May 25, 2009
If It Wasn't for Israel...
Sultan Knish
When early in the 20th century Germany faced a variety of complex economic,
military and political problems, the Nazi propaganda organ, "Der Sturmer"
boiled them down to a simple message, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck". In a
flash, Germany's defeat in WW1, the worldwide economic depression and its
political turmoil could all be blamed on the Jews. And of course if the Jews
were gone, everything would be alright in Germany again.
That same message has dominated the diplomatic and political rhetoric on the
Middle East, with American and European diplomats, pundits and politicians
claiming that the problems in the Middle East would be healed if only it
wasn't for Israel. This latest echo of, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck" in
regard to the Middle East blames the existence of Israel for the general
instability, violence and terrorism in the Middle East. An accompanying
illustration naturally features a Der Sturmer caricature of a Jewish
"lobbyist" controlling American foreign policy.
If you were to believe this Sturmeresque critique of what's wrong in the
Middle East, if we simply removed the tiny state of Israel, 1/80th the size
of Iran. Islamic terrorism would go the way of the Dodo, women and religious
minorities would have rights and Europe, America and the Muslim world would
be able to join hands and sing Kumbaya.
If only it wasn't for Israel.
Never mind that much of the actual instability comes from the fact that the
map of the Middle East was a clumsy colonial hodgepodge of imaginary states
with ancient names, ruled by bandits and warlords, styling themselves Kings
and Emirs. Virtually every ruling house in the Middle East that was backed
by the England, France or the US... is despised by their own populations.
The Egyptian and Iraqi monarchs were deposed. The regime of the Shah was
overthrown. Their replacements, Nasser and Saddam, were Soviet allied and
anti-American thugs and dictators. This had nothing to do with Israel, and
everything to do with the fact that the same Western foreign ministries now
blasting Israel, tried to rule the Middle East through weak and unpopular
governments. Something the USSR was happy enough to take advantage of.
It was a problem that recurred in Asia with spectacularly deadly results and
two devastating wars involving the United States. All without Israel ever
being in the area. Indeed without Israel ever being located there, the same
pattern of Marxist dictatorships and Muslim terrorists have rampaged through
the region.
This did not prevent Gandhi from regurgitating his own version of "Die Juden
sind unser Ungluck", arguing that India would be at peace, if the Muslims
were just allowed to have Jerusalem. Yet despite the Jordanian seizure of
East Jerusalem, Partition went ahead anyway, not to mention the bloodbaths
in Bangladesh, Kashmir and East Timor. Or the current nuclear standoff
between Pakistan and India. Thus far no one has tried to claim that the
problem could be resolved by Israel giving up its capital.
But the spectacular dishonesty of insisting that Israel is the cause of the
Middle East's instability goes on. Somehow Shia and Sunni would have stopped
fighting each other, Syria would stop dreaming of conquering Lebanon for
good, Saddam would have never tried for Kuwait, and the Saudis wouldn't be
pouring all their resources into promoting Islamism abroad-- if only it
wasn't for Israel.
Yet if anything Israel has served as a stabilizing factor, creating buffer
zones between many of the Arab regimes that would otherwise be doing their
best to swallow each other. Israel was the only reason Syria hadn't taken
Lebanon and Jordan. Instead Arab nations have been forced to stage their
conquests in a direction away from Israel, witness Egypt going West to
Yemen, or Syria nibbling away at Lebanon, without being able to take the
whole thing in one bite.
The squabbling Arab League has only one common interest, and that is Israel.
The barest fragments of Arab unity are directed around Israel. It has
actually been pressure to make peace with Israel that has been far more
destabilizing, than the presence of Israel itself.
Too much of the world has swallowed the Arab argument that Israel is all
that stands in the way regional stability, the same argument that Hitler
made over Czechoslovakia. The Peace Process has been an attempt to stabilize
the region by creating a terrorist state run first by Arafat, and now by his
successors and Hamas. This "Experiment in Terror" has not brought stability,
on the contrary it has increased terrorism and spread instability.
something for which Israel is paradoxically being blamed.
But that is the whole point of "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck", to distill a
complex set of problems, into a single bigoted tautology. Whether in Germany
or the Middle East, it is easier to blame the Jews, than to address the real
problems. Nazism and Islamism were both violent reactionary responses to
real social problems. The Muslim world, like post-WW1 Germany, has
experienced humiliating defeats in war and responded with irrational
violence and hate, backed by a paranoid mythology of persecution. And those
who cannot learn from their mistakes find it much easier to brandish a Koran
or Mein Kampf, and cry for the death of the infidels.
And as in the Pre-WW2 period, too many in the West have bought into the
victimology of the sociopathic mass murderers and the idea that conceding a
country or two to them, might buy us "peace in our time".
Now some 70 years after Munich, Barack Hussein Obama is pressuring Israel to
let itself be carved up in order to appease Islamic terrorists, claiming
that the solution to the Middle East's problems lie through Israel. 130
years after a liberal politician coined the phrase, "Die Juden sind unser
Ungluck", Western liberals are back to reducing a complex series of regional
problems to the "Jewish Question".
http://sultanknish.
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