Friday, August 04, 2006

[Israel]

Things I Think About Israel

Deep thoughts on the Israel, in no real order.
  1. There's nothing inherent about Israel; nothing says it has to continue to exist.
  2. The invasion of Iraq, predictably yet ironically, has endangered Israeli sovereignty by radicalizing Muslims worldwide and emboldening Israel's neighbors.
  3. The US is a toxin across the Middle East and is more likely to worsen conflict with diplomacy or engagement--which is a great irony (if not surprise) given the overwrought rhetoric and arrogance of the neocons who thought they were bringing light and goodness to dem stoopid Mooslems.
  4. What the hell is wrong with the Europeans? Given the US inability to manage things--given that we can only make them worse--some other neutral broker needs to step in. Is there a law that says it can't be someone besides the US?
And now perhaps I will go back to the sabbatical advertised at the top of the blog. Perhaps.

4 comments:

Idler said...

And what's inherent about Hizbollah that it should continue to exist?

Because Arabs (along with their sometime Persian sponsors) choose war over peace, Israel--the freest, most liberal, most productive country in the region--must be sacrificed?

Once again, if only in the fantasy of one blogger, the threat of violence succeeds in rewarding Arab and Muslim aggression. Terrorism succeeds. Using civilian shields to create propaganda coups works like a charm. Too easy, really.

What fades down the memory hole is that Israel's attempts at land for peace were treated with contempt, and any break in hostilities has been a chance for its enemies to regroup and rearm.

Israel originally withdrew from Lebanon on the condition of Hizbollah's disarmament. The flouting of this condition--the breaking of the whole deal--raises few concerns. The acts of war that preceded Israel's reaction are similarly supressed from the bigger picture as events march on. The fact that Israeli withdrawal from Gaza leads not to peace but to the immediate commencement of hostilities directed at Israeli civilians leads to no new insights or epiphanies. The strategic context of Israel's reaction is also ignored, despite Hizbollah's increasing technological weapons capability and its utterly open support from Tehran. What really matters is what Israel does.

So let's wish they could just disappear. I have to wonder whether you have reflected very deeply on what the final solution you imply would actually look like. And once again, I can't help but marvel at how supposedly progressive people could favor the success of an atavistic, theocratic, mysoginistic, homophobic, warlike, genocidal force against a creative, productive, civilized liberal democracy.

Anonymous said...

Nothing says it has to continue to exist? What about its six million citizens? Do they get a say in the matter?

Why is Israel the only state on the planet that has to defend its very existence?

Jeff Alworth said...

You completely miss my point. There's nothing inherent about any country. I think most people tend to orient themselves to the current war with the unchallenged assumption that Israel will survive this era. Yet if you imagine a scenario in which Israel doesn't survive, I think it would look a lot like this.

Chuck Butcher said...

There's nothing inherent about the existence of this planet, that uncharted cosmic whizbang could do us in at any moment. (great, something else for my wife to worry about...) The survival of a nation is dependent primarily upon its citizenry, their willingness to go the lengths neccesary. Many nations define themselves in terms that are virtually tribal, America still does, Britain, Israel are also outstanding examples. That tribal self-definition leads to a willingness that's truly awe inspiring and frightening.

During WWII Americans at home gave up their comforts and sacrificed their "social code" regarding women and blacks in employment to win and would have gladly exterminated an entire island nation on a fairly remote possibility of loss of nationhood. Britain went a much greater distance, though they were willing to lose an empire.

Qualifying this as an outsider looking in at Israel, I can't see any way the populous would allow it, and they do have means.

At one time cohesive nations were still at risk from outside, Saxon England springs to mind, but today most of that type nation can resist outside forces, it's the internal ones that are the risk. One could propose a scenario that puts the US in a slow decline into servitude, or ...