Update: From Instapundit
UPDATE: Question: Come a real confrontation with Obama — which seems possible — could the Israelis flip and ally with Putin? The Soviets backed the Israelis pre-1967, and right now Putin’s siding with Assad against the Islamists. Israel would be a game-changing ally for Russia in the Middle East, especially with all the traditional Arab powers looking shaky — not only in terms of military assets, but more significantly in terms of intelligence assets.
Interesting as a game changing gambit although unlikely. Not even Obama is that stupid.
Hamas has attacked Israel, first with the kidnapping of three teenagers, now with rockets aimed, for example, at Tel Aviv and its airport.
GAZA: Islamist Hamas’ armed wing has warned airlines that it intends to target Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport with its rockets from Gaza and has told them not to fly there, a statement by the group said Friday.
So far, Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system has been successful in intercepting those that are a risk to populated places.
Israel’s astonishingly effective Iron Dome air defense has prevented Hamas from killing Israeli Jews and spreading terror in the civilian population. Ironically, though, the better Iron Dome works, the less sympathy the rest of the world has for a nation that remains under rocket attack.
That sentiment is to be expected as even the Presbyterian Church is anti-Isreal.
David Goldman, who has been writing as “Spengler” for years, reports on the situation in Israel.
the thumbnail version is that Hamas is making a demonstration out of weakness. Money is tight, 44,000 Gaza civil servants haven’t been paid for weeks, and the IDF did significant damage to its infrastructure on the West Bank after the kidnapping-murder of the three yeshiva boys. Netanyahu will look indecisive and confused, because he has to deal with an openly hostile U.S. administration on one side and his nationalist camp on the other. Time, though, is on Israel’s side: economically, demographically, strategically. The proportion of Jewish births continues to soar. The fruits of a decade of venture capital investing are ripening into high-valuation companies. And the Arab world is disintegrating all around Israel’s borders.
Israel has been in mortal danger for 50 years. They have survived and thrived. The Arab countries are collapsing into chaos. Iran is still a threat but its demographic future is grim.
There will be no Intifada on the West Bank: the Palestinian Arabs are older, more resigned and less inclined to destroy their livelihoods than in 2000. Syria and Iraq continue to disintegrate, Lebanon is inundated with Syrian Sunni refugees (weakening Hezbollah’s relative position), and Jordan is looking to Israel to protect it against ISIS. Egypt is busy trying to survive economically.
Israel is becoming a huge economic success under Netanyahu. Just think of our future had we elected his friend, Mitt Romney.
Obama promised a “pivot to Asia” but Israel may in fact be the one doing the pivot, leaving us in the dreary Socialist past.
Richard Fernandez notes that in the view of the world press and elites being rich makes you “white.” Everybody knows that white people, even if they are Asian like John Derbyshire’s Eurasian children, are the root of all evil.
Israel is starting to increase its ties to China. China agrees.
Now the China-Israel relations are in the best-ever shape. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited China last May. Five important agreements were signed and consensus on many issues was reached between our leaders during his visit. The G2G (Government to Government) mechanism has been established and five task forces have been set up in the fields of high technology, environmental protection, energy, agriculture and financing, respectively.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Israel for friendship, cooperation and peace in December. The exchanges between the two countries now take place at the central governmental level, as well as at the provincial and municipal levels, and involve people from all walks of life.
If Obama finally gets to his “pivot point” he may find someone there before him. Israel and China have no issues dividing them, except possibly Iran.
The Chinese Dream will bring the world more opportunities, and will benefit Israel in many ways. It is projected that in the coming five years, China’s imports will reach some $10 trillion, its outbound investment $500b., and the number of its outbound tourists may well exceed 400 million annually, 50 times Israel’s total population.
China and Iran share a trade relationship in oil but Iran is not the technological economy that China needs and desires to share.
The foundations of the economic partnership between Iran and China are Iran’s abundant energy resources and China’s growing energy needs, but China is not overwhelmingly dependent on the Islamic Republic for its energy needs; in contrast, the Iranian regime now depends on China as its chief diplomatic protector.
Despite their energy cooperation, trade, and shared geopolitical interests, Iran and China have potentially divergent interests on a number of issues.
That may not be true of Israel. Spengler pointed this out some time ago.
Chinese, who with some justification regard their civilization as the world’s most ancient and, in the long run, most successful. The high regard that the Chinese have for Jews should be a source of pride to the latter. In fact, it is very pleasant indeed for a Jew to spend time in China. The sad history of Jew-hatred has left scars on every European nation, but it is entirely absent in the world’s largest country. On the contrary, to the extent that Chinese people know something of the Jews, their response to us is instinctively sympathetic.
“I am always surprised by the expressions of affection that the Chinese show for the Jews. Both cultures, the Chinese emphasize, share respect for family, learning and, yes, money,” wrote the journalist Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore last year. ‘”Most Chinese will think Jews are smart, clever or good at making money, and that they have achieved a great deal,’ Professor Xu Xin, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at Nanjing University (one of over half a dozen centers in China dedicated to studying Judaism) told me last week,”
The Chinese have been called “The Jews of the Orient” for many years and have experienced discrimination in Indonesia and Malaysia somewhat similar to the experiences of Jews living in hostile cultures.
From the first link: China and Israel have been rapidly developing their ties of late, with a flurry of high profile visits since Netanyahu’s trip to Beijing last May.
Much of the focus has been on trade and economic cooperation. China is Israel’s third-largest trading partner, and bilateral trade between the two countries was worth over $10 billion in 2013. Officials from both countries hope to keep the positive momentum going. China is particularly interested in advancing technological cooperation with Israel. In a sign of China’s priorities, Ambassador Gao describes Israel in her op-ed as “a happy and innovative startup nation with many cutting-edge technologies.” According to Chinese reports, Beijing is especially interested in cooperation in the fields of agriculture, natural resources, environmental protection, education, and healthcare.
The terrorists of Hamas are the remnants of a failed civilization and are in trouble both economically and militarily. The “Iron Dome” shows how foolish Obama’s actions were in canceling missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Iran is in even worse shape demographically.
Dying civilizations are the most dangerous, and Iran is dying. Its total fertility rate probably stands at just 1.6 children per female, the same level as Western Europe, a catastrophic decline from seven children per female in the early 1980s. Iran’s present youth bulge will turn into an elderly dependent problem worse than Europe’s in the next generation and the country will collapse. That is why war is likely, if not entirely inevitable.
The only weapon Iran has is a suicidal war against Israel.
Tags: Obama, Palestinians, terrorism