Sultan Knish
During a week in which half the Middle-East was in flames, the diplomatic chatter over a UN condemnation of Israel’s so-called “settlements” showed just how irrelevant Western diplomacy is to the real issues in the region. The riots in Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iran were not about a few Jewish villages on one side of a line on a map that has been redrawn half a dozen times in the 20th century. The trouble with the Muslim world does not lie in the vineyards of the Judean Hills, the glass factories of Ariel, the academies of the revived Maccabean town of Modi’in Illit, the solar panel plants of Nazareth Illit, the dairies of Carmel or the fruit orchards of Gush Etzion.
Ever since ten Arab nations lost a war to Israel over six days in the spring of 1967, too many diplomats have acted as if it were its responsibility to fix the Muslim world. In 1973, Israel was set up to lose a war in order to bolster Muslim self-esteem. But Israel still won and while its people buried more of their dead this time around, Muslim self-esteem did not noticeably improve. In the early 90’s, Israel was pressured into providing an autonomous territory for Islamo-Marxist thugs who had been trained and equipped by its neighbors to carry out terrorist attacks on its citizens. And year after year, for almost two decades, Israel has been held responsible for all the problems in the region because it has been unable to achieve a lasting peace with the terrorists.
Only a few weeks before the rioting started, American diplomats and journalists were being told by Arab leaders that a solution to the Palestinian problem would stabilize the region. It would be interesting to go out into the streets of Cairo, Manama, Tripoli and Tunis to find out how many of the rioters would be willing to go home if there were a Palestinian state tomorrow. The answer would be none. Palestine has never been anything but a myth used as a channel for Muslim anger. Like Al-Andalus or the Mu-Pan-Li myth, (which Muslims use to claim that they were the first discoverers of America), Palestine feeds the Muslim ego and its sense of victimization. And like all xenophobic myths, its emotional teeth cannot be pulled by any amount of appeasement or concessions.
The reason Western intelligence didn’t see this coming, and Israeli intelligence did, is that the West was successfully gulled and deceived by Arab leaders who insisted that the only real source of regional instability was Israel. And now even when half a dozen cities are burning, Western diplomats wrangle over a few Israeli towns and villages as if they were the real threat to peace. European leaders like Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron may be proclaiming the failure of multiculturalism, but they are still unable to stop pandering to it anyway.
When New Zealand’s Clarke government wanted to sell some sheep to the Muslim world, Wikileaks reveals that it staged a crisis with Israel. Such second-hand bigotry has since become commonplace as nations already drowning in violent Muslim immigrants, queue up to inveigh against the peach tree orchards, olive groves and wineries of Israel’s native inhabitants. But European leaders aren’t selling sheep to the Saudis, they are selling themselves. The ancient cities of Europe have their own settlement problems. And it is not too difficult to foresee an age when London, Paris, Berlin and Rome are as Muslim as the former Constantinople.
Ceding towns and cities to the Islam has not worked out for Israel or for Europe. And while many Americans may not be aware of the Little Mogadishus and the Dearbornistans in their own country, the fruited plain and the purple mountain majesties set from sea to shining sea, are bringing forth mosques and terrorists out of the ground like thorns. The secular republicanism of France has faltered in the face of millions of angry Algerians and Moroccans. And Albion’s bid for a multicultural New Britain has been overwhelmed by Pakistanis and Egyptians. Germany grits its teeth at the Turks and it is not the cold that sends shivers up Sweden’s spine.
Israel is a convenient whipping boy for European leaders who know this can’t go on, but also believe that it must. Their assents to denunciations of Israel by such solid UN citizens as Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are acts of moral cowardice by men and women who would rather collaborate than lead. It is easier to condemn the settlements of Israel, than the settlements of Europe. Barking about the Jews of Judea and Samaria requires no courage, standing up to the Muslims of Birmingham, Goutte-d’Or or Essen does. Jews may write angry letters to newspapers, but Muslims lop off the heads of newspaper cartoonists.
And what goes for the millions of Muslims scattered across Europe, goes double for the billion or so Muslims of the globe. Western leaders have no clue what to do about the rush of events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. But they still know how to push the automatic ‘condemn’ button when it comes to Israel. These events have shown the impotence of the post-colonial Western order when it comes to dealing with the Muslim world. And faced with that impotence, the gaggle of politicians, diplomats, foreign policy experts and journalists who in a space of a month have proven that they know less about the region than any child, revert to the known. To the proven and failed methods that are safe, because they are useless.
