Prager Explains ‘The Middle East Problem’

The Israel-Palestine conflict in the Middle East has been treated as if it’s a complicated problem, when in actuality the root of it is easy to explain: the Palestinians do not accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state and desire its destruction. In a 2014 PragerU video, Dennis Prager points to key moments in the Israel-Palestine conflict that demonstrate that Israel is willing to allow Palestine to exist peacefully as their own state, while the Palestinians, and many of the surrounding Arab states, do not share that same view towards Israel.

“This has been true since 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the land called Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state,” Prager says. “The Jews accepted the United Nations partition but no Arab or any other Muslim country accepted it. “

The day after the United Nations recognized Israel as a sovereign nation, the Arab states of Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq and Syria all descended on the Jewish state with every intention of destroying it, but Israel thwarted their efforts. In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan all prepared to attack Israel again, but Israel launched preemptive strikes to defend themselves, acquiring the Sinai Peninsula and West Bank in the process.

A decade later, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt with the promise of peace. Israel has been willing to do the same with Palestine in regard to the West Bank, but such deals have been continually rejected by the Palestinians because they all involved recognizing Israel’s right to exist. Instead, the Palestinians continue to churn out anti-Semitic, anti-Israel propaganda and launch terror attacks against the Jewish state.

“Think about these two questions: If, tomorrow, Israel laid down its arms and announced, ‘We will fight no more,’ what would happen? And if the Arab countries around Israel laid down their arms and announced ‘We will fight no more,’ what would happen?” Prager asks. “In the first case there would be an immediate destruction of the state of Israel and the mass murder of its Jewish population. In the second case, there would be peace the next day.”

Prager then points out that the land where Israel resides has historically been the area of a Jewish state, boiling the issue down to one question: “Why can’t the one Jewish state the size of El Salvador be allowed to exist?”