UPDATE: We are staring to see some frank talk about Turkey’s role in the crisis. Turkey has turned away from us and should no longer be considered an ally. That includes the F 35 fighter we have agreed to sell to them. We might as well sell them to Iran, at this point.
I have previously posted on the Cordesman paper about a possible Iran-Israel nuclear exchange. He estimates that Iran would lose with 28 million dead and “the end of Iran as an organized society.” While that would deter a rational state, Iran is not a rational state.
The recent raid on a ship carrying cargo and militant Islamists to Gaza has brought world wide opprobrium on Israel although that was to be expected. The UN, as expected, postured and pontificated. Obama produced vague generalities that are faintly anti-Israel. The American left has become progressively (no pun intended) more hostile to Israel. A former ambassador attacks them for “alienating” supporters, as if defending oneself would alienate a true supporter.
In less than six months, under its truncated Likud government, Israel has managed to alienate its most important regional Muslim ally, Turkey; angered the United Arab Emirates with the botched assassination saga in Dubai; endured expulsion of diplomats from Australia and the United Kingdom — two of Israel’s greatest friends; accorded Hamas’ supporters a public relations bonanza, and kicked settlement construction sand in the eyes of Vice President Biden.
Here we see much of the leftist narrative. Turkey has been shifting toward the Islamist forces since Erdogan and the AKP party took over seven years ago. Army officers are being arrested for “treason” as the Islamists try to emasculate the secular army. This has nothing to do with Israel and everything thing to do with Islamist politicians who are destroying the legacy of Ataturk.
It is all Israel’s fault. Hamas is just a political party; the settlements in Jerusalem were not in traditional Jewish neighborhoods, and so on. The fact remains that Israel has control of the West Bank and Gaza because the Arabs started a war and lost. In fact, they started three wars and lost them all. When Germany started a war and lost, they lost East Prussia and Sudetanland. We do not see German suicide bombers in Poland or Czech Republic protesting that they were dispossessed just because they lost a war and demanding “right of return.” They would be laughed out the UN. Why is Israel different ?
Well, they are Jews. They were expelled from what is now the West bank in 70 AD after rebelling against the Roman provincial officials. However, there have always been some Jews living in what is now Israel, especially Jerusalem. The Zionist movement began when Theodore Herzl recognized the implications of the Dreyfus Affair. After watching anti-Semitic rallies in paris, he came to the conclusion that assimilation was a trap, an opinion reinforced in Germany in the 1930s. The emigration of Jews to the portion of the Ottoman Empire now called Israel and Palestine began with the Russian pogroms in 1888. Herzl then encouraged more emigration around the turn of the century. Arab- Jewish violence was well established by the 1930s, mostly at the instigation of the Arabs. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1930s was an avid follower of Hitler. Copies of Mein Kampf are still on sale in Cairo and, interestingly, in Turkey. Turkey, in recent years, has seen a rise in anti-American conspiracy theories that are intertwined with anti-Jewish folklore. One that goes back to the Middle Ages is the cannibalism of Christian children. The modern equivalent is seen in a popular Turkish movie in which Americans harvest the kidneys from dead Iraqis for shipment to Israel. It starred many well known American actors.
The level of vicious anti-Israeli rhetoric is high and this is not just disgusting but dangerous. Some American leftists have concluded that Israel is an embarrassment rather than an ally. They have no strategic sense and the instinct is to dump your friends when they are
not being helpful. Harry S Truman once said that about a famous Roman Senator, “His downfall began when he took his friends for granted and tried to bribe his enemies.” This is a profound statement and one I have lived by. It is an instinct to try to add to our circle by recruiting new members, even if it may push aside a loyal supporter. This appears to be the central tenet of the Obama foreign policy, illustrating how far the Democratic Party has come from its origins.
Anyway, the present crisis has its origins long ago and has nothing to do with the actions of Israel, which are totally defensive.
Tags: Islam, Israel, Obama, Palestinians
I find it fascinating that the Palestinians are the darling of the Left while concurrently embracing much that appears antithetical to our progressive brethren: monochromatic, tribal, clannish, theocratic, patriarchal.
Then again, maybe they do have more in common…