Go to any organized basketball game, or watch one on television, whether at the high school, college of professional NBA level, and you will soon hear, loud and clear, the word which comprises the title of this essay. The word is not "defense." There is no misspelling of this word in the title. The word is deefense, sometimes spelled deeeeeefense, with a very heavy accent on the first of these two syllables. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, the word is only uttered, shouted that is, about half the time during the game. On the other half of the time, there may not be deadly silence. There is indeed encouragement to be heard for the home team. But never is this particular word ever heard.
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What is going on here? Why this strange pattern amongst basketball fans? Are they just weirdos?
Not a bit of it. When they yell "deefense" at the top of their lungs, the other team has the ball, and the fans are urging their champions to not allow them to score. When the home team has the ball, it would be pretty much treasonous to yell this word. If you did so, you might get beer poured all over your head.
What is the point of mentioning these very basic elements of our culture? Everyone pretty much knows all of this, even if they have been Rip Van Winkling it for years. The point is to drive home to basic elemental truth that these people know the difference between offense and defense.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for all too many commentators on Israel's present war with Hamas.
The truth of that matter, of course, is that Israel is on the defense, and Hamas is very offensive oriented, in both senses of that word. The vicious, depraved, sickening attack on the former by the latter of October 7, 2023 constituted the initiation of violence. If that was not offense, an unwarranted attack on innocent people, then there is no such thing as an offensive act. The reaction of the IDF, one day later and thereafter, was defensive. If not so, there is no such thing as defense and the distinction between offense and defense is invalid (it most certainly is not). Try telling that to basketball fans everywhere.
But proponents of Hamas will claim that Israel "started up" first and thus, contrary to popular and not-so-popular belief in some quarters (Europe, South Africa, the United Nations, Harvard University) the only civilized country in the Middle East was really the offensive party. How so? They had turned Gaza into an "open-air prison," and thus began and justified the depraved hostilities of a few months ago.
This cannot be totally denied. Yes, Israel did indeed restrict the Gazans in all sorts of ways. For one thing, the IDF set up coastal blockades to try to stop in the importation of rockets and bombs. Wait, what? Why would the Israelis do that? This was because Hamas had been launching missiles at them for lo these many years. The Gazans, then, started hostilities; the Israelis reacted, defensively.
But the supporters of this terrorist organization are not without a response. Israel drew the first blood, they contend when they would not allow the Palestinians who fled in 1948 to return to their homes and vineyards.
There are several things wrong with this riposte. First of all, these Palestinians were guilty of treason against the newly-born state of Israel. They were aiding and abetting the five invading Arab armies which had ordered them to vacate, so as to make it easier for them to slaughter all the Jews. The Palestinians who remained and their children now comprise some 20% of the population of this country, and they are treated in much the same manner as are Jewish citizens. They are members of the Knesset, are judges, are policemen, have enrolled in the IDF are college professors in Israeli universities.
Secondly, who was invading whom upon that occasion in 1948? It is difficult in the extreme to claim that the Irgun, the Hagenah, the IDF were assaulting Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. No, the very opposite was the case. It does not take a basketball fan to see clearly who initiated the violence in this case.
Third, at roughly the same time that the Palestinians were doing the bidding of these offensive invading armies, totally innocent Jews were being expelled (ethnically cleansed) from their homes in those very same Arab countries. They were not traitors, in sharp contrast to the Palestinians. Their only "crime" was being of the Hebrew faith. There were almost one million of them. What happened to their "right of return?" They dared not do any such thing. If they had the temerity to try this, they would have been killed.
In a more rational world, a "swap" would have been orchestrated. The Palestinians would have taken up the properties the Jews were forced to abandon and vice versa (even though the former were of greater economic value than the latter). In the present imperfect case, the Jews were welcomed by the Israelis, while the Palestinians were forced to enter tent camps. Why? To demonstrate the "cruelty" of the Israelis who would not welcome back these fifth columnists. Who is being offensive here? Do we really need to ask any basketball fans?
The Hamas supporters have one more arrow in their quivers. They claim that the Jews are a colonist organization which took over lands rightfully belonging to the Arabs.
This is refuted on two grounds. For one thing, historically, the Jews have been in operation for some 3300 years, the Islamicists have only been in existence for about half that time, at around 1400 years. The Hebrews were not entirely twiddling their thumbs for these additional millennia. Rather, they were busy homesteading land, building temples, etc. Mixing one's labor with land, a la John Locke has long been the civilized justification for legitimate land ownership. As well, the Arabs were nomads to a greater degree than the Jews, and a "rolling stone gather no moss": it is difficult to establish land ownership without permanent settlements.
In the more recent epoch 100 to 200 years ago, Jewish land titles are of far better provenance than Arab ones. Some stem from purchases of previously established land titles, others from homesteading. They "made the desert bloom." Palestinians in sharp contrast to a great degree were supposed owners of land they never cultivated, swamps and deserts, which were given to them by governments (British, Ottoman, Arab) which did not properly own them in the first place.
This brings us to the present, where the IDF is now in the last stages of defeating Hamas. Advocates of the latter maintain that at least now Israel is on the offense, the Gazans on the defense. Stuff and nonsense. As part of their principles of incorporation, Hamas is dedicated to one, two, many October 7s. If they would surrender, release all prisoners, and stop using their people as shields, this war would come to an abrupt halt. Hamas, not Israel, is responsible for the tragic number of deaths now suffered by the Gazans, in the form of collateral damage.
What we need to make sense of in the Middle East imbroglio is to bring in a bunch of basketball fans. They could hardly do worse than those who think Israel is on the offense, and the Palestinians are playing defense. Nonsense.
Peace will reign in the Middle East when the Arabs realize, once and for all, that the Israelis are "mad as hell and won't take it anymore." That, and when they stop hating the Jews more than they love their own children, and no longer use them as shields.
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