Posted on 08/30/2013 7:54:09 AM PDT by SJackson
- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com -
Israel, Lone Light in a Dark Region
Posted By P. David Hornik On August 30, 2013 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments
As the Obama administration keeps weighing whether and how to act in Syria, one wonders if Israel is looking goodor at least betterto the administration these days. Seemingly, if there was ever a time, now would be the time to start taking note of Israels strengths in a bad region.
1. Some ways in which Israel differs from other countries of the region.
No chemical-weapons attacks. In the Middle East this can hardly be taken for granted. Along with Bashar Assads use, there was Iraqs against the Kurds in 1991 and Egypts against Yemeni tribesmen in the mid-1960s. Egypt and Iraq are, of course, countries with which the U.S. has been allied or heavily involved, and for decades U.S. diplomats kept coming to Damascus to try and get President Hafez and then Bashar Assad to make peace with Israel.
Israel, of course, will never use WMD of any kind except to save itself from annihilation.
No intercommunal bombing campaigns. Along with the carnage in Syria, such campaigns are now being waged in Iraq and, to a lesser but growing extent, Lebanon; theyre basically spirals of reciprocal mass murder.
Israel too, even within its Jewish population, has had intense animosities between groups. The right and left were at loggerheads particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, and there are ongoing tensions between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews. But violence, of course, has been small-scale and rare. Differences get settled at the ballot box.
No church burnings or other persecution of Christians. In fact, Israel is the only country in the region whose Christian population is steadily growing rather than fleeing.
No mass rapes in public squares.
No bigoted slanders of other countries by national leaders. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey recently pulled that one off when he declared that Israel was behind the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. Although President Obama has in the past called Erdogan a great friend, this was too much even for the administration, which strongly condemn[ed] Erdogans words.
Israeli leaders, of course, do not engage in public defamation and conspiracy-mongering.
No journalists in prison. In that category Turkey now takes the lead in the world, surpassing Iran and China. In Israel even Uri Blau, a Haaretz journalist convicted last year of holding thousands of classified military documents that were passed to him by a soldier who filched them, was sentenced to all of four months community service.
This is, of course, a very partial list, but its enough to point to an essential difference between a democracy and countries very far from democratic standards.
2. Some ways in which, nevertheless, Israel is treated differently from other countries in the region.
No recognition of its capital city. The U.S. embassy is in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, and the official position of U.S. administrations (though not of Congress) is not to recognize even West Jerusalem as Israels capital. No such problem, of course, arises regarding Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Ankara, and so on.
People told where they can and cant live. Though the Obama administration made a particular point of it during its first term, U.S. administrations have long objectedoften with public vehemenceto Israelis living in lands captured by Israel in the 1967 war, including even East Jerusalem. No such problem arises, for instance, regarding Turkish building in Northern Cyprus, even though that really is a case of an illegal occupation stemming from a belligerent act. Israels presence in the territories, by contrast, is entirely legal.
Constant pressure to retreat from territory. The obsession with Israeli land giveaways, ostensibly to make peace, has marked U.S. administrations since the 1967 war. At present Israel is engaged in yet-more U.S.-orchestrated peace talks with the deeply hostile Palestinian Authority, the chief Palestinian negotiator claiming a U.S. written guarantee that the talks are based on Israeli withdrawal to the indefensible pre-1967-war borders. This is, again, unique treatmenteven though it is Israel that faces ongoing animosity and security threats from the other countries in the region.
This too, of course, is only a partial list, but representative of U.S. exploitation of Israels isolation in the region and dependence on U.S. support.
One hopes for a day when a U.S. administration will, instead, show greater respect for Israels autonomy, security concerns, rights, and loyaltyand for its unique achievements in an inhospitable part of the world.
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Israel is a first world gem afloat in a massive third world Islamic sewer. The sewer rats don’t want to raise themselves to Israeli standards, they instead want to destroy that which they themselves cannot achieve.
The sewer rats dont want to raise themselves to Israeli standards, they instead want to destroy that which they themselves cannot achieve.
Well said, Entropy Squared! My father told me when I was about eight some people build themselves up, and some people try to tear other people down. I believe he'd have been disappointed had he lived long enough to see our nation degenerate into the latter kind.
We know that at the end, Israel will stand alone. It has been prophesied and we see it starting to happen!
Truly Ultra Orthodox Jews look down on Orthodox Jews who look down on Conservative Jews who look down on Reform Jews who return the favor. However, one does not hurl bombs, missiles or injurious things at other groups. What is hurled back and forth is words, maybe unkind but not dangerous.
Further, without the existence of a strong and secure Israel, the two parts of the Islamic world would rapidly explode into a genocidal violence against each other. Sunni would fall upon the Shia, and the favor would be heartily returned.
The very existence of Israel is the SOLE unifying cement that keeps the Islamic world from coming really apart.
Rough days ahead for Israel. But when the dust clears, the Israelis will be the survivors.
Don’t worry. Obama is on the job and will extinguish that final light as soon as possible.
This bothers me, countries choose their own capital no one has any business not "recognizing" it. That's just silly.
I'm sure our diplomats don't mind living in Tel Aviv instead though, I know I'd prefer it. ;D
I don't give a crap what country "recognizes" another country's capitol city, but it seems ridiculous that the U.S. Congress decided to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem in 1995 (with a "deadline" of December 31, 1999), and they have yet to do so, despite both parties routinely putting useless 'pander to Jewish voters' planks in the party platform that they're gonna move the embassy to Jerusalem. What's the point after 18 years? Grow some balls and do it.
>> I'm sure our diplomats don't mind living in Tel Aviv instead though, I know I'd prefer it. ;D <<
From a security standpoint, absolutely. I wouldn't want to live in Jerusalem year-round given the political climate there. Of course, from a historical and cultural perspective, I'd much rather be in the "Christian quarter" of Jerusalem than some random place in Tel Aviv where everyone who lives there is Jewish except me. I also read somewhere that Tel Aviv is the San Francisco of the middle east and overrun with gay propaganda. Some political cartoon bashing Stephen Hawking anti-Israel position said he was a "hypocrite" since Tel Aviv is "the most progressive city in the world for gay rights". I noted that the cartoon made no logic sense (Hawking has been married twice and is obviously not gay, and since he's paralyzed from the neck down, I doubt he's going to take part in any "gay rights" festivities), and it said more about the cartoon writer's political views than it did about Hawking's.
And the beach. ;) But embassies are supposed to be in the capital.
Thanks SJackson.
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