AaronFreedman.com

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War (during which Israel captured the West Bank with East Jerusalem, the Sinai peninsula with the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights) on the Gregorian calendar (the day is celebrated in Israel as Yom Yerushalayim on the Hebrew calendar date of Iyar 28, which occurred a few weeks ago). Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to write a full post about the anniversary, but I did find a great op-ed in The Times that summed up my opinion on the war and its aftermath. The general gist of the piece, by Israeli Tom Segev, is as follows:

But peace with the Palestinians has not come one inch closer. As a result more and more Israelis realize today that Israel gained absolutely nothing from the conquest of the Palestinian territories. Speculating again in hindsight — Israel may have been better off giving up the West Bank and East Jerusalem without peace than signing the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan while keeping these territories. Forty years of oppression and Palestinian terrorism, both extremely cruel, have undermined Israel’s Jewish and democratic foundations. With about 400,000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and with extreme Islamism as a driving force among the Palestinians, the conflict has become infinitely more difficult to solve.

This is pretty much the same as my views, which is that the settler movement, the movement of right-wing Israelis to Palestinian territories, is the cause of most of Israel’s problems and its negative image with the liberal populous and world in general.

Obviously, I have a tremendous amount of affinity for and pride in Israel. But, unfortunately, most of the world doesn’t feel that way. The settler movement has caused Israelis to become deeply trenched in the Palestinian territories, resulting in the peace process become infinitely harder and more complicated. Plus, this difficulty in achieving peace has caused Israel to become regarded by most of the world as “having a negative influence in the world” at best, and “should be wiped off the map” at worst. What conservative Israelis, and even their global opponents, forget is that Israeli was founded on the principle of compromise. The partition of Palestine gave Israel very little territory, yet David Ben-Gurion still accepted it. So, while Israel may have made some dumb decisions in its past, that doesn’t mean that it has no right to exist.