As the Camp David accords, the original treaty that paved the way for all the others, is being disowned by Egypt’s liberals, the push for a settlement goes on. A settlement with Mahmoud Abbas, who refuses to stand for elections, gets most of his money from America and is about as popular as Mubarak was in Egypt. That Abbas looks exactly like all the tyrants who are being overthrown across the region has yet to come up, because it’s another of those inconvenient observations. The last time Condoleezza Rice pushed for democracy, Abbas nearly lost his head to Hamas. No one will be making that mistake this time. Instead Israel is expected to turn over half its capital and large portions of its country to a flimsy dictator who remains in power only by the grace of American assault rifles and an Israeli blockade of Gaza.
With the Egyptian peace treaty going down in flames, Israeli leaders would have to be out of their minds to stake half their country on a deal with Abbas, an unpopular terrorist group’s office boy. Signing an agreement with an Arab leader is like buying stock in a bankrupt company. And Abbas’ stock is that of a telegraph company after the invention of the telephone. The only thing left to do is lay down the law, but a leader with the brass to do that is as hard to find in Israel, as in Europe. They exist, but are invariably treated as dangerous warmongering pariahs on every continent, when the real dangerous warmongers can be found shouting the Koran from the floor of every mosque.
For America and Europe, the settlement comes down to the settlements. A term that has been defined so far down that Jerusalem, one of the oldest cities on earth, is now being called a settlement. Turn them over to the terrorists and there will be peace, the diplomats and the pundits pant. But is there actually a way to settle this?
Israel could sign yet another agreement with the terrorists. But which terrorists. Like a Sheikh in a preschool, there are too many to choose from. There is Abbas, who might be willing to negotiate and sign an agreement, but won’t abide by it. Then there’s Hamas, who run Gaza and will eventually run the rest of the Palestinian Authority, but the only agreement they’re willing to sign is a temporary truce. Islamic Jihad won’t even go that far. Jaysh al-Islam, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Israel, has condemned Hamas as a bunch of Zionists for offering a temporary truce. Instead it’s bombing coffee shops in Hamas run Gaza, because all the other terrorist groups have cornered the local market on everything else.
The pundits assured us a month ago that if Israel signs a deal with Abbas, it will stabilize the region. Now that the region is burning, they tell us that if Israel doesn’t sign a deal with Abbas, he will be overthrown by Hamas. And then if Israel doesn’t sign a deal with Hamas, it will be overthrown by Al-Qaeda, and then if Israel doesn’t sign a deal with Al-Qaeda– that is proof positive that Israel doesn’t want peace. Somehow the burden is never on the alphabet soup of Muslim terrorist groups to reach an agreement, but on the civilized nations who must somehow find a way to accommodate them– instead of shipping the whole bunch back to Egypt, Jordan and Syria marked, ‘Return to Sender’.
Israel can dig up Hitler’s corpse, wrap a turban around his skull and sign an agreement with him, and it still won’t make a bit of difference. Land for peace is as dead as Goebbels and twice as useful. So is blaming Israel for the New Brownshirts and Blackbeards striding around Berlin, London and Paris as if they own the place. Bashing the Jewish state may sell sheep to the Saudis, but it won’t make the 16 million Muslims of Europe sit up and Baa. Instead the Muslims are the ones holding the shears.
The Muslim world’s problem is not in the vineyards of the Judean Hillside, but in the demons fluttering around their own skulls. The Arab Street is angry, but it’s been angry even before it had actual streets. Perpetual anger is not righteous, it’s just plain mental. People who are angry all the time are not in the right, they are out of their minds. For too long the Arab Muslim world has solved all of its problems by blaming them on someone else. This hasn’t resolved a single problem, but it has led to most of the wars fought over the last 50 years.
Now quite a few of them have decided to pile together all their social dysfunction and cultural malaise into one heap and call it a Caliphate. Women will know their place, so will Jews and Christians and anyone else who doesn’t lift his arse high to heaven five times a day. That will fix the Muslim world, about as well as Nazism fixed Germany and Communism fixed Russia, but as usual it will get a lot of people killed. It already has from Russia to Israel to America to Afghanistan to Iraq, to less likely places like Thailand, the Philippines and Nigeria. And it won’t stop there. Because for all the talk of settlements, there isn’t enough wine in the Judean Hills to put a stop to all this– even if someone could talk the Muslim world into drinking it.
Chenkin. You made your case extremely well. I tend to agree with your thoughts.
