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"Disproportionate" is 60 years of Arab assaults on Israel by W. E. Gutman I arrived in Israel shortly after its rebirth in 1948. I was 12. War erupted when Arab forces from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq joined in a simultaneous assault against Israel. The war raged on for a year. Simultaneously, the infant state, poorly armed and barely released from the clutches of the British Mandate, suffered daily incursions by Palestinian marauders who went on a door-to-door rampage of bloodletting during which hundreds of Jews --- men, women and children -- many born in "Palestine" and whose roots went back to Biblical Israel --- were massacred in their beds as they slept. In Jerusalem, where I lived, the Grand Mufti, an outspoken fan of Hitler, engineered nightly sorties during which movie houses were firebombed, synagogues were torched, drivers were ambushed on open roads, women were raped and young children were tossed in the air and skewered on bayonets. From 1949 to 1956 a tenuous truce was punctuated by daily Arab raids. Tensions mounted when Egypt blockaded the Suez Canal, denying passage to Israeli, French and British ships. In 1956, Israeli forces, commanded by Moshe Dayan, launched a combined air and ground assault into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, capturing several key objectives, including the Gaza strip and Sharm el Sheikh. Israel withdrew from these positions in 1957. Syria, Egypt, and Jordan increased their incursions into Israel during the early 1960s, with Palestinian guerrillas supported by Syria. Arab threats and provocations continued until 1967, when Israel launched a massive air assault that crippled Arab air capability. With air superiority protecting its ground forces, Israel took the Sinai Peninsula in three days. It then captured Jerusalem's Old City and gained the strategic Golan Heights on the Syrian border. In 1973, Egypt launched a two-pronged assault on Israel while the Syrians, supported by Jordan, Iraq and Libya, advanced from the north. Israel was caught off guard but soon forced the Syrians and Egyptians back and, in the last hours of the war, established a foothold on the west bank of the Suez Canal. The 1973-74 War led to the signing of the Camp David accords. In 1978 Palestinian guerrillas, from bases in Lebanon, launched an air raid on Israel. Israel retaliated, sending troops into southern Lebanon and occupying a strip 4-6 miles deep designed to protect Israel's border. Rocket attacks and nightly raids against Israel continued. In 1982 Israel launched a massive attack to destroy all military bases of the PLO in southern Lebanon and, after a 10-week siege, forced the Palestinians to accept a US-brokered plan whereby PLO guerrillas would evacuate Beirut. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 1985. The latest chapter in the ongoing conflict began on July 12, 2006, when guerillas from the Islamic group, Hezbollah, the powerful and influential Lebanese "Party of God," crossed into Israel and attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three and capturing two others. The operation began with a diversionary attack of rockets and mortar shells fired at Israeli towns and military posts. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said the men were taken to set up a prisoner exchange with Israel. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, declared the attack an "act of war" on Lebanon's part, and promised a strong response. An Israeli tank stationed nearby attempted to pursue the captors into Lebanon but was hit by an improvised explosive device, killing all four crew members. Another Israeli soldier died during an attempt to recover the bodies from the disabled tank. After Hezbollah's cross-border raid, the Israeli military launched air, naval, and ground attacks at Hezbollah targets across Lebanon. Hezbollah responded by firing hundreds of rockets into northern Israel, many reaching as far south as the port city of Haifa. Hezbollah also damaged an Israeli warship ten miles off the Lebanese coast with an Iranian-made unmanned drone. Rational people will surely agree that being on the receiving end of a daily shower of missiles --- for years --- is sufficient provocation to strike back at a fanatic and well organized phalanx of terrorists. Israel, reborn from the ashes of the Holocaust, was attacked five times by its neighbors in less than 60 years. It has suffered repeated assaults by lunatics who blow themselves up in buses, marketplaces and restaurants. Suicide bombers are just the more extreme emissaries of a large, seething, teeming throng of Muslims who, given the chance, would cheerfully slit the throat of every Jew they met. For a pithy and telling synthesis of the Muslims' mindset and intentions, here's what Al Qaida's Ayman Al Zawahiri, Bin Ladin's deputy, said recently: "All the world is a battlefield open in front of us. The war with Israel does not depend on cease-fires. It is a Jihad for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq." The Muslims have not forgotten the Crusades, which they claim the West is still waging. But this time, they intend to wipe out the Jews who once shared their fate at the hands of the Crusaders. What we are witnessing is well beyond Israel's battle for survival. The western world, its values, freedoms, civilization and evolution, is now in peril. A strong and resolute Israel is the key to stability in the Middle East. If Israel falls, we all fall.
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