MOSAIC
by Sol Stern
July 9, 2014
The Middle East is exploding in mayhem and savagery. The region’s system of nation states is disappearing before our eyes, perhaps to be replaced by one or more jihadist movements pledged to the destruction of Western civilization. In the upheavals to come, only one civilizational force, one stable democracy, has the will and the means to fight back and to defend the values of the liberal West. It is the tiny nation state of Israel.
Since this is indisputable, you might think that out of sheer self-interest, if for no other reason, the Western democracies would extend some degree of solidarity to embattled Israel. At the very least, they might defend it against the unrelenting campaign by Arab and third-world powers to vilify and prosecute it at the United Nations and in other international forums. But this the democracies have seemed largely disinclined to do. As a result, not only are we witnessing the near-collapse of Western resolve against the threat of jihadi Islam, but the democratically elected leaders of Israel are the ones being routinely pilloried in enlightened opinion as warmongers, racists, and colonial oppressors.
…..But in the world’s brief love affair with Israel, the mass popularity of Exodus and the Israeli army’s subsequent lightning victory in the June 1967 war were the high-water mark. Right after that war, the tide began to turn; ever since then, anti-Israel (and sometimes anti-Jewish) animus has continued to build almost in inverse proportion to the country’s growing list of economic and social achievements.
Israel’s unforgivable sin, in Muravchik’s telling, lay in winning the 1967 war and then occupying some of the aggressors’ territory. Succeeding Israeli governments waited for the Arabs to negotiate for peace and discuss terms of future relations—which is exactly how the European wars of the 20th century ended. But the Arabs’ adamant refusal even to recognize the Jewish state left it, by default, in the role of “occupier.” That marked Israel as the guilty party. In short order, it went from being admired by much of the liberal world as a plucky little David to being regarded as an increasingly ugly Goliath……
ArchitectGuy on Israel 