Israel Matzav

As usual, Israel is the scapegoat

The Washington Post didn't get everything right, but they got this much right: Israel is indeed being used as a scapegoat by certain Arab and Muslim regimes.

There’s little doubt that plenty of Arabs and Turks are angry at Israel. But it’s worth noting that, as often is the case in the Middle East, those passions are being steered by governments.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who aspires to regional leadership, has directed a campaign against the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and stoked it with incendiary statements. Mr. Erdogan is furious that a U.N. investigation concluded that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, and thus its intervention to stop a Turkish-led flotilla last year, was legal. He also finds it convenient to lambaste Israel rather than talk about neighboring Syria, where daily massacres are being carried out by a regime Mr. Erdogan cultivated.

The assault on the embassy in Cairo has been condemned by the leaders of Egypt’s popular revolution and by some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both they and Western diplomats blame the ruling military for failing to secure the embassy, and they suspect the omission may have been part of an effort to divert rising public unrest toward a familiar target.

In the West Bank, polls have shown that President Mahmoud Abbas’s U.N. statehood initiative is regarded as a low priority by the majority of Palestinians, 60 percent of whom said the better option was resuming direct negotiations with Israel. But Mr. Abbas fears he may be the next target of popular uprising; the U.N. gambit appears aimed in part at preempting that.

But what we Israelis and many Jews understand - but very few other people understand - is that none of this will change if there is God forbid a 'Palestinian state.' They will just find new reasons to scapegoat us. It's a cycle we Jews have been living for more than 2,000 years and it didn't change upon the creation of the State of Israel. Its focus just shifted.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Arab obsession with Israel, Turkish obsession with Israel

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:22 PM