex them in hopes of ameliorating the local Arab population.
In 1973, the surrounding Arab nations of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, among others, again attacked Israel, and Israel somehow triumphed yet again. Sensing the futility at the time, Egypt, and only Egypt, agreed to a formal peace with Israel.
In 1987, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, under Yassir Arafat, began a murderous six-year “intifada” against Israeli soldiers and civilians. More than 1,400 Israeli citizens were injured, while 16 were killed. More than 1,700 Israeli soldiers were injured, and 11 were killed.
In 2000, Israel offered the Palestinians approximately 90 percent of the land they claimed to be fighting for and the opportunity to form their own state. The offer was rejected. A similar offer was made in 2008 without success.
Israel again reached out to Palestinians in hopes of peace in 2005 and withdrew from Gaza, ceding control of the region to Hamas. Again, there was no attempt to reciprocate on the part of the Arab world.
Israel has an historic right to the region they call home, and they have a legal right to the nation they call home.
In the next in our series, we’ll look at the actual history of what has become "Palestine" and the roots of the terrorist connections with Hamas and, by extension, Iran.
