Israel Matzav

'Realism' exposed as fantasy

Jonah Goldberg draws inspiration from his first trip to Israel.

In Egypt, the popular uprising unfolding is not about Israel but about autocratic brutality, economic stagnation and skyrocketing prices. The same goes for Tunisia as well as the popular protests brutally crushed by Iran's mullahs in 2009. Turkey is not Islamifying because of the Palestinians. Al Qaeda surely hates Israel, but its roots lay in hatred of the Saudi royal family and the Islamist ambitions of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

And yet the "realist" fantasy that an Arabs-first (or Muslims-first) foreign policy will yield rich rewards endures. The French have followed that advice for generations. They nurtured the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in exile. They give special preference to their former colonies. They pander to Arab sensibilities. And what has it gotten them? A lot of burning cars but few lucrative oil deals.

As we've recently been reminded, Israel is the only truly democratic regime in the region, and therefore the most stable. But, we are told, if we were only more conciliatory to corrupt dictatorial regimes and more sympathetic to the "Arab street," the region would be more stable. (Ironically, this is very close to Israel's own position, no doubt because it will take any peace it can get.)

No doubt this is what the solons of American foreign policy hear from their Arab and Muslim interlocutors. And it is certainly what the autocrats in the Middle East want everyone to believe, starting with their own subjects. Tyrants always want to focus on scapegoats, insults to national honor and shadowy enemies. Why apologize for skyrocketing bread prices when you can demonize the "Zionist entity"?

Addressing the real problems in the region is just too hard, particularly when any effort to take attention off the Palestinians is greeted with outrage from an anti-Israel industry that cravenly singles out Israel as the worst human rights abuser in the neighborhood. Israel puts Arab critics in the Knesset. Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia put them in jail or in an unmarked grave.

All of this would be just as true if Israel retreated to the 1949 armistice lines tomorrow.

Indeed, it would be just as true. But a week or a month or a year or five years afterward, there would be no Israel, or there would be a lot of dead Jews (God forbid). And that, my friends, is what this is really about.

Welcome to Israel, Jonah.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Egypt, Israel is a Jewish state, Israel is my home, Palestinians, realists' fantasy, Tunisia, Turkish obsession with Israel

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:41 PM