By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
Far-left media notoriously make various historical and statistical errors that lead the public to a divisive conclusion on Israel-Gaza/Hamas wars.
The arguments are: (1) Unjust creation of Israel in 1948 had provoked conflicts in the Middle East; (2) Foreign aid to Israel is about one-half of Israel’s Gross National Product, and 85 percent of that aid come from the United States; (3) Israel’s response to Gaza’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023 is excessive and disproportionate.
Creation of modern-day Israel. The Arab-Israel conflict in the Middle East is centuries old. The conflict over land is particularly perplexing. Before the time of Christ, the Jewish people lived in their own kingdom; a Jewish-ruled state was located where Israel is today. In 586 B.C., however, the Babylonian Empire defeated Israel. As a result of it, many Jews were brought to Babylonian as slaves.
Returning to their homeland after years of captivity, the Jewish people constructed a new state, only to be incorporated into the Roman Empire. Then, in 70 A.D., the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people scattered throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. From this time until 1948, Jews had no state.
During the intervening centuries prior to 1948, Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic religion predominated in the territory where Israel had been. The Palestinians, like the Jews, claimed the territory as their own. Thus, at one time or another, Palestinian Arabs and Jews both owned the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. This leads to a question, “Whose land is it?” Unfortunately, there is no simple, universally accepted answer.
In 1948, the United Nations proposed that Palestine be partitioned, with Jewish state being created along the Mediterranean coast and Palestinian state inland. It was not a perfect solution, and few people, least of all the Arabs, were pleased with it. But, at least, it was a solution, and both superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were behind it.
U.S. foreign aid to Israel. U.S. foreign aid to other nations in need is not only a critical humanitarian effort but also is in the national interest of the United States.
During World War II (1939-45), the United States instituted a huge Lend-Lease Program (US$50 billion at that time) to 42 recipient countries, including 11 countries who fought Nazism. The origin of U.S. modern-day foreign assistance dates back to the Marshall Plan.After World War II (1946-50), the United States instituted the Marshal Plan, which granted US$13.2 billion (over US$130 billion in today’s dollars) to help restart the world’s economy and stabilize potential U.S. allies in Western Europe.
The U.S. President’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Request included US$60.4 billion for the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Countries that received the most foreign aid from the U.S. in 2021 are:Israel ($3.3B), Jordan ($1.6B), Afghanistan ($1.4B), Ethiopia ($1.39B), Egypt ($1.29B), Yemen ($1.04B), South Sudan ($954M), and Congo (Kinshasa) ($825M).
The United States currently gives billions of dollars in security assistance to both Israel and Egypt to help maintain peace and stability in the Middle East. The United States considers Israel its most reliable ally in the Middle East and gives it more than $3.3 billion per year in foreign aid, and gives nearly $2 billion to Egypt as well. In September, 2023, Israel Gross National Product was reported at $126.855 billion, (U.S. dollars.) Israel total foreign aid from other countries (mostly USA, England, France) in security assistance is about $5 billion.
Israel-Gaza/Hamas war. Far-left media and activists accuse Israel in excessive and disproportionate use of force against Gaza/Hamas in defending itself in today’s war initiated by Gaza. Historically, there have never being proportionate wars. None.
On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, and destroyed or damaged 19 U.S. Navy ships, including eight battleships.
In response, on Aug 6 and 9, 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 Japanese respectively, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
The allied bombing of Germany from 1942-1945 almost completely ruined several major cities (Dresden, Berlin, Cologne), in bombing essential infrastructure and, in the process, killing thousand civilians. Nearly 27 million Soviets were killed during the war, including some of my relatives in Kiev, compared to nearly 9 million civilian and military Germans death by allied forces during the war.
On the 9/11, 2001, the Arab terrorists cowardly attacked and killed 2,977 people and injured thousands at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. In response, the United States and its allies invaded two countries—Iraq and Afghanistan—and, in the process, disproportionately killed and wounded tens of thousands civilians and military personnel.
The causes of Oct. 7, 2023 heinous Gaza’s attack of Israel are deeply rooted in multi-faceted historic, religious and ethnic issues of global terrorism. Historically, terrorism always has been a complex problem for humanity and for peace-seeking nations. And only “united we win” again.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
