Who cares about Israel anyway?
I saw this post somewhere last week and intended to link it, but like many other good intentions, it got lost in the numerous open windows in my browser until the computer crashed and I no longer knew where to find it. Fortunately, the guy who wrote it sent it to me again, so you're all in luck.So, it's Israel's 60th birthday.....Read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did!
It seems to be fashionable this time for lots of people to wonder in print and aloud whether the country can survive...or if it should.
Especially in view of a very well funded effort to rewrite history and to delegitimize the US/Israel relationship. To hear some of these people, Israel is at the heart of the problems we have with the Muslim world, and things would be just fine if we became more 'balanced'...or translated, became more pro-Arab and curtailed our support for those pushy, stubborn Jews.
To hear others, Israel can't survive unless it pushes itself into an indefensible enclave and makes even more real estate in the Middle East Jew free, and perhaps not even then. They've forgotten that Israel has beaten much greater odds in the past. Nor do they see the grim irony in encouraging a retreat to borders 'for peace' that would make the destruction of the country and its people far more likely.
But let's take an objective look. So what? What difference does what happens to Israel make to us here in America? Why should we care? Why is what happens to Israel important to the US? If Israel somehow ceased to exist, would it matter?
Very legitimate questions, especially as many people are unaware of the real answers.
To get there, let's put aside any of those slooshy considerations of fairness, justice, religion or humanitarian principles...and go for the cold, hard, self-serving realpolitik reasons why what happens to Israel is important to the US.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:56 PM
1 Comments:
If Israel never existed, the Muslim World would find other reasons to hate the West. Israel is not the principal reason for turmoil in the Middle East. The most devastating war in the Middle East in the past century, the Iran-Iraq War, never involved Israel. Ditto for the Lebanese Civil War and other regional conflicts. It can be argued Israel introduces a stabilizing element into the region, by checking the tendency of extremists to escalate matters til it involves the entire world. There are reasons to be grateful for Israel's existence and the world would be a lot less safer and far more dangerous without the Jewish State in it.
Post a Comment
<< Home