Live and be hated, or die and be loved

Here is a piece of hard-core truth, from Nathan Sharansky:

But who is to blame? The Israeli government of course, for it launched a brutal campaign of death and destruction against the Palestinians in Gaza, without taking into account how much its actions would endanger the well-being of Jews around the world. Strangely enough, this logic is widely accepted by much of the free world today.

I have heard this kind of argument before. In my years as a member of the Israeli government, I faced countless situations where the world forced us to choose between protecting our citizens and facing international condemnation, on the one hand, and letting our citizens face suicide bombers and rocket attacks while winning world sympathy, praise, and understanding for our “restraint,” on the other.

Putting us in this situation is, itself, a form of anti-Semitism. Seventy years ago, the Peel Commission refused to allow Jewish immigration for fear of upsetting the Arabs and destabilizing the Middle East. Then as now, Jewish survival was seen as an inconvenience to the Western world. Then as now, Jews were forced to choose: Either live and be hated, or die and be loved.