2 May—The State of Israel, as Israel is known officially, will celebrate its 76^th birthday on 14 May. It was established—declared its independence—in 1948 when Britain terminated the Palestine Mandate, which had been created by the League of Nations in 1919 and took effect in 1920.

The very next day, 15 May 1948, the armies of neighboring Arab states Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria invaded the brand new little Jewish state. That was the start of the First Arab-Israeli War. Actually, Iraq and Saudi Arabia weren’t next-door neighbors but couldn’t resist the temptation to join the fray and kill some more Jews.

That war—essentially Israel’s War of Independence—was ended by the Armistice Agreements of February, March, and April 1949. But it was only the first of the wars in which Arab states tried to destroy little Israel. Israel won—if you can call it that—by surviving intact.

Eight years later, Israel, Britain, and France were the entirely justified aggressors in the Second Arab-Israeli War, fought in 1956. Arabs call it the Tripartite Aggression, Israelis call it the Sinai War, and the world at large calls it the Suez Crisis. Armed forces of the three countries invaded Egypt on 29 October 1956 with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba which Egypt had blockaded to prevent Israeli passage. Israel won the right to use the Straits of Tiran but not the Suez Canal; Britain and France lost influence in the Middle East. Since 1979, Israel can use the Suez Canal.

The Third Arab-Israeli War in 1967 is celebrated as the Six-Day War. Israel won.

The Fourth Arab-Israeli War—also known as the Yom Kippur War—took three weeks in 1973. Israel won.

The Fifth Arab-Israeli War—the Lebanon War—was fought in 1982. Israel won.

The Sixth Arab-Israeli War—the Second Lebanon War—was fought in the summer of 2006. It ended in a stalemate armistice brokered by the United Nations.

The Seventh Arab-Israeli War is the current one that started last October when Hamas, with the connivance—perhaps the instigation—of Hezbollah, Iran, and Iraq, caught Israel with its pants down.

There have, of course, been many other wars, battles, skirmishes, and other assorted hostilities in which Israel’s Muslim Arab neighbors have manifested their unwillingness to live with the little Jewish state that they maintain shouldn’t be there in the first place. Or just shouldn’t be. Period.

The bottom line is that there’s been an average of a numbered war every decade or so in which Israel has been essentially fighting for its very existence. Whatever happens with the Hamas War, there will without any doubt be another and another and another war with one or more of Israel’s hostile neighbors.

Israel will never be at peace. And it’s not just about religion . . .