Israel's Righteously Unblemished Critics

"[The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] rejects and disapproves] of the new State of Israel proclaiming Israel a "Jewish" state by legislation which contradicts international law]."
"[The international community should] confront such a law and or other Israeli attempts, aimed at perpetuating racial discrimination against the Palestinian people."
Saudi Foreign Ministry 

"[The new law is] racist [it] enshrines the racism of this entity [Israel] through an apartheid system that goes beyond the former apartheid system in South Africa."
"This Israeli law would not have been issued without the unlimited support provided by successive U.S. administrations to this rogue entity. [The Trump administration’s recent relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem] came as a green light [for Israel] to pursue its aggressive policy and racism."
Syrian Foreign Ministry

"[Adoption of the law] reflected the regime of racism and discrimination against the Palestinian people."
"[Israel clearly means to obliterate the Palestinians'] national identity and depriv[ing] them of their legitimate civil and human rights on their occupied homeland."
GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani

Israeli flag.. (photo credit: REUTERS)

Amazingly, unpredictably, there are others in the Arab world of diplomatic niceties who politely and vehemently feel threatened that a clearly Jewish state which freely celebrates its home-coming in the re-establishment of its heritage lands as a place of comfort, security and haven for persecuted Jews worldwide, finally asserting its preeminent position as the only country in the world where being Jewish is not a reason to fear being yet again persecuted, oppressed, threatened and violated adamantly presents itself in legal terms, as Jewish.

The chorus of Arab condemnation of the new Israeli legislation that now enshrines the country as "the national home of the Jewish people", has sung its outrage in a choir including the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, comprised of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Israel, must be feeling utterly devastated, disappointed, outcast and alone; its neighbours, in a totally new move will surely now exclude the Jewish state from the friendly and civil relations that prevail among all countries in the Middle East.

How can Israel possibly live with this rejection and the loss of comradely relations between it and its Middle East neighbours? Possibly if it explains that the thousands of years of Jewish yearning to return to its ancient homeland, to escape the recurring deadly hostility that Jews have been subjected to; culminating from endless pogroms, humiliations, expulsions, scorn, and victimization, Jews have felt worn out from being forced to find a place for themselves where no country would accept them.

Turning as a bright alternative to the ageless pledge to one day return to Zion, they did, after the world extracted an exorbitantly horrendous price, tasking the Angel of Death to hover over the Jews
of Europe while they were tormented and vilified, ghettoized and anguished in preparation for mass annihilation as the ultimate assault and insult to the existence of that people collectively refusing to vanish from the face of the Earth.

Proclamation of Nationhood is read by Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.   Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

In the State of Israel, which considers itself the final refuge for Jewish life, non-Jews were welcome to remain, and they did. Arabs constitute 17.5% of the eight million population, with the Jewish presence estimated at over six million, hosting as well Druze, Kurds, Armenians, Africans and Bedouin among others such as European Christians. Hebrew will now legally represent the only official language of the Jewish state; Arabic downgraded to special status.

Saudi Arabia guards its citizenship, awarding it to Saudis exclusively; it recognizes no religion other than Islam, and its concern for the welfare of Palestinians has not excited it toward offering either haven nor citizenship to them. It considers the Shiite sect of Islam false and results in accusations of a heretical nature, leading to violent enmity. The conflicts that result from sectarian hatred and violence creates gross destabilization, military assaults, mass murder of civilians, starvation, deprivation, refugees.

Syria's Shiite regime has waged an unrelenting war against its sectarian majority population, viewing them as 'terrorists' for the unsupportable crime of protesting against the unjust treatment meted out to them by their dictator-president Bashar al-Assad. Millions of Sunni Syrians have become both internally displaced and external refugees, crowding for safety from the regime into Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, flooding Europe for asylum.

Iran has mustered the strength in numbers of the minority Shiites, supporting their armed militias, creating non-state militias as terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, with an agenda focused solely on the destruction of the State of Israel, with a side-issue of promoting Shiism over Sunni Islam, with all the attendant fury of accusations, venom and threats that accompany a power struggle of one over the other, each reaching to attain the coveted status of ultimate power.

Israel, seeking to live in peace and security in its ancient homeland, cradled in a geography that once held disparate indigenous populations, all of which jockeyed endlessly for territory, has brought modernity and democracy to the Middle East in a geography to which both were foreign in a world stilled in the amber of quaint medievalism and backwardness. Viewing Israel as an usurping intruder, the Arab world shudders at the progress and civility Israel represents, challenging the brutality and ignorance that suffuses their culture.

After an Arab air raid, bodies of dead Jews lie in the rubble along the Tel Aviv waterfront.
Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images