They were subjugated, butchered and ostracised much of the time and still today face constant aggression from external threats.
Presently in the region you have Hamas attempting to bombard Israel indiscriminately with Iranian-supplied rockets, which provide an unprecedented penetration range into the tiny state. But Israeli missile defences are protecting Israeli civilians against the majority of incoming rockets.
As Israel retaliates against the constant rocket-fire, to date it has killed approximately one hundred and seventy Palestinians with surgical air-strikes – most of these are HAMAS operatives amongst innocent civilians such as families, including children, living in the same quarters as the terrorists.
Many of these people have been issued warnings by the IDF via telephone calls and pamphlets advising them to leave residences occupied by Hamas. Large numbers of Palestinians have fled their homes for refuge in safe-zones anticipating further action.
Hamas has been nestling itself inside school buildings, crowded apartments and even bunkered under a hospital - basically using voluntary (willing martyrs) and forced human shields to deter any Israeli retaliation, and since that isn't working Hamas are exploiting the civilian deaths for ''propaganda purposes'' against Israel - portraying Israel as the aggressor against civilians, while in fact Israel is only legitimately defending itself.
The employment of human-shield tactics by Hamas shows that their hatred of Israel is greater than the love they have for their own children and families - it smacks of a deep-seated & festering hatred that goes beyond the cosmetic land grievances.
If rocket-fire by Hamas, which is unwarranted at the outset, was to cease then there would be no need for an Israeli military response. Hamas are frankly the aggressors and instigators of the conflict, and their supporters and sympathisers in Palestine enable and perpetuate the violence to their own detriment. Such supporters have signed the death warrants of their own families caught up in the violence.
We westerners sit comfortably
We westerners once denied refuge for Jews escaping the holocaust, making us complicit in their extermination, and now that we are situated comfortably away from the rocket fire, we preside to pontificate at Israel expecting it to do nothing about the current manifestation of Jew-hatred and intolerance, as it once again erupts into violence.
It is understandable that the Israeli government is placing the defence of its own civilians before the lives of terrorists and those mostly innocent Palestinians they hide amongst. Remarks by the journalists and news-media purporting the "disproportionate use of force" by the IDF are ambiguous with regards to what 'proportionate' measures they would expect Israel to employ instead.
The major tabloids and reporters have double standards for Israel which they would not uphold for themselves were they in the same situation.
Sending in land forces would probably generate similar levels of collateral damage and civilian deaths as well as Jewish casualties. Surgical precision air-strikes against Hamas, with due warnings given for civilians seem like the most practical, casualty-mitigating option and the least of necessary evils, to exterminate the terrorists. If Hamas fought soldier to soldier instead of using cowardly guerilla-tactics, hiding between women and children, no such collateral damage would result.
The culpability for civilian casualties rests on Hamas, their sympathisers in Palestine and the Arab nations which fund the terrorism and refuse to absorb the Palestinians that were displaced during Arab invasions of 1967. (They attacked Israel, foremost, during its inception and infancy. Only by God's hand did the fledgling state survive - and it is the same today).
Amos Sale grew up in Auckland and recently moved to Wellington to assist his girlfriend with her youth ministry. Amos enjoys learning about history, politics, philosophy and biology and he likes sci-fi and action movies. Amos has a passion to defend the Christian worldview and value system against its enemies and detractors by any means he can, and to encourage others to seek out an experiential encounter with God. He is recently been engaged.
Amos Sale's previous articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/amos-sale.html