Guest Opinion: It Is Time to End World War II

After World War II – during which Adolf Hitler exterminated one-third of the world’s Jews – Israel was established under British mandate to ensure such a travesty would never happen again. On Oct. 7, Hamas, Gaza’s militant ruling government, brutally attacked civilians in southern Israel, resulting in the murder of 1,200 innocent men, women, and children. The response? Millions of protesters worldwide hoisted signs advocating “from the river to the sea” and “the final solution” – Hitler’s planned mass murder of Europe’s Jews. “Missing” posters of kidnapped Israelis were torn from streetlight poles. Antisemitic threats have skyrocketed on college campuses. Why are people erasing the truth? This is not about Israel’s overbearing military response. It is about a long-simmering hatred of Jews.

Palestinian advocates – and many Jews – rightly object to Netanyahu’s pyrrhic retaliation against Gaza and the displacement of multigenerational Palestinian families by ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. Yet most anti-Israel protesters blindly ignore the violent Islamic extremism that has devastated Palestinian territories and undermined progress in the Arab world. Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon have been brutally murdered at the hands of other Arabs. These historical facts receive no attention among Arab activist groups.

Claims of Israeli-sponsored “genocide” and “extermination” are lies. While all should be outraged by Israel’s reckless retaliation in Gaza, a more targeted military response that avoids civilian casualties is entirely justified. Hamas has for years used hospitals, schools, and neighborhoods as civilian shields. They have absconded with billions of aid dollars to acquire weapons and enrich themselves in foreign enclaves while Palestinian civilians suffer. Yet Israel gets the blame.

Antisemitism is as old as the Holy Land. The kingdoms of Judea and Samaria, located in current-day Israel, comprised the Jewish homeland for almost two millennia before all Jews were expelled by the Roman empire – roughly a century after the birth of Christ and five centuries before Islam was established. Palestine supporters never mention Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who met with Adolf Hitler in 1941 to encourage the extirpation of Jews returning to Palestine while pledging his support for Nazi Germany. Israel was attacked by five Arab states after its establishment in 1948, and again in 1956, 1967, and 1973. Each time, Israel came back to the table, offering Palestinians land for peace on parcels that dwarf today’s Gaza. Those offers were repeatedly declined. Palestinian leaders didn’t want a settlement. They wanted the Jews gone.

Things have changed. Egypt and Jordan now have long-standing peace agreements with Israel. Bahrain, UAE, Morocco, and Sudan have normalized relations. Twenty percent of Israel’s population are Muslim and Christian Arabs, as is eleven percent of the Knesset, Israel’s legislature – a diversity prohibited in the Arab world.

This is what makes Netanyahu’s Gaza blitzkrieg so morally reprehensible. Palestinian refugees are fleeing into neighboring Arab states that have long shunned them. Egyptian President El-Sisi fears Hamas militants moving into Sanai and destabilizing his nation, noting “if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created long ago in negotiations, there would not be war now.”

Israelis and Palestinians must return to the negotiating table. But this cannot happen unless Palestinian representatives disavow Hamas, reject terrorism, and release the remaining hostages. Similarly, Israeli citizens should dissolve Netanyahu’s extremist government and stop the flat-earth policy of the current military campaign.

Neither of these steps will be easy. Because Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, internal change is possible. Gaza is another story. Since Hamas’ election in 2006 – the last one ever held – Gaza’s terrorist kleptocracy has staged hundreds of deadly missile attacks on Israel, indoctrinated children with Jew-hatred, murdered political opponents, and left their own people impoverished and hopeless.

Bombing civilians to destroy Hamas is wrong, but no military intervention at all is naïve. The temporary cease-fire and hostage negotiations are a positive gesture, but Hamas ultimately must be eliminated. In the long run, a targeted military strategy that protects civilians paired with international diplomacy will galvanize the Arab world around Israel, not against it. A modern-day “Marshall Plan,” led by western powers, should rebuild Gaza’s infrastructure and economy, as was done for the Axis Powers after World War II.

Creating an Israeli-Arab peace and a two-state solution is a generational strategy fraught with setbacks. Yet the alternatives are catastrophic. It is time to end the last world war, lest we risk the next one.

John A. Lipman is a writer and author of the biography, “Alfred B. DelBello: His Life and Times.” He earned a Master of Public Policy from the University of Maryland and has served in environmental leadership positions in Maryland and New England. He was born and raised in New York and attended Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester.