A Reply to Critics of US Policy Toward Israel

What is all this talk about America’s goals or Western goals being different than Israel’s? To state the problem is to belie the real issue. Israel’s goal is to live in peace. It is in a fight for its life. It cannot and should not have to temporarily or permanently exist with one-third of its people living in bomb shelters, afraid of the next deadly shower of rockets. It is the only democracy in the region. It is a natural ally, if only to keep an eye on the autocracies that abound in the region. I chuckled when I heard Sen. Chuck Hagel bleat on about the “hatred” being ground into the fabric of the Middle East. Newsflash for Sen. Hagel and everybody else (especially the news writers at NBC): Hatred is ALREADY a major part of the social fabric of the Arab-Islamofascists. Doesn’t a Senator in the US Congress know THIS? It is those Islamofascists that our so-called “allies” are rushing to help or who are in a rush to criticize the US from helping Israel, even if that help comes in the form of leaving Israel to do what must be done. These so-called “allies” of ours in the US would prevent Israel from defending itself from the 6 year shower of rockets it has put up with despite a clearly worded and just as clearly ignored UN Resolution (1559) which required Hezbollah to disarm. Now, in typically hypocritical UN fashion, Israel is being excoriated in the harshest tones for fighting against the exact result of the UN’s neglect in enforcing its own resolution – a Hezbollah militia that has been supplied with rockets, missiles, guns and other weapons by Iran and Syria. This excoriation comes both from the Arab world as well as the Western world and is difficult to explain in terms that do not get back to the fear of Jews, and especially Jews with guns. Of course, the US is in the same position, since it remains, thankfully, Israel’s only consistent, true friend in the world. As much as I have written chastising President Bush on a host of other issues, I do not think that a Democrat President (e.g. John Kerry) would have had the moral clarity and strength that President Bush has shown with respect to Israel. They would have been too concerned for the same popular opinion that apparently the "W" isn't caring terribly much about for now. For that I am truly grateful. Popular opinion cannot be given precedence over policy decisions that are fundamentally and morally right.

Hezbollah exists not to build a state or to build an economy. Yes, it has social service function, but this is clearly secondary to its prime goal of ridding “Greater Arabia” of Jews -- to wipe out Israel and its inhabitants. Its brand of Islamofascism exalts the value of death, and masses of those who are dispossessed by their own governments look to a wretched form of radical, violent Islam to overcome the hopelessness they have come to know only too well in order to feel fulfilled. That fulfillment is sought by carrying out acts of terrorist violence against all that most people in America and in Western societies cherish. It is in the ideology of this radical, violent and Islamism that too many find not only the opportunity but the mandate to violently strike back at those who they feel have, by their very existence, crossed them ideologically or religiously, whether those arguments are real or are the result of feelings dragged up by the likes of Sheiks Nasrallah, Zwahiri and Bin-Laden, from the 8th Century. In its essence, it is merely the very existence of Jews and Israel that gives these emotionally, intellectually bankrupt killers all the manpower they can use to try to terrorize Israel and Jewry into fleeing from the land of Israel. Certainly the masses of disaffected Arabs cannot strike back against their own governments which ultimately are the root causes of their real dispossession. It is those governments which have traditionally kept them in a permanent state of dispossession and hopelessness exactly so that they will foment rage against Israel. Alas Israel has not gone away, and that rage is being directed at the governments themselves in the form of armed militia and organized if unofficial opposition parties none of which, short of a revolution, stand the slightest chance of advancing politically or economically. The mostly authoritarian (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia) or fascist (Syria) regimes would shoot them before they ever had the chance to contest the legitimacy of the governments they find themselves under that keep their mainly poor, illiterate populous permanently under foot. These governments have an interest in keeping these masses under control and themselves in power. And the only way that they can do this is to condone the virulent anti-Israeli anger and to otherwise misdirect their rage onto a third party – Israel.

It seems that the media and our Western Allies admire the concepts of liberty, freedom and democratic government but not when it is Jews who are on the front lines fighting for those things. The world is, I suppose, more accustomed to seeing Jews brandishing legal pads and stethoscopes than it is to seeing them in Merkava tanks and automatic rifles and clearly and loudly resents Jewry for it. Does the world somehow feel emasculated when it is Jews that are doing the fighting? Is the fact that Jews are standing up for everyone in the fight against Hezbollah somehow less valid than if it were the US or Britain doing the fighting? Apparently so, since no one seems to particularly admire Hezbollah or Iran these days. But far be it for some in our society to take a stand that is the same as the Jews’, even though not to do so now is essentially asking to be put to death by the Hezbollah, Iran or Al Qaeda. A prequel of what is in the offing is being played out in Iraq, where Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other at a record pace. But it is Westerners who have their heads chopped off. Remember Daniel Pearl? Nic Berg? Despite these warnings, there are some people in government, media and elsewhere who would just as soon postpone a fight where good and evil are present and distinguishable and to side with Jews. They would be happy to watch Israel drop its weapons, walk back across the international border with Lebanon and wait for the next barrage of rockets. Those are the same people who would be glad to see Israel collectively walk back into (this time) Arab Concentration Camps. Or if not glad content to do nothing as doing nothing is a trademark role that the US is quite good at of late when faced with tough decisions that call for doing the right thing even when a future election might hang in the balance. (Or if not doing nothing, doing things for the wrong reasons – e.g., Iraq) We have only to look at the world’s stomach to sit by and watch as other genocides have taken place excluding the Shoah: What did the world do in Cambodia? What did the world do in Bosnia? What did the world do in Rwanda? Nothing. Public opinion was against it.

Israel, believe me, will not leave its fate up to the likes of the Israel-hating UN or the wishes of the Anti-Zionist lobby or media, or for that matter, world public opinion. It will fight. And it will fight hard. Nobody else will. Thankfully, America is standing with Israel regardless of what the opinion of the world is. Frankly, world opinion used to mean something to me. It doesn’t any more.