Israel does what it has to do in order to survive on the battlefield and off it. The international order is sometimes upset. There are some who think it only right and proper that a small country should defend itself in the face of implacable neighbors, but quite a swath of public opinion conjures up hostile analogies to Nazi Germany. In the 1930s, Nazis boycotted Jews, and today, liberals boycott Jews. Prominent figures such as former president Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu accuse Israel of racism as though it were a pariah nation comparable to apartheid South Africa. In the streets of the great cities of Europe, demonstrators have waved placards proclaiming, “Hitler was right” and “Jews to the ovens.” Making David into Goliath is a discussion of the politics and personalities responsible for completely misrepresenting Israeli and Jewish reality. Written with only the lightest touch of polemics, this book is instructive and of course could hardly be more timely.
Take the recent fighting in Gaza. Hamas, the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, hoped to kill as many Israelis as possible by firing missiles indiscriminately at them. Anticipating Israeli countermeasures, Hamas compelled the inhabitants of Gaza at gunpoint to stay put as human shields in premises — some right next to mosques and a hospital — where they had sited their launch pads. Sure enough, some of these unfortunates were killed in air raids. Making sure to publish grim photographs of dead civilians, Hamas accused Israel of “disproportionate bombing” and “war crimes,” the very actions for which they themselves ought to have been brought to account. Deliberate inversion of the truth brings together Muslim extremists and secular European freethinkers whose sole belief in common is that Jews will always do their worst.
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