There is a cottage industry in America devoted to pressing for greater "balance" in American policy in the Middle East. In this view, American interests in the Middle East have become subservient to Jewish interests as promulgated by a Jewish lobby which has too much influence in Washington. A more balanced approach almost always means increased pressure on Israel to offer accommodations to the Palestinians. Those of us who support Israel worry that such pressure, as it has repeatedly in the past, will increase the dangers to Israel and to Jews and will never lead to peace. This conviction is based on history and a view of the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim dynamics in regard to Israel. Well meaning (and many not so well meaning) proponents of "balance" simply elide the point that for Israel's Arab neighbors, there can be no accommodation with the state of Israel. For the Arab street, since the establishment of the state of Israel, there has never been a moment when the fact of a Jewish state on Arab soil has been tolerable. This will not change merely because well intended Westerners, who do not understand how the Arab culture works, imagine that all disputes can be resolved if only men of good will sit down and parley with each other.
Rob, at Arabic Media Shack, wrote an interesting article yesterday in which he argues that al Qaeda, ie Salafi radicals, are preparing to make the Levant the next front in their war. Al Qaeda has lost its primacy among Arabs because they have failed to defeat the United States in Iraq while Hezbollah is on the ascendant because of tis success against Israel. For various reasons, especially having to do with regaining Honor, Hezbollah is now the leaders of Resistance.
Salafis in the Levant: Preparing for the Coming Challenge
Overwhelming evidence suggests that the Levant is the next big battleground. Anyone who can should watch this 2006 Al-Jazeera documentary on “Al-Qaeda in the Levant” which makes a compelling case that the Levant is the movement’s next target. For those who don’t know Arabic you can read about it in English here. The Rumman article talks about how the Syrians encouraged, even recruited people to go to fight in Iraq. Interestingly, in the Al-Jazeera documentary, the Syrian Minister of Culture claimed that Syria can’t control its borders, comparing them to the US-Mexican border which even the US can’t control.
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The Party of God is a natural ally of the US against the Sunni Jihadists who argue that HB is actually “allied” with the US and Israel. As long as Hezbollah is strong, AQ can’t get at Israel. Note one comment from the Rosen article:
Like many salafis I have met, Saadi was openly envious of Hezbollah’s confrontation with Israel but contemptuous of its failure to fight beyond Lebanon’s borders. “Hizbollah protects the Jewish border with orders from the Syrian regime,” he said. The goal of Hizbollah’s “takeover” of Beirut was to weaken Sunnis in the Arab world, he argued.
From both an American and Israeli perspective a strong Hezbollah is a good thing. Abu Muqawama recently argued that Israel’s threats to destroy Lebanon if attacked (aka deterrence theory) might not be such a bad plan if that's what it takes to freeze the (non-violent) status-quo. I agree and do think HB is satisfied with the non-violent status-quo. Therefore, a strong Hezbollah is a good thing. The US only has one enemy here, the Salafis, so for us, a strong Hezbollah is a good thing. Israel, however, has two enemies, but if the first (Hezbollah) can be threatened into maintaining the status quo, than Israel also wants a strong Hezbollah. Some readers are probably thinking WTF are you talking about? Israel wants a strong Hezbollah? Yes, because if the Party of God’s military capabilities were to collapse, then Israel will be faced with an even more fanatical enemy who is literally dying to “get some.” Unlike Hezbollah who has to balance their desire to fight with other domestic political considerations, the Salafis answer to no one but God. They don’t care if half of Lebanon gets destroyed in the process because those people are all infidels anyway in the Salafi mindset. So if these guys get in a position to fight Israel, it would be a very very bad thing for the Jewish state. That’s why Israel wants a strong Hezbollah.
To Rob's way of thinking, Hezbollah is deterrable and therefore can be dealt with through negotiations. The only problem with this thinking is that Iran is making rapid progress on obtaining a nuclear capacity and an Iranian nuclear weapon would be extremely destabilizing to a regime based on mutual deterrence, especially when one party includes as a basic tenet the destruction of the other party. This also misses an essential point about the animus felt throughout the Arab world toward Israel. Anti-Semitism is not just like any other prejudice. All but the most extreme racists do not believe that their agenda requires exterminating lesser races. Anti-Semitism, of the genocidal kind that finds daily expression int he media of the Arab world, requires that the Jew be at the center of every evil and that only by destroying Israel and killing the Jews can Utopia be attained.
