OPINION

(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not represent an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)

In the shock-driven aftermath of World War II, Allied forces, shamed by Hitler’s "final solution" to his "Jewish problem," the newly formed United Nations recognized Israel as the first Jewish state since the fall of Masada in A.D. 73.

One problem not fully addressed at the time — or at any time since — was the fate of the 700,000 Arab Muslims who left or were forced to flee their homes as the Israelis made room for 700,000 Jews who emigrated to their new homeland in the nation’s first four years.

The entire matter was clouded by the fact that Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, had allied his people with Hitler’s regime as early as 1933, and many saw the imposition of a Jewish state in what Palestinians perceived as their homeland as payback for that collaboration.

Fast forward through decades of forced expulsions, brutal assaults, and even poisoning of wells by Israelis and suicide bombings, rocket launches, and other hostilities by both the displaced Palestinians and various allies to October 6, 2023.

Israel, through the Abraham Accords, was making peace with many Arab nations, and relief agencies and other humanitarians continued pouring billions of dollars in aid to the grandchildren of the original refugees.

But the plight of the refugees had not been resolved.

Then all hell broke loose, and the world’s response has been woefully inadequate. No big surprise there, given that it had been inadequate for the past 75 years. On the one hand, for many, Gaza was never a homeland, but a staging ground for retaking the lost homeland.

On the other hand, the tiny territory’s anointed leaders, from Nobel Prize winner Yasser Arafat to today’s Hamas billionaires (none of whom live in Gaza), "reappropriated" huge swaths of humanitarian aid to line their own pockets.

Even when Leslie Stahl exposed the depths of Arafat’s corruption in a 2003 CBS "60 Minutes" episode, nothing really changed. Neither the UN, the Israelis (who collected taxes for Arafat), nor any other Muslim nation could or would put a stop to the abuse of the Palestinian refugees by their own leaders.

And so the refugees continued to suffer.

After 2007, Israel washed its hands of Gaza and left operational control of the tiny area to its people, who promptly switched their primary allegiance from the PLO to Hamas, a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood with ties to Iran.

Then came Oct. 7, 2023 — a day of infamy that saw over 1,200 Israelis die and hundreds more (plus foreign visitors) taken captive. The Israeli response has taken a very heavy toll on those same hapless refugees, only a few of whose members had taken part in the massacre.

Nearly eight months later, nothing has been resolved, and Israel’s relentless search and destroy mission against Hamas has brought destruction, famine, and death to many in Gaza who have no safe refuge anywhere else.

Meanwhile, the UN’s Relief and Works Agency has been scandalized, the U.S. is seemingly funding both Israel and Iran (and thus Hamas), and no Arab nation has offered to help restore order or provide refuge for the beleaguered refugees.

Enter Indonesia, a stable democracy that has the world’s largest Muslim population. Last fall, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) ordered his nation to coordinate the delivery of aid to Gaza from both the government and the private sector through the Egyptian Red Crescent.

In addition to the government’s support, the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) sent health kits, generators, and oxygen cylinders worth nearly $200,000 to Gaza and the Indonesian Humanitarian Alliance (IHA) collected up to $320,000 toward Gazan relief.

That support has continued. Just last month Indonesia became the first Muslim nation to be allowed to airdrop a planeload of needed supplies directly into Gaza by flying from Jordan across Israeli air space and back. The success of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules type airplane has been called a tribute to Jokowi’s diplomacy.

Indonesia had success in gaining Israeli approval for this vital mission after Israel had vetoed air drops of humanitarian aid and food from Turkiye and Qatar (likely over concerns that the shipment might include weaponry).

This, despite the fact that Israel and Indonesia have no diplomatic relations.

Just this week, President-elect Prabowo Subianto, who chose Jokowi’s son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as his running mate, called the aid package "just a drop in the ocean of horror and deprivation to which Gaza has been reduced lately."

Still, this gesture carried "great symbolic value" for Indonesians.

This "message of shared grief and pain, of solidarity and support, to our brothers and sisters in Gaza," said Prabowo, is also from my own heart.

Prabowo further stated that, while "I feel sorry for all those Israelis who lost their loved ones … I refuse to consider that what happened on that day in October can somehow justify what is happening in Gaza ever since."

As a human being, "You do not have to be a Muslim to feel the pain of Gaza [or] to feel outraged at what is happening there."

Prabowo noted the calls for condemning Russia “in the name of human rights and international law."

But, he asked, "How is the destruction of Gaza City less condemnable than the destruction of Mariupol? How is killing Palestinian civilians less condemnable than the killing of Ukrainian civilians?"

Prabowo is urging a ceasefire in Gaza today, for the same reasons he has urged a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine for nearly a year. These wars must stop, "because innocent civilians are paying with their lives; because lives and livelihoods are being destroyed; because wars of this magnitude impact not just the countries and people involved but can spread and engulf entire regions and continents."

But Prabowo went further, and in this there can be hope.

"As a Muslim, as an Indonesian," he said, "I believe in peace and coexistence, in moderation and harmony.

"These values are in the DNA of our nation and our people. And to us, they are just as relevant when those suffering are Europeans as they are when the victims are Asians or Africans, when they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish."

Prabowo still believes there can be a two-state solution, but he is wise enough to recognize that unless there is peace, those two states could not coexist.

But he warns the world that, "We must not stop [with a ceasefire]. If we do not want the cycle of violence and suffering to repeat itself with dramatic reality as it has done for the better part of the past eight decades, we must work together to resolve this conflict" for the long term.

Yet for that to happen, the multitude across North America, Europe, even Russia, and the Mideast (and beyond) of nitpickers, meddlers, instigators, and beneficiaries of this seemingly well-orchestrated endless holy war must be brought to account for their roles in profiting from the hate they either tolerated or perpetrated.

At this time when American college campuses are exploding, and the White House is attacked both for being pro-Israel and anti-Israel while funding both parties, is it even possible for there to be a sober real-world conversation that focuses on the horrors not just of war but of fostering the hatred and the greed that leads to war?

Or do we let this Hatfield-McCoy style carnage continue until it embroils the entire planet in a nuclear conflict?

Yet here we have Prabowo sounding like the prophet Isaiah quoting the words of the Lord: “Come now and let us reason together.”

Yet we know that reason only succeeds when all agree that only "the one without error can throw the first stone."

Duggan Flanakin is director of policy research for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), in addition to being a policy analyst there, he is a former senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Arkansas Public Policy Foundation.