Writer Supports Israel in Flotilla Incident

To The Editor:
Let’s set the record straight regarding Israel’s blockade of hostile ships: Israel does not stop humanitarian aid from getting through, it simply exercises the right under international law to inspect for weapons (many have been found) that would be used against Israeli citizens, if the search is negative, the ship is sent on it’s way.
Israel vacated Gaza as a gesture of peace, Hamas took over and immediately started firing missiles into Israeli border cities.
The Flotilla ship, in which the Israeli soldiers were attacked, was occupied by known Turkish terrorists, Hamas sympathizers who planned the attack for maximum propaganda (as admitted by the captain).
Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East, and is surrounded by hostile Arab Muslims who have called for it’s extinction and have tried to fulfill that promise since Israel’s inception under UN mandate. Yet the writer seems to feel Israel should do nothing to defend itself.
Let us look more closely as to the whole concept of being “Pro Palestine” and its agenda. The facts are very clear if one chooses to look at the facts instead of the propaganda.
• There was never in history a country called Palestine or an ethnic group called Palestinian until 1974. Arabs living in Israel, Jordan, Gaza or Judea/Samaria (West Bank) never referred to themselves as Palestinian until after the Yom Kippur War. The only people prior to 1974 who were referred to as Palestinian were the Jews who lived under the Palestine mandate prior to 1948.
• Prior to the six-day war in 1967, all Arabs living in Gaza called themselves Egyptian and those living on the West Bank were Jordanian and were entitled to or possessed passports for those countries.
• Any country securing land in a defensive war, that land is not considered occupied under international law. The land was secured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 six-day war, who many years later renounced their claim to those territories. Israel now owns those territories based on international law (though they do not fully claim them) and the creation of a Palestinian state is their prerogative and no one else’s whether one agrees or disagrees with such a policy.
• If one studies the facts of the history of the conflict, it is based on hatred of Jews and the culture and teachings of Islam. In both conflicts of 1948 and 1967 the chants from the street were to “Kill the Jews.” If you listen to the audio response to the Israeli Navy when they intercepted the boats of the Gaza Flotilla you heard Jew-hating expletives. No non-Muslim country can be tolerated in what Muslims regard as there sphere of influence. To put it simply, a two-state solution is a suicide solution.
DAN McNEILL
North Cape May