I was in Israel just a few weeks ago. After touring Jerusalem, my Jewish-Christian guide took us to an Arab restaurant in the same place where Jonah met his whale. It was wonderful. I saw Jews and Arabs and Christians – men, women, and children – eating and laughing and enjoying life together in joyful diversity of peace and acceptance.

Imagine my horror, when just a week later, some 1500 Jewish men, women, and children – mostly civilians – were brutally massacred in the worst single day of slaughter since the Holocaust.

Despite what you may have been told, Israel has always agreed to a “Two-State Solution” that would give the Palestinians a sovereign state of their own. Indeed, when the United Nations formed Israel in 1948, they also formed an independent Palestine along side it.

But, on the very first day of Israel’s existence, all the nations surrounding them (Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq) attacked the nascent Jewish state. Miraculously, Israel survived.

Following this war, and at the behest of many Arab nations, some 700,000 Arabs voluntarily left Israel and were then dubbed “the Palestinians”. In a later memoir, the former Syrian Prime Minister admitted this when he wrote, “We have been demanding the return of these refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave.” During that same year, some 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab nations. They mostly went to Israel and America.

The difference in these two migrations, was that Israel and America accepted these Jews as citizens. The Arab nations, on the other hand, still refuse to accept the Palestinians even to this day, insisting that they remain refugees for over half a century.

Pakistan was also created in 1947. It was never a nation before, but broke away from India because they wanted to live in a Muslim state. A bloody civil war ensured, in which a million Indians were killed. Because of the horrific violence, 7 million Muslim Indians fled to Pakistan, and 7 million Hindu Indians left Pakistan to live in India.

The tragedy broke Gandhi’s heart. Yet despite all that bloodshed and strife over religion, no one claims that Pakistan shouldn’t exist.

Why do people say that Israel shouldn’t exist?

It is also a fact, that the modern day countries of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq were all created around the same time as Israel. Yet, no one refutes the validity of any of these nations.

In 1967, the Arabs attacked Israel again. Even though they were hopelessly surrounded, the Jews won again. That is when Israel captured “the West Bank” and Gaza and the Sinai.

In response, the Arab League got together in Sudan and announced their “Three No’s” – “No Recognition, No Peace, and No Negotiations with Israel”.

Since that time, Israel has tried many times to trade land for peace. In 1978, Jimmy Carter brokered a deal where Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt in an exchange for a peace treaty.

In response, the Palestinians launched their First Intifada against Israel, killing hundreds of Jews.

Following their success with Egypt, Israel offered to give the Palestinians their own state…not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five separate times!

The Palestinians rejected every offer.

The most famous of these negotiations was in 2000, when Bill Clinton invited Yasser Arafat to Camp David. There, Israel offered the Palestinians a nation of their own, 94 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and East Jerusalem as its capital. Arafat, who had already been given the Nobel Peace prize, refused. Clinton said that Arafat was, “here 14 days, and said no to everything.”

Shortly after, the Palestinians launched the Second Intifada, where waves of suicide bombers entered Israel and killed over 1000 Jews.

Still, Israel sought for peace. In 2005, in a gesture of goodwill, Israel gave Gaza back to the Palestinians without any conditions. In 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians even more land in the West Bank.

A few weeks ago, Hamas launched a brutal attack from Gaza, the very same place they had been given.

There are 22 Arab states with 453 million people, stretching four thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.

There is only one Jewish state of about 10 million people. Smaller than New Jersey, you can literally drive from one end of the country to the other in less than an hour.

Israel is a model of diversity, and one of the only nations in the Middle East that ensures LGBTQ rights. Over 20 percent of the people who live in Israel are Arabs who enjoy full citizenship. The Jewish Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, education, culture, and language to everybody, regardless of their ethnicity, a rarity in the Middle East.

Biden claimed he wanted to end our “Forever Wars” when he ignobly pulled out of Afghanistan, giving $82B of our weapons to terrorists. Now, we have two massive wars in Ukraine and Israel

as bad actors feel emboldened. Still, I’m very glad the Leader of the Free World is finally defending the only democracy in the Middle East.

The new coalition of China and Russia and Iran and North Korea are watching. If we fail to defend the free peoples of the world, more grief will come to the Free World.

Dave Belton is a former state representative for District 112, which includes portions of Morgan and Newton counties, in the Georgia House of Representatives.