Israel Matzav

Why Israel is demonized (and Fatah is not)

Objective assessments of Israel’s misdeeds, then, cannot explain the double standard that vilifies a tiny country’s attempt to survive the attacks of enemies sworn to its destruction. Larger cultural dysfunctions are at work, not least being the corrupt Western media. The major print and television media are filled for the most part with self-styled champions of “social justice,” crusaders not for the truth but for “progressive” ideologies in turn based on incoherent ideals and sheer ignorance of history. Their minds shaped by sentimental Third-Worldism, Marxist demonizations of “colonialism” and “imperialism,” and arrogance about their own moral superiority, many Western reporters are easily turned into the chumps and shills of corrupt Arab regimes and Muslim jihadists. The Palestinian Arabs in particular have brilliantly exploited the useful idiots of the media to construct the narrative of brutal Israeli “occupation” of the Palestinian “homeland,” as documented by Richard Landes and Pierre Rehov, who have exposed the numerous blatant fabrications eagerly swallowed as fact by the media, such as the Jenin “massacre” or the killing of the boy Muhammad Al Durah by Israeli soldiers.

This irrational hatred of Israel on the part of many Westerners is dangerous and short-sighted, as is the failure to understand the true roots of Muslim hatred of the Jewish state. For the modern jihad against the West did not start on 9/11, or even in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Its first major campaign took place in 1948 when the Arab states ignored a U.N. resolution and attacked a U.N. member state. As significant as this rejection of the Western-crafted international order was, the response of the West — leaving Israel to sink or swim — was even more important. By sitting on the sidelines while a Western democracy battled for its life, the West sent a message: that it would not intervene to protect a cultural brother and a legitimate state when attacked by autocracies and religious fanatics.

The failure to destroy Israel militarily two more times led to other tactics — disinformation, propaganda, phony negotiations, and especially terrorism. And once again, the Western flabby response emboldened the Muslim view of Western decadence and weakness.

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All these tactics first perfected in the jihad against Israel are being used in the other theaters of the war against the West. Yet we still persist in believing that the assault on Israel is a conflict distinct from jihad, or that jihadist terrorism is created by that conflict and would disappear if it were resolved, or that “moderates” like Mahmoud Abbas genuinely accept Israel’s existence and will peacefully coexist with a nation of despised former dhimmi if only the Palestinians get their own state — all this despite the absence of any empirical evidence from the last fifty years that could support these fantasies.

Meanwhile the U.S. Secretary of State scampers around the Middle East pursing the chimera of the “two-state” solution via “frameworks” and “road maps,” Israel is pressured to show “restraint” in the face of violence, and U.S. tax dollars are sent to Fatah, in the weird belief that it makes sense to help Fatah, who believe Israel should be destroyed in “phases,” prevail over Hamas, who believe Israel should be destroyed right now. In other words, we continue to validate the jihadists’ estimation of our gullibility and weakness, which in turn convinces them that they can win and so should fight on. Why shouldn’t they? After all, they’ve been fighting Israel for over fifty years, and have been rewarded with the Sinai and Gaza. Why wouldn’t they think Al-Andalus is next?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:19 AM