One of my friends has a habit of telling me that all of the problems in the Middle East stem from our support of a state that was created as a direct result of terrorism. While there was, undeniably, a rash of Jewish terrorism during (and immediately following(?)) World War II, mostly as a way of fighting back against the way Jewish refugees were treated, I’m not quite certain that the creation of the Israeli state is directly attributable to Jewish terrorist activities.

Even assuming that the sole (or, at least, primary) motivating factor for the United Nations to create a state for Jews in Palestine was the terrorism of Jewish extremists, does that change the right of Israel to exist today? At most, a tiny percentage of Israel’s Jewish citizens in 1950 had anything to do with that terrorism. The percentage of Israel’s Jewish citizens today who were involved in that terrorism is much, much smaller, I’d think. Do the sins of a handful of Jewish extremists, inexcusable (but not incomprehensible) as they were, negate the right of the state of Israel to exist today?

I say no*, and because of that, I tend to think that at least some knowledge of the acts of Jewish extremists more than half a century ago are interesting historically and vitally important in understanding some of the reasons that the Middle East is in the situation it’s in, but they really play very little role in striving for peace in the region today.

I’m not going to get into the current situation with Israel and Hezbollah right now, but Jay Tea covers it pretty well (and again, even assuming that we accept my friend’s claim that Israel’s origins are the direct result of terrorist activities of their own, all of Jay’s other points provide a pretty solid set of evidence as to which of these two groups we should be supporting).

* Even if one believes that, yes, Jewish terrorists of the mid-20th Century somehow undermine the right of the state of Israel to exist, then I’m forced to wonder what action that belief would dictate. If the state of Israel were to be dissolved, who would be given control of that territory? If Jewish terrorism from a half century ago undermines the right of the Jewish people to control a state in the Middle East, surely modern terrorist activities would do the same for the Palistinian Arabs (and since we’re painting the entire Jewish people with the same brush to say they’ve no right to Israel because of terrorist activity, maybe we should extend that to say all Arabs, just for true reciprocity), wouldn’t it?