In Pity the Poor Anti-Semite, I described the self-destructive core at the center of anti-Semitism:
Here is the crucial point for those who imagine that a tiny group of people, barely 60 years out of an almost successful genocide, left with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, comprising approximately .05% of the world's population, who came to the desert in Palestine and built a modern technological nation, would have the time and interest to simultaneously devote themselves to oppressing the Muslim world, with almost 100 times their population and oceans of oil:
The anti-Semite necessarily defines himself as monumentally inferior to the Jew.
This resides in the core of the anti-Semite and renders him permanently damaged and weakened. Only the aid of a being much greater than themselves, Allah, can save them from disaster. Short of such divine intervention, they are doomed to remain defeated. The Muslim nations of the world do not see it as within their abilities to compete in a world of high technology, higher education, competitive open economies; no, they look to nuclear weapons, only available to them by virtue of their Allah given oil money rather than by the sweat of their own brows, to bring them relief from the often imagined depredations of the now conflated Jewish/American demi-Gods.
For those who have the hubris to attempt to destroy the Gods, there are only two outcomes possible:
If they partially succeed, as the Nazis did, they imagine they have become Gods, intoxicated with their power; and, as with all who pretend to be Gods, they over-reach themselves and are inevitably destroyed. Only those with the egotism of the Malignant Narcissist would dare attack England, invade Russia, and antagonize the sleeping American giant, at the same time.
Should they attempt to destroy the Jewish American God-beings and fail, they will surely be destroyed themselves. The most recent example of such spectacular self-destructive failure is Osama bin Laden, who though perhaps still alive, is frightened and in hiding; while he may perhaps be able to prick the God, he is no more able to slay Israel or America than the fly can kill the eagle.
The psychosis of anti-Semitism destroys the ability of the sufferer to reason. Consider how this works, even in countries that are at peace with Israel:
The Region: Why the Middle East is sick
We now have the perfect metaphor for the Middle East's political situation. In Egypt, a little boy with cystic fibrosis badly needs a certain medicine. Unfortunately for him, that drug is only produced in Israel, and Egypt's health ministry won't let it be imported.
Unless one understands how this story typifies the region, it's impossible to understand the Middle East.
Let's remember that Egypt has been at peace with Israel for over 30 years, and that, nevertheless, its government still does much to boycott, not to mention demonize, the Jewish state. By constantly pursuing a hate-Israel campaign, it stokes an atmosphere of hatred and extremism which also gives ammunition to the Muslim Brotherhood that seeks to turn Egypt into a war-oriented, totalitarian Islamist state.
So tightly controlled is the Egyptian media, so extraordinary the Israelphobia, that the English-language Cairo paper Al-Ahram was considered courageous even to mention the sick boy's family's effort to obtain the Israeli-invented medicine.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian wrote recently: "Admission into [a] state-run hospital is likely to cost one his life." This came shortly after a scandal involving a top ruling-party politician who was discovered selling tainted transfusion blood.
Arab countries cannot develop medicines and hi-tech advances precisely because they are too busy using up the resources for battles against various fantasy enemies of Allah.
Barry Rubin describes how an Egyptian child will die because of the Jew hatred that is so prominent a feature of Arab life. As noted Jihadis and scholars of Islam proudly proclaim, "We love death and you love life." But this only explains how anti-Semitism destroys its carriers. What does that have to do with "Why Israel Matters" to the West?
Disowned secrets and amoral behavior always persist in the unconscious. A horrid crime remains an active cancer in the mind as long as it is disowned and denied. Europe is the exemplar. Europe stood by or shared complicity in the destruction of European Jewry. All guilt was assigned to the Germans and even there, was limited to the small group of Nazis who carried out the final solution. Yet by so designating such a small group (which became smaller and smaller retrospectively as time passed) the guilt of those who shared complicity by sins both of commission and omission has been buried deep in the collective unconscious. I cannot prove that Europe's demographic suicide is a partial result, yet when a great stain resides within the soul it colors all perceptions. The slow "soul murder" of genocide and Jew hatred smolders in the heart of Europe.
Israel matters primarily because it is a strategic asset in one of the most important parts of the planet. But beyond that, Israel matters because a world that will tolerate and engage in covert complicity with the Jew haters is a world that is descending onto a self-destructive path. Every year at the Passover Seder, Jews are reminded that "in every generation they will arise against us"; yet after more than 5000 years, the list of those who tried to destroy the Jews is a long one and the Jews are still here. Aligning oneself, even with the best of intentions of fairness and balance, alongside those who are diseased with the virus of anti-Semitism is dangerous and self destructive.
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