I receive mail from many people around the world. A letter from a gentleman in Australia accuses Israeli Jews of using "heavy handed tactics" against the Palestinians, and of "oppressing" them. He uses the standard, oft-repeated claims of "occupation" and "usurping land". He accuses Jews of automatically calling anyone who criticizes Israel an anti-Semite. What follows is part of my letter to him.



You are no doubt an educated and decent human. If you could, miraculously, become Jewish in your soul for one day, I think you would begin to understand how we feel. It is just not possible for you to know.



When you speak of "heavy handed tactics" against the Palestinians, I bristle.



In 1967, we fought a defensive war, during which we dislodged the Jordanians from their illegal occupation of the West Bank and Egypt from its occupation of the Gaza Strip. These lands, every square inch, were part of the British Mandate and were thereafter disputed, not occupied.



We Jews set about building infrastructure, schools, hospitals - Arab infant mortality was reduced by 80%. (Ironic, isn't it, that many of those children we saved are now trying to destroy us.) We brought electricity and piped in water to places that had never had either. We built three universities, believing that an educated people would be a good partner in solving complex problems. There were no checkposts, no tanks, no curfews, no road closures. More than 200,000 Palestinian Arabs worked in Israel, and all, we and they, were safe and secure.



The moment we won the war in 1967, we extended the hand of peace to our Arab neighbors, only to receive the infamous response of "The Three No's" - No recognition. No negotiation. No peace. - as proclaimed at the Arab conference in Khartoum.



Stupidly, in 1993, we resurrected Yasser Arafat from his Tunisian exile, armed him, turned over control of most of the territories, and set him up with a quasi-government, believing he was ready to sit and negotiate a true peace. After the smiling signatures on the White House lawn, after the dignified Nobel Prize award ceremonies were over, Mr. Arafat decided he would do much better with a war of terrorism against Israel than with negotiations, and he has not changed his mind or his tactics to this day.



If this had happened in your country, would you sit idly by and politely absorb the daily deaths of innocent civilians by bus bombings, roadside and sniper shootings and lynchings? No, you would protect and defend your citizens in any way you could. Rather than "heavy-handed", Israel has constantly put its own soldiers at greater risk by fighting door-to-door instead of carpet bombing, by scrubbing many actions because the murderers who were the target had surrounded themselves with many children and women.



Are we perfect? Of course not. We have made some mistakes. War is not pretty. We did not start this war, we did not want this war. We have tried every sort of negotiation; we have made a series of settlement offers only to receive more and greater attacks.



Today, on our New Year, I want to tell you: until you have walked in the shoes of a Jew, until you have walked in the soul of a Jew, who has been hounded, persecuted, murdered and demonized for 2,000 years, you will never fully understand.