Yamit . You lost it with your one unacceptable characterization of Bland. I deleted it.
Mazel Tov, this is the best written explanation of the crisis facing Israel. The author nailed it. I side with Shmuel on the context outlining, not only our huge problem but how to solve it. As I look at this crisis, I can only deduce that total separation of Jews and Muslims by the military will work. Israel can only achieve a nominal peace by deporting the Arabs from Judea and Samaria, by force if necessary which I presume will be. War is inevitable between Hizbollah and Hamas and this time, hopefully, no time limit will be enforced. If this is not done, I believe that Israel could go down in flames. Syria has been shown today as building another Nuclear facility so Israel can’t wait. Netanyahu, please look at this as Israelis did in 1967 and destroy them before they destroy us.
continued,
Netanyahu.
Perhaps he is crafty. Perhaps he is weak. Perhaps he is being blackmailed for personal issues. Perhaps he sees his own nation divided and delusional. Perhaps he sees Diaspora Jewry equally weak and confused. Perhaps he sees IsraPundit commentators spending much of their effort scoring points against each other and not against the enemies of Israel. I was adamantly opposed to the surrender of Gaza and made a very substantial but failed effort to convince observant American Jews to oppose the surrender of Gaza. In retrospect I must wonder was Sharon simply smarter than us. Did he understand that Israel needed to sacrifice Gaza, and get the missiles, Hamas and Al-Queda, in order to save Yehuda and Shomron, and thus all of Israel’s security. What I can say with certainty is that after Israel abandoned Gaza, we got missiles, Hamas and Al-Queda, and so our obligation is not to speculate on Sharon’s motives yesterday or Netanyahu’s today, but to use the surrender of Gaza to show the existential danger of surrendering Yehuda and Shomron.
Defensible Borders.
Israel’s long-term security has been rotted away by a generation of the total drivel of land for peace. All who are concerned about Israel’s wellbeing most focus on Israel being able to maintain defensible borders. Carving an Arab state out of the physical and strategic heartland of Israel negates Israel’s right to defensible borders. Importantly, defensible borders are a military concept, not a political one. Put simply the criterion for defensible borders is what guns can they protect against, not whether the holders of those guns will use them or not, which is a political issue. In other words, land for peace does not create secure borders (and few on this website would believe an Arab state carved out Israel would be peaceable over the long-term anyway), because, again, the question is the objective defensibleness of the border, not the good will or lack thereof of the people on the other side.
Oil.
Oil funds the war against Israel in terms of both military hardware and political influence. Oil is also bleeding the American economy dry (along with imports of manufactured goods). Americans on this site, for the sake of both the USA and Israel, need to be supporting policies and programs to get America off its oil addiction. This is both technologically and commercially feasible now with reasonable subsidies. Anyone who has followed the cost curves of wind turbines and now solar cells knows that costs are a fraction of what they were twenty and thirty years ago. The technological and commercial progress that brought this about occurred because of a steady flow of small improvements and achievements of economies of scale, caused by the active development of markets for these products. The next frontiers for this type of progress are batteries (and perhaps cellulosic biofuels). What it takes to make this happen is political will. Furthermore, while it is debatable how much the US needs alternative sources of electric power, the US desperately needs to get off of imported oil. The market roiling chaos in the oil producing areas of the middle east make now an opportune time to forcibly bring these points up.
Debate.
There are many interesting personalities on this site with the inevitable intramural scrambling. However, we need to recognize and act upon the fact that Israel’s security has been hurt by the events over the last few weeks and that is on top of the challenges posed by the changes in Turkey, Lebanon and Gaza. I have proposed two areas to focus on: defensible borders to start to undue the damage of twenty years of false debate over land for peace. and oil, to change our physical reality and stop funding the Arab war against Israel.
No need for vituperation between folks who when it comes down to basics want the same thing. My own opinion about Obama is that he means well, but he has risen above his level of competency. Much of the anger about him is racist, but by no means all of it.
Well written article!
But, in order to defeat our enemies we must set our own goal, develop plan of action and execute it. Any goal is achievable!
Our enemies love when we waist our time and resources on rebuttal of their stupid accusations and anti-Israel smear campaigns, and not on pursuit of our national goal.
Hazborah (Zionist propaganda) is important, but it leads nowhere without action toward reunification of all Jewish land, freeing it from Arab occupation and establishing of Eretz-Israel!
Unfortunately we have corrupt and inept current Jewish political leadership in Israel and Diaspora! Therefore, at the moment, only the network of people dedicated to true Zionist ideals can make a difference.
