Here is a refresher of an article sent out a while back that gives a little more of the thoughts on Islam of world class expert on Islam, Professor Bernard Lewis. His candid advice is as relevant today or even moreso, as it was when he presented this a few years ago. |DB| David Basch Subject: "GET TOUGH OR GET OUT" "GET TOUGH OR GET OUT" "Get tough or get out," was the advice Bernard Lewis gave to the U.S. concerning its policies in the Middle East. This was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article today (2/6/04 - "A Historian's Take on Islam"). It seems that this same advice would be good for Israel. The article gave some background on the Muslim world whose rage against the West began, according to Professor Lewis, in 1683 "when the Ottomans failed for the second time to sack Christian Vienna." Among other things, Professor Lewis pointed out that it was foreign powers over the last centuries that had bailed the Arab powers out against their conquerors, not Arab might at all. Against Arab assertions to the contrary, said Professor Lewis: "Excuse me, but you've got your history wrong. The Turks got rid of the Crusaders. The British got rid of the Turks. The Jews got rid of the British. I wonder who is coming here next." Notice that today the Arabs want the U.S. to bring such a victory by bringing about the defeat of Israel. This will happen to an Israel that wishes to be a boy scout in the Middle East jungle. Israel leaders crave to be peacemakers with those who seek the nation's blood, trying again and again and again through appeasement and gestures to win the heart of the enemy away from the enemy's fondest heart's desire to destroy Israel -- like winning the jackal away from his blood lust, the very thing that is the essence of the jackal's character and which he must crave and pursue because he is a jackal. Obviously, with a Jewish leadership that cannot walk on water, all these efforts have been doomed to failure and were used by Arabs to trick Israel again and again. It has brought death, destruction, and the material weakening of Israel and the nation's cause even as it strengthened the Arab enemy poised for nationhood in Israeli lands. Professor Lewis pointed out that "Palestinian Arabs didn't have a historical claim to a state, because Palestine hadn't existed as a country prior to British rule in 1918." Now notice two things about that comment. First is that Professor Lewis correctly refers to "Palestinian Arabs," not "Palestinians" since he knows they are not a people but merely the Arab residents of the Mandate of Palestine. They are like the "Palestinian Jews," also residents within the Mandate, but with the important difference that the Jews had had historically two kingdoms in the land and, thus subsequently recognized by the nations of the world under the Mandate, were empowered under that mandate to build a Jewish homeland. But the Jewish boy scouts in Israeli leadership, attempting to appease the unappeasable Arabs, jettisoned such facts of history in their attempts to win over the Arab jackals and bought for Israel's Jews the title of "invaders" and "usurpers." To this day, this is how most Israelis falsely think of themselves, a view fostered by leftist socialist leaders that only has eyes for Universalist, pseudo-doctrines like "national determination." After all, every such natural right is countered by an equal and opposite national right for competing claims to resist conquest, which most always is the case, hence the silly doctrine is a formula for continuing war on the planet. In particular, it is a formula for bringing about Israel's destruction, the way the same doctrine as used by Hitler brought about the destruction of Czechoslovakia and World War II. But such facts have not stopped blundering Israeli leaders from pursuit of such "ideals" as a substitute kind of religion which such empty souls crave, selling out their own people and future. Returning now to the opening point, "Get tough or get out," is good advice in the Middle East whether for the U.S. or Israel. Israel, at the height of her military power today even as the enemy forces arrayed against her promote her collapse, needs to keep her eyes on her survival over the long run, not allowing the nation to be written off in history as the most righteous nation in the graveyard -- a defeat for not only the Jewish people but for the leavening civilization that the Jews have brought the world. This may not mean anything to two-dimensional, technocratic leaders like Sharon and his fellow hollow men, who live for the day and not for too many more days until election time. But it should mean something for a new, pro-Israel leadership that this faltering country desperately needs. **** |
David Basch is an architect and city planner in New York as well as the Freeman Center's political philosopher. Basch is also an expert on Shakespeare and the author of the book, The Hidden Shakespeare, which proves through talmudic and other Jewish sources that Shakespeare was in fact Jewish.
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