Israel is under attack again, but this year it’s worse. And Americans must remember that their war is our war.

Riots broke out this weekend in the streets of Jerusalem, as they have broken out almost every year for the last ten or so years. One Arab teen-ager, while throwing rocks, took a bullet and later died. The Jerusalem Police still don’t know who shot him.

Last week your editor published this translation of a nine-year-old essay from an Israeli, who wrote to a French audience on what daily life had come to mean, and what it still means. Now it’s time to tell what those scenes look like from here.

Your editor read the story of ancient Israel in the Bible when he was a boy. Your editor was nine years old when his father said to him, “Boy, those Israelis, they’re giving those Arabs a fit!” That “fit” was the Six-Day War. Then we all crowded around our TVs and saw pictures of Arabs burning our embassies. Your editor would learn later that this happened because Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser said that American and British planes had wiped out his air force on the ground when the war started. That was a lie. But some Arabs have preferred to believe it ever since.

The Arabs have also been trying to roll back history. They’re still doing it; the “prime minister” of the Hamas “government” in Gaza said this over the weekend:

I want to hear the numbers 1-9-6-7 from Netanyahu. Until we…hear that, we’re not going to waste our time.

Except that he said it at a demonstration commiserating over an event in 1-9-4-8, not 1-9-6-7. His real problem is the same as always: he does not want Israel to exist.

Enough of this. In plain English, here is the reply of one American who has watched the Middle East since he was a pup, and knows which side he is on.

What does it mean to be an American friend of Israel?

View from the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, looking toward Damascus.

You turn on the news, and do a double-take, because for a minute there you think you are watching a remake of Cast a Giant Shadow, on a station that carries news, not movies. Then you get it: this is no movie; this is real. Riots and shooting are breaking out in Jerusalem, and rag-tag battalions and rump regiments try to crash the borders with Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria. Syria??? You remember that, a month and a half ago, you were right there, and stood on the bluff overlooking the Damascus Road! Unbelievable! And Jerusalem? Your tour guide lives there! You hope that the violence didn’t affect her, you search Google News for her name, and find nothing in the news. Whew! Then you hold up your thumb and forefinger of your right hand, about an inch apart, and tell yourself, “I missed a big scoop—or maybe dodged a bullet—by that much.” And then you read this, from our embassy in Tel Aviv—and right away you say, “That embassy ought to be in Jerusalem. Why isn’t it?” But of course you know why.

What does it mean to be an American friend of Israel?

You pick up your Bible and turn to Nehemiah chapter 4, and especially verses 17 and 18:

Those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load with one hand doing the work and the other holding a weapon. As for the builders, each wore his sword girded at his side as he built, while the trumpeter stood near me.

And you say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” You call the tour organizer to see whether he has heard anything that you haven’t, and your own pastor just to say that you know how blessed you are. (You’d like to call your old tour guide, but you wouldn’t know how to reach her.) You go to the mall, you think for a moment about the threat by “home-grown terrorists” to set off a bomb at some mall somewhere, and then you remember that the people of Israel have lived with that kind of threat almost since their founding. You ask yourself, “Where do I go to sign up?” but of course you’re not ready to sign up even to join the United States Army, much less any foreign auxiliary of the Israel Defense Forces. (Then you remember that there’s a law against the latter. It’s called the Neutrality Act.)

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What does it mean to be an American friend of Israel?

Two Tzahal (Israel Defense Force) soldiers walk casually on the Golan Heights.

You ask out loud, “Why do those people take this!?” as if they could hear you. You want to cry out, “Send some troops and take Gaza right back!,” and then remember that they gave it up because our own government wouldn’t let them keep it. You realize that all that aid our government gives that country comes with the kinds of strings that we never pull with any other country. (Like the time when they tried to develop their own equal to the F-16, but our State Department said no.) When you think of that, after a few seconds, then you know what shame is. You think about the few Jewish friends that you have, and wonder what you can say to them. You remember how well the Israelis received you, while you were over there, and wonder, “How do they do it? Why aren’t they bitter?” You remember walking down two streets in Jerusalem named after American Presidents (George Washington and Abraham Lincoln), and are grateful that they kept those names. You also wonder why Israel votes with us in the UN nine votes out of ten. Iraq gets a lot more foreign aid than they do these days, and they won’t vote with us even half the time!

What does it mean to be an American friend of Israel?

You know perfectly well that traffic accidents aren’t what’s killing more Israelis all the time. You read the descriptions of the “Arab Spring,” and remember that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has openly said that, first chance they get, they’re going to break the Camp David Treaty with Israel and start another war. Then you read things like this (a 92-year-old “Palestinian” woman brags about having been part of a massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1948) and this (a Hamas cleric finally says how they really feel about the Jews), and you say, “Tell me again who wants peace, and who doesn’t!”

What does it mean to be an American friend of Israel?

T-shirts on sale on the Golan Heights: America, don't worry: Israel is behind you!

You think, with a sinking feeling in your gut, that your country won’t be in any shape to help anybody pretty soon. You stand in your family room, a glass of water in your hand, and say, “God, what’s next?” And then you look toward the east, toward a land that you know is the front line in the war of civilization. You remember the T-shirts that they sold at a trading post in the Golan Heights, T-shirts bearing this slogan: “America, don’t worry. Israel is behind you.” You raise your glass in salute, and say another silent prayer on their behalf: “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.”

That’s what it means to be an American friend of Israel.