Israel as “vampire bat”? Terrorist-supporting Arab states run by dictators as “butterflies”? While everyone is entitled to an opinion, this letter to the Monitor shows that some opinions are of value only as examples of poor reasoning.
Despite ample historical evidence, many on the anti-war Left continue to put their faith in international coalitions and the UN to resolve the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. These same folks claim to prefer "diplomatic" solutions even when there is no diplomatic solution. (Where is the diplomatic middle ground with an enemy that fails to uphold international standards of behavior and repeated calls for the annihilation of UN-member states?) They also favor applying a “European approach” rather than American "cowboyism" to dealing with the world’s hot spots.
Post World War II Europeans have spent decades supporting meaningless resolutions and absolving terrorist organizations of blame for heinous crimes while holding the United States and Israel to impossible standards. That is the “European approach,” and it fails miserably everywhere it is tried. (Remember the former Yugoslavia?) The irony is that the United States “cowboy” has spent billions of dollars and sacrificed thousands of lives over the past 70 years trying to mitigate European diplomatic, military, and philosophical messes.
Let us not forget that Israel was created in part because European powers could not be trusted……
Let us not forget that Israel was created in part because European powers could not be trusted to treat their Jewish populations properly. The region was under British and French mandate after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, and European Jews were encouraged to buy land in what is now the State of Israel. Western powers created the national boundaries and Arab nation-states in the region for their own perceived benefit (control of oil resources chief among them), often ignoring cultural and tribal factors. The bottom line is that most of the states in the region did not exit as such at the beginning of the 20th century, and intra-Islamic fighting in the region has claimed more lives than Arab-Israeli wars.
And yet when it comes to Israel – the only democracy in the region, the place where ethnic Arab citizens enjoy Western-style rights – members of the anti-war left don’t support the UN resolution that created it. They rarely condemn outright Arab/Islamist terrorist violence or recognize Israeli restraint. They support dialog over action, even when dialog merely provides cover for anti-democratic forces. At base, they seem not to understand history and are unwilling to put current events into context. “Batty,” indeed.
More on “context” in the age of visual media in another posting…