The goal is much bigger than just promoting support for Israel. There is another two-states solution, which may bring peace to Israel. It is the Sinai Option!
Please, visit and read:
http://www.shamrak.com/hauma.php
http://www.shamrak.com/sh_articles/EA_The Jewish National Goal.htm
http://www.shamrak.com/sh_articles/EA_Sinai Option.htm
Regards
Steven Shamrak
http://www.shamrak.com
BlandOatmeal says:
I do not allow you the right to define for me or anyone else what is legitimate criticism and what is illegitimate (Bashing). That I think Calvin Coolidge was the best American President and believe I can back it up does not preclude you and millions of others to believe differently. In democracies that’s what we do ,we criticize. Woe to us if we were to take positions of our “leaders right or wrong”!
Contrary to what you deny I believe you are Bashing the Black Guy, and the Clinton’s as well as President Carter. How dare you criticize me for criticizing BB or any of our leaders. I live here and they are MY leaders not yours and what they do or don’t effects me, and it could be life and death and not mundane issues of taxes and health care issues as important as they are to some Americans and no Israelis.
If you have paid attention I generally don’t enter into debates on internal American issues that don’t effect Israel. I could care less, just like many internal issues here are complex and effect us and not you. You manage to voice opinions on just about everything about Israel and Jews with the barest of knowledge and understanding which render your opinionated conclusions to the level of: “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing”. More often than not your opinions are predicated on only partial facts and or wrong understanding of them that render your conclusions invariably faulty, inaccurate and usually wrong.
Stick to what you know, whatever that is?
Excellent article.
I do not always agree with Blandoatmeal but on this one he is quite accurate.
It is obvious that Soetoro Obama is totally incompetent and evil as well.
His incredibly plain acts of vicios nature delivering Lebanon and Egypt to imminent estreme islam are not circumstantial. Neither is him abandoning the Iranian people or the Libyan.
Those acts follow an evil plan to establish a lock on Israel. We are aware and prepared and if the US administration standing in the region is past disastrous now, it will be even wose later on.
Yamit, you said,
I don’t believe I am bashing my leader. About the worst I have done concerning Obama, is to refer to him as “B.O.” — which, of course, are my own initials as well. I haven’t called him a monkey and suchlike, as some have. I respect him as my President, and appreciate the difficulty of his job. That said, he is
(1) unqualified for the job he holds
(2) either a rank amateur, or, more likely, a man with an evil agenda in both foreign and domestic policies…
All right. He’s just evil. He has no redeeming qualities I can think of, though that might hold for most of us. That’s the truth, as I see it: It’s not “bashing”. If you want to compare what I’ve said about him with what, for instance, you have said about Israel’s leaders, let me put it this way:
1. George Washington was a great leader, uniquely chosen by God to be the first President of the US.
DITTO for Chaim Wiezman and David Ben Gurion.
2. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were uniquely chosen by God to lead my country through perillous times.
DITTO for Levi Eshko and Golda Meir
3. Nobel laureate Barack Obama has been the most disastrous President this country has ever seen, followed by Jimmy Carter.
DITTO for Nobel laureate Yitzchak Rabin, followed by Ariel Sharon.
If your own appraisal of your leaders and mine is even half as generous, then you may dare to accuse me of “bashing”. I have not seen such generosity, but instead have seen nothing but criticism by you of ALL the Prime Ministers Israel has ever had. In effect, you have made a habit of speaking against the ruler of your people simply because they have been the rulers of your people. As a Jew, maybe this is considered a virtue. In my culture, this is called a personality defect.
Does bashing your leaders qualify you as anti-American? Your logic, not mine!
Very well written, Knish. I have never seen these issues explained more succinctly. Now, all we need is a solution. For Israel’s part, I would say the best solution would be to deal with the madness of the world around them the best that they can, and to get its own house in order.
You are correct, in saying (in effect) that the West is mired in deep doo doo. I expect to see a Western version of the madness in the Arab world, in only a few years — say, at best, seven. President Obama is currently trying to fan the flames of a revolt in Wisconsin, because his personal position is getting desperate. As for the Moslem threat to America, I live in Oregon, truly a land of purple mountains’ majesty, amber waves of grain and oceans white with foam; and also the home of a mad Somali student from Coravllis who tried to kill hundreds of innocent people at a tree-lighting ceremony in Portland. We certainly have our own problems to attend to, without trying to micro-manage Israel.