In 1977, as I was about to depart for my first trip to Israel, I went to a party in New York City and met a young Israeli boy. “Hello, my name is Raffi,” he said. “I’ve lived through three wars.”

Naturally, I was taken aback; as a rule, American kids don’t define themselves by the wars they’ve experienced. But war has a different connotation for each country. During my life, we Americans have fought our wars overseas (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) and even when we “lost,” no American cities were destroyed and there was no mass extermination of our civilian population. For Israelis, losing a war means being wiped off the face of the earth. This is no idle fear because for decades, the Muslim nations surrounding it have voiced such a threat. So have the Palestinians, an inconvenient truth their advocates tend to ignore. These facts, however, are embedded in the Israeli mindset and explain their brutal methods of self-preservation.

Israel turns 75 this month and for a nation that supposedly has no right to exist, it’s been existing for three-quarters of a century during which time, it has fought six wars, three of which were life and death struggles. Unfortunately for that nation, its current threat comes from within.

From 1948 to 1967, Israel was the West’s favorite underdog; a tiny but tough entity fighting valiantly against Arab dictatorships hell-bent on pushing it into the sea. Contrary to myth, during this time the United States did not arm or finance Israel whose weaponry was predominantly Czech, French and British and who benefited by vast reparation funds from West Germany. Israel also lived off its “Exodus” — induced mythology as former helpless Holocaust victims now armed with tanks and fighter planes defending itself against genocidal aggression (Paul Newman’s blue eyes helped.)

This changed in June 1967 when Israel took over the West Bank from Jordan (who, it should be noted, would never have even considered an independent Palestinian state on its border.) Overnight, Israel became an occupier and a military superpower; the oppressor, not the oppressed. Such a drastic change in identity altered both Israeli and world perception of the Jewish state.

Suddenly, Israel was being accused by western activists of being an illegal nation artificially created by European colonial powers and entrenched by conquest. These accusations ignore the hypocrisy that their countries were also formed by a strong group conquering a weaker one. They also ignore the notorious 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement whereby Great Britain and France artificially created Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon out of the former Ottoman Empire. Israel was, in fact, legitimately created by UN Resolution 181 which designated separate Jewish and Palestinian States from the old British Mandate.

The fraught relations between the Israelis and the Palestinians have always been the Gordian Knot of the Middle East. Fanatics on both sides pretend the other doesn’t exist which of course, they do. The inability of both parties to comprehend the mindset of the other is the true tragedy of this never-ending madness. To me, the settlers on the West Bank have truly earned the title of an Apartheid State because their treatment of their Palestinian neighbors is a toxic mix of religious fanaticism and Manifest Destiny. Stories coming out of that region could have been lifted from pre-liberation South Africa and the American South before the Civil Rights movement. For their part, the Palestinians have always chosen terror tactics as a primary strategy which only inflames further Israeli reaction.

Those who have followed the news are aware that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, accused of numerous charges of corruption, attempted to cripple the Israeli Supreme Court in ways that would limit its power and thus, erode Israel’s democratic institutions. Israel has no Separation of Church and State in its constitution so extremist Ultra-Orthodox religious parties are a major force in Israel’s government. Certain cabinet ministers have not only advocated violence against the West Bank Palestinian population as well as the Arab citizens of the Jewish state but suggested their mass deportation. The country itself is being torn apart by massive protests against such actions as its politics and policies swing to the far right.

With relations with its Arab neighbors normalizing, Israel now appears to be its own worst enemy. Its current turmoil reminds me of a line of dialogue from the 1977 television miniseries, “Masada,” whereby a Jewish Zealot advising a Roman general says, “If you want to destroy the Jews, leave them in peace.”

Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for 44 years and is a frequent contributor to the Recorder. He lives in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico with his wife, Lisa and dog, Cody.

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