Israel seeks to improve the world by setting an example, not by conquest.

By Ted Belman

The progressives in the world want change to achieve a better world or New World Order. The Left and the Islamists both want this but they differ on what the new world order should look like. They are at odds with conservatives who want to keep what they got and Jews who refuse to get with the programme.

In A Tale of Two Wars, Daniel Greenfield puts it this way:

Washington needs the Syrian war to happen, and it needs to keep a conflict with Iran from happening. The great diplomatic problem of Israel has always been that its leader insist on viewing conflicts in practical terms. Israel does not fight wars to make the world safe for democracy, it fights wars because there’s someone shooting missiles as it. This is an unacceptable reason for a war in a postmodern world where wars are fought to preserve the international order, protect civilization, make the world safe for democracy and prove that human rights violations will be punished by the duly constituted body of international jurisprudence.

Self-interest is Israel’s original sin. It was the sin that countless titans of the left from H.G. Wells to Lenin berated the Zionists for. Instead of contributing to the welfare of mankind and participating in the international brotherhood of workers, they went off to rebuild a country that existed only in their holy books and stirred up all kinds of trouble doing it. And since they have kept on stirring up trouble, not in the name of some grand idea, but out of their tawdry interest in defending themselves.
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Israel’s insistence on a purely existential view is dismissed as selfish and narrow-minded when the Middle East is headed toward a brave new world where nukes no longer matter because no one is angry anymore because there are no more dictators and democracy is everywhere. While the Israelis see the Middle East as basically static, the progressives see the Middle East as constantly on the verge of a great leap forward to a new more enlightened age.

It is the nature of the strong powers to subjugate the world whether through colonialism or a New World Order. The nature of the progressive left is also to subjugate everyone else to their vision. They can’t leave wel- enough alone. The nature of Islam is also to subjugate the world. Thus they are fellow travelers.

Israel, on the other hand has no grand design for anybody else, only for itself and that is Zionism, return to and rebuild the land. In biblical times Israel also had no thoughts of conquering the world. Their aspirations were limited to the land G-d gave them.

While Israel has more than its share of leftists, its animating philosophy is an ethnic nationalism that is repugnant to the transnationalist. They can find no meaningful globally applicable philosophy that defines its success. Like Japan, Israel is a self-contained wonder. It is a nation, not a philosophy. Its identity is rooted in an infuriating recent and ancient history. It is modern in defiance of the progressive understanding of history– which is why its technology, its human rights and its basic decency are dismissed.

The Arab Spring seems to be everything that Israel is not, a transnational transformation, the soul of Europe invested in a Middle Eastern body. A great leap forward that will lift the region out of its backward fanaticism and move the world closer to the modern place it ought to be. .

Washington is not interested in Israel’s selfish need not to be nuked. It isn’t in this for existential reasons and it doesn’t see why Israel should be either. If the United States can sacrifice thousands of lives for the greater good to promote peace, tolerance and respect for international law, then why can’t Israel risk a few million lives, especially when there are foreign policy experts who will explain slowly and distinctly to the dunces in Jerusalem why it is very unlikely that Iran will actually detonate a nuclear bomb.

Israeli leaders have a diminishing interest in grand theories of history arising from DC or Brussels. Small nations can’t afford grand theories of history. They make do with keeping the rain from leaking through the roof. The Israelis aren’t interested in another war, which is exactly why they want to launch a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program. In response Iran’s terrorist proxies will do their part by shelling Israeli towns and villages, but that’s part of life. Not the good part, but the part about living in a region overrun by terrorist militias that anyone can sponsor for a dollar.

They are often stupid, but they are rarely stupid in the way that American and European leaders are stupid. Israel can’t afford its own version of Blair, Sarkozy or Obama. The closest thing to them, Shimon Peres, was quickly voted out despite wearing the cloak of martyrdom and has been relegated to a ceremonial office which allows him to explain his vision of the New Middle East dominated by nanotechnology and free trade zones to foreign visitors who are impressed by this visionary.

When Israel looks at Syria, it doesn’t see a potential gateway to regional progress, it sees a local civil war backed by its neighbors, which will result in instability and one side or the other gaining Syria as a pawn. It sees Assad’s weapons stockpiles ending up in the hands of terrorists, terrorists flocking to fight in the civil war, and it even sees Alawite refugees desperate enough to flee across the border. What it does not see is the glowing symbols of the Arab Spring.

And when it looks at Iran, it doesn’t see a rogue state, it just sees a bunch of fanatics about to get their hands on nuclear weapons. And time running out in which their efforts can be aborted or at least slowed down. It will do something about it not because it wants to change the region or advance human civilization, but because it knows the exact casualty count from a nuclear detonation over Tel Aviv.

Washington desperately doesn’t want anything interrupting its rush to war in Syria. Jerusalem has run out of patience and will go it alone in Iran. The consequences aren’t unpredictable and won’t be much fun. But that is also the difference between responsible and irresponsible leadership. Responsible leaders can take a hit now to avoid much worse consequences down the road. Irresponsible leaders take refuge in philosophy and chase after theories of history, rather than keeping the rain from leaking through the roof.