Recently, I read an article titled, “Unpopular Opinion: I'm A Jew and I Dislike Israel,” and I found the headline interesting at first, being a proud Jew and a proud supporter of the State of Israel. I gave Josh Sweren’s story a read and found fallacies within his writing. Find my rebuttal below.
Sweren introduces the idea that being Jewish does not necessarily equate to being a supporter of Israel. He is correct in this assumption, but mind you, this is the same Jewish democratic state which supports human rights in a region plagued with turmoil (i.e. providing humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees and freedom of religion). Sweren then continues to say, “In practicality Israel isn't a very nice place. There are a lot of negatives about Israel that I feel outweigh the benefits it provides.” Of course, it is presumed that no country in history was or is perfect; every nation-state has its flaws, its unappealing colors, its rejections.
I’ll go out on a limb and agree with Sweren — Israel isn’t a nice place; Israel is beautiful, majestic and full of color. Using the adjective nice to describe Israel does not do it justice. The Arbel Mountain, Dead Sea, Masada and Ein Gedi are all breathtaking sceneries. The aforementioned sites are not just nice, but awe-inspiring.
It remains true that since its establishment, the Jewish State has fought to maintain its sovereignty. However, Sweren elaborates on this fact by saying, “Israel is not a safe place for its citizens - of any religion,” and continues to explain that therefore, Israel should not have statehood due to its endangerment of its constituency. By this logic, France and Britain, while fighting to ensure their independence from Nazi Germany during World War II, should not have been sovereign nations; and the United States should not have been a country during the War of 1812 while combating the British because it jeopardized the safety of Americans. To go off on the tangent that because a country is attacked and warred against and therefore cannot exist is a disgrace to those who place their country before themselves and pay the final price, and remains a degradation of the fundamentals of democracy and priority of state security.
Sweren then concludes by saying, “As long as Israel exists there will be fighting over it. And in my mind, the lives Israel takes and puts in danger outweighs the benefit of the idealism of a Jewish homeland.” To be clear, turmoil was prevalent in the region under Roman, Ottoman, and British control. The current age of fighting is to deny the Jewish people a homeland, and since when were we a people to back down from a challenge? Did we not survive the pogroms in Eastern Europe, and the mechanized extermination of our European brethren?
UN Resolution 181 partitioned the land formally known as Palestine into two states: An Arab one and Jewish one. So, when Sweren says, “No matter who controls Israel there will always be another group fighting to take it from them,” I find a logical fallacy, because saying this implies that there will be fighting in the region regardless of who holds power. Meaning, that even under Palestinian control, at least according to Sweren’s logic, there would still be war; so how does eliminating Israel from the equation result in peace? It does not.
The answer is simple; peace can not be attained until the inciteful Palestinian government and its supporters decide to care more about their success and future rather than the elimination of the Jewish people. The two state solution is viable, as long as Hamas, Fattah, the PA and all other power-players in the region lower their guns and heighten the cause for peace; the two-state solution is ideal once Iran ceases its funding to its terror proxies; and the two-state solution is alive in the minds of millions of Israelis who yearn to stop sending their children to war. The choice needs to be made, if not for the current leadership, but for their descendants who will inherit the problem: peace, or war.
