It is easy to blame America for the lack of Palestinian-Israeli peace. Critics from the left argue that America is biased in favor of Israel. Critics from the right argue that America has not allowed Israel to end the Palestinian terrorist regime on its borders.

It is easy to blame the Palestinians for the paucity of calm in the region. Palestinians incite their children to murder Jews. Palestinians encourage and celebrate homicide bombings. The Palestinian end goal is the destruction of the state of Israel.

It is also easy to blame the other Arab nations for the failure of the Middle East peace process. They fund Palestinian terror. They refuse to take in Palestinian refugees. They use Israel as a scapegoat for their own domestic problems.

But the cardinal blame for the Middle East conflict lies with Israel. Why? Because the other nations in the region despise Israel and wish it ill. Because the rest of the world condemns Israel if Israel so much as attempts to defend itself. And yet Israel chases after international praise rather than protecting its own citizenry by any means necessary.

Israel's apologies for its own existence can be directly linked to its ideological foundation. Israel was built by men who sought to separate religious Judaism from the concept of a Jewish state. They were socialists and secularists. They aspired to create an Israel that would take its place among the "family of nations," as the Israeli Declaration of Independence puts it. These secular Zionists were certainly heroes, but they built Israel on shaky ground from the beginning.

This was, and is, the problem for Israel. Israel still strives to be admitted to the "family of nations." Israeli leaders have still failed to realize that there is no family of nations, that the countries of the world have independent interests and values, and that they share no common vision.

Israel's secular Zionism has always provided the seeds of its destruction. Secular Zionism requires that Arab citizens of Israel be guaranteed equal rights. Even though many Arabs within Israel wish for Israel's obliteration and vote as such, Israel does nothing. In January, the Israeli Supreme Court overruled a Knesset ban on Arab Members of Parliament Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi, despite both Bishara's and Tibi's support for Palestinian suicide bombings. Israeli Arabs compose about 20 percent of Israel's population. Demographic trends indicate that within decades, Israeli Arabs will compose a voting majority in Israel, allowing them to vote the Jewish state out of existence. Secular Zionism will let it happen. 

Israel's secular Zionism means accepting indefensible borders. The 1967 Pentagon Report, issued immediately following the Six-Day War, explains that Israeli security requires control over virtually all territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, and even parts of the Sinai Desert. Yet Israel accepted United Nations Resolution 242 only months after the war. Once again, Israel's desire for international approval trumped security concerns; U.N. Resolution 242 now provides the basis for the Palestinian Trojan Horse campaign to destroy Israel.

Secular Zionism forces Israel to allow the murder of its own citizens and the rape of its sovereignty. Almost every day, Jews are brutally slaughtered at the hands of Israel's "peace partners." But Israel's anti-terror campaign has been mainly bulldozing empty terrorist hideouts and complaining about Yasser Arafat. Secular Zionism dictates that Israel either forgive Palestinian terror or fight terror with one hand tied behind its back.

The essence of secular Zionism is rejection of religious Judaism. But the only way the Jewish state can survive is to become more, not less, Jewish. Israel must reject the tenets of secularism, the "family of nations" ideal. The basis of the Jewish claim to the land of Israel stems from God. For millennia, Jews have prayed for the ingathering of exiles, for a return to the Holy Land. Now, God has granted them their homeland and the weapons to defend it. God's road map requires the Jews to kill those who seek to kill them (Talmud Sanhedrin 72A). Israel has the God-given obligation to defend itself against those who wish to destroy it. 

Secular Zionism has fulfilled its mission; it has created a homeland for the Jews. But ever since that creation, the appeasement-oriented tenets of secular Zionism have meant unending conflict. Only if Israel elects to follow God's road map will true peace ever be achieved.