The Independence I Wish We Had Celebrated

On May 1, Israel celebrated its Independence Day. And in Israel, unlike America or any other country I’m aware of, they do a really smart thing. They connect Independence Day with their Memorial Day which always takes place the day before.

More than any country on Earth, Israel understands, and painfully so, that their independence is directly linked to the sacrifices made by countless Jewish heroes.

Of course, these days, one person’s hero is another person’s colonialist. But I’ll leave that to the haters in the comment section. Because they are heroes, like it or not, and as a proud Jew, just as Israel is my land, this is my piece.

Many like to say that the war today between Israel and Gaza is really just a continuation of Israel’s first war, it’s war for independence (if not the eternal struggle of the Jewish people as a whole).

Let’s look at that.

On May 14, 1948, out-matched, out-numbered and out-sized, immediately following its declaration of statehood, Israel found itself having to fight off five Arab nations who wouldn’t accept UN Resolution 181 which had passed the year before.

Huh, maybe it’s not accurate to say that Israel is still fighting the same war after all. Following October 7th, at one point Israel was fighting a seven-front war. In 1948, it was just five.

Oh, how the times have remained the same.

I would say all kidding aside, but there’s nothing funny about one demographic with 99% of a territory waging nearly a century’s long war to capture the less than 1% it falsely feels entitled to.

There’s nothing hilarious about a world that’s just fine with there being about 50 Islamic nations but can’t seem to accept one Jewish one.

To those who say that in 1948 the land was really Palestine even though it may at one point in time have been Israel, I say, well, if that can be true, now it’s Israel again. In the most mature, well-conceived argument I can think of, “So there!”

Actually, it was always Israel, and despite what some want to believe, at the turn of the last century, Jerusalem had a majority Jewish population.

If the Palestinians really wanted an independent state, they’d have accepted any number of the comprehensive land deals they were offered, or done much more with the chance they were given following Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

There’s not enough room here to delve into why they so often have rejected peace in favor of conflict, most recently in 2008, and before that under Clinton. In short, it keeps the pretext alive of why they still attack.

Whatever the reason, if to this day they keep choosing war over peace, then it is entirely reasonable to say that Israel is still fighting for its independence, for its very survival, against a combined enemy who wishes its total destruction.

If only there were enough independent thinkers to understand the conflict this way.