I’m a Zionist and proud. Look no further than the arguments I’ve advanced in defense of a beleaguered Israel over the years.

I believe Israel has a right to the land it bought from willing Arabs (Turks and locals) using private funds. Jews established a majority in a sliver of Israel they purchased fair and square. Upon that majority, a young UN conferred statehood, recognizing the Jewish people’s natural right to have non-coercively purchased land from those willing to sell it, and resettle a territory that had been barren. The Jewish State enshrined minority rights in its Declaration of Independence and in its laws and institutions.

Many impoverished idealistic Jews died warding off Arab attackers and draining swamps. The idea that prior to the Jewish state Muslims and Jews lived in harmony is a humbug. Defenseless pacifist Jews have always been victims of periodic Muslim onslaught. When Muhammad’s muse moved them, the indigenous (often nomadic) Arabs would pounce. The massacres of 1920, 1921, and 1929 are examples:

The targets were not Zionists who had dispossessed Arabs of their lands, but for the most part Jewish communities of the ‘old Yishuv,’ communities that had lived in Palestine for many hundreds of years. The pogroms were of the same general character as pogroms that had taken place sporadically in Palestine for hundreds of years, usually referred to euphemistically by Jews of Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem and Hebron as ‘Meoraot’—’events.’ The worst massacres took place in Safed, Hebron, Jerusalem and Motza. Like the pogroms of past ages, these ‘disturbances’ featured angry crowds stirred up over a religious or other dispute, Imams preaching ‘Kill the Jews wherever you find them,’ and mobs screaming ‘Aleihum’ (get them) and ‘Itbach Al Yahood’—murder the Jews. In a few days, over a hundred Jews were murdered and several hundreds were wounded. [That’s in 1929.]

While there were indeed injustices against the local population after the Arab countries attacked Israel in 1948, these were sporadic, not systematic. The charge of planned ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is bogus.

I hold that the “society” that sends suicide bombers into Israel proper is a savage and atrophying one—not because of Israel or America, but because of its own values and sources of inspirations. Ditto that state-within-a-state, Hezbollah.

I am fully aware of the staged set-ups in the war in Lebanon. The Jenin “massacre” fable and the Mohammed Al-Dura case are among the more notorious hoaxes perpetrated by propagandizing Arabs on the West.

However, the hoaxes do not explain away a devastated Lebanon—destruction so wanton it must turn the stomach of any honest human being.

The ongoing frauds, long an arrow in the Arab quiver, do not resurrect the 900 Lebanese dead, nor restore close to one million homeless to their obliterated homes.

You can discount what the hard-left, the far-right, and the far-gone libertarians say about Israel, if you like. Because their positions are intransigent—Israel evil; Arabs good—they can be said to evince ingrained bias.

But given my long-standing pro-Israel position, you cannot discard my stance.

And it is this: It is impossible to finesse Israel’s wrongs. The Israeli Air Force’s shock-and-awe has been barbaric. Instead of starting with precision, “deep-penetration” operations, Israel began with brute force, turning Lebanon into a parking lot and its inhabitants into homeless people.

I repeat what I said two weeks back, “Hezbollah (and Hamas) target civilians and hide among them. Although necessary, this fact, however, is not sufficient to exempt Israel from responsibility for its direct actions. For those, Israel can’t shirk accountability. It can’t claim it didn’t intend to take out civilians when Israeli generals can both see and foresee the devastating results of their bombardments.”

Any principled human being devoted to justice and freedom has to be repulsed by what Israel has done and is busy doing.