Thoughts on the Future of Israel and the Middle East

Dear Readers:

In my limited interaction with Israelis, I can tell you that the bombings, rockets, and other sorts of terrorist attacks have already, in large measure, already succeeded, according to an article I read yesterday. Though the reasons for it are certainly not stated so (with the exception of the ability to earn more money), it indicated that >40% of all PhDs from Israeli universities are now elsewhere, mainly in the US and Canada, despite the fact that Israel’s seven major universities more students than they can handle. In Los Angeles, 100 miles up the road, there is a huge Israeli population in excess of 40,000, complete with a Hebrew newspaper. When I asked an Israeli friend of mine why he moved to LA, he stated to me quite unequivocally that they didn't want to live in an atmosphere where even those engaged in innocent activities (e.g., parking your car) are subject to the potential of getting killed.

As far as I can see, there are only a few choices for Israel and none of them is without cost in blood and treasure, and none of them is particularly attractive nor guaranteed to work given the religious fervor with which its present day enemies (e.g, Hezb'Allah) is operating under. To my mind, Israel must somehow re-energize itself existentially, away from the notion that it can live in peace with people who live only to hate and die, unlike themselves and us, people who live to love (with some notable exceptions, of course...)

They are not unlike the Japanese under the militarists who encouraged martyrdom for the emperor. I have read quite a lot of personal accounts of battles in the jungles of the South Pacific by US Marines and remember a conversation I had with my hard-drinking ex-Marine Sgt. and great-uncle Jack Diamond. At first, they were scared to death of the "banzai charges". But after awhile, they took the attitude that if they wanted to die so much, then they had an obligation to themselves and their country to assist them in that regard.

Japan was, after the dropping of the second atomic bomb, able to be pacified because of only two things: 1) the possibility that a third (nonexistent) atomic bomb would be dropped on them and 2) the feeling on the part of the Japanese populace that their leaders had been instrumental in the devastation wreaked on them by the US Army Air Corps, which bombed Japan until they ran out of targets.

Islamic radicals continue to cause Israel and its civilians harm. The intentional targeting of civilians is by any measure, a crime. These animals only understand the voices that come out of gun-barrels and from under the wings of F/A 18s and the like and unfortunately are sometimes even tone deaf to those measures. Do you suppose there is a reason why Hamas put their headquarters smack-dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood? Because they expect retaliation from Israel and want Israel to (albeit inadvertently -- on Israel's part) to cause as much "collateral damage" as possible.

It must get into the minds of the Arab/Muslim general public that their so-called leadership are nothing but cowards and criminals. They have to understand that they are being used as bait by their so-called leaders for their own ends.

My basic faith in the goodness of human nature, naïve as that may be, tells me that the bulk of the so-called "Arab street" has to be made up of people who just want reasonably normal lives where they can get up in the morning and go about their business to improve themselves and their lot, something that their leadership (and the rest of the Arab world) has cynically and purposefully prevented in order to keep the Palestinian refugee crisis alive and "in play" for 60 years as if they were pawns in a game of chess.

Until they are empowered with the gut-level understanding and the ability to actually live their lives free of violence, of at least all of the foregoing, I am afraid that the choices that Israel faces are in part quite similar to those that the US government faced against the Japanese in the 40s: 1) a bunch of little wars (e.g., aid to Britain to protect her empire) vs. periodic incursions into hostile territory to quell particular outrages and criminal acts such as those that have been visited on Sderot and now Ashkelon and 2) a war that devastates whole cities and towns until the people in them (those that are left) wake up and see that their leaders' (and their own, I am sure in many cases) idea that Islam is destined to and must rule the world is, like the belief in the invincibility of the Showa Empire, doomed to failure. Perhaps, like a drug addict, they will have to "bottom out" before they seek treatment. Until then, they will do anything for a "score".

I have not commented on the powerful role that the media play in this complicated and tragic calculus, especially post 1995 or so with the advent and the penetration of the Internet where so much trash is instantly disseminated and believed (I spoke with a Jewish friend of mine in France about the US elections on Thursday, and she believed the canard that Barack Obama was a Muslim) and public focus is guided by a 24-hour news cycle. To the extent that Obama's message is resonating so loudly here in the US, it is because he is trying to empower people simply to do the right thing; to look inside themselves (us) and understand what is right. This is the reason why he could get up in front of Black leadership at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (former home to Martin Luther King Jr.) and tell them that the anti-Semitism in the Black community has got to stop. He reminded them that it was Jews who were by their side in the South in the early 60s. He was, from accounts that I have read, met with icy silence; he did not care. Sometimes people have to hear what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear. This is a man running for high office who seemingly has an idea of what personal integrity is, though I am sure that by the time the elections are over, that will come into question in some way.

The media have a different agenda: to sell airtime, a goal which is oft-times in complete contradiction to their so-called "journalistic integrity". The more controversy they can generate, the more space they can sell. They don't, as readers know, only "report" the news; they are opinion-makers. People have an obligation to inform themselves and to act accordingly. To the extent that they do not, the problems that ensue are entirely their own fault. And inasmuch as the media do not have Israel's existence at heart, Israel must do what she must do in order to ensure that their existence is not forever chipped away at by criminals who have commandeered the minds and lives of their followers, who, if they do not soon realize that their leaders are leading them to a place they do not want to go, will receive exactly what my great-Uncle Jack gave to the banzai warriors with his Thompson sub-machine gun on Guadalcanal: a one-way ticket to what they call "paradise". Threats and criminal acts against Israel and the diseases of anti-Semitism and radical Islam which support them should be losing propositions. I am sure that Israeli leadership understands this far better than I.