Glick: Israel's new strategic environment

Israel's leaders are no worse -- but unfortunately no better either -- than the run-of-the-mill leaders in other Western countries. Unfortunately because the countries around Israel, not for miles but for thousands of miles around, wish not merely to do it no favors, but to make its existence so hellishly difficult that it will, by degrees, yield to Muslim Arab demands and disappear, so that one more of the non-Muslim and non-Arab peoples in the vast swath from Morocco to Afghanistan along one axis, from the border of Turkey to the border of Ethiopia along another, will have disappeared, or exist, as do so many of the other suriving remnants of ancient peoples subdued by Islam and, where possible, by arabization thatn necessarily accompanies Islam -- only on sufferance and not by right, in a stae of permanent potential persecution and insecurity. The Samaritans and Mandeans hardly exist. The hundred Christian groups that even in the time of Gertrude Bell could still be found in Iraq and Syria have been reduced in power and numbers; the Copts are perennially on the receiving end of Muslim tolerance, and were only spared during the brief period in which Lord Cromer and Edward Cecil and others, over a forty-year period 1882-1922 (with results that continued to be felt, not only by the Copts, who had their heyday in that period, but also by the Egyptian Jews, and the Italians, Greeks, Armenians and others in Alexandria and Cairo who were then dispossessed of everything, when Nasser and his fellow colonels simply "nationalized," a few years after the fmaous week (in 1951) of street riots in which Arab mobs inflamed against the "foreign" infidels (some of those "foreign" infidels had lived for centureis in Egypt, and some had even been officially recognized for their services to Egypt -- but that was another, saner, less purely Arab and Muslim Egypt) looted, destroyed, and murdered.

What was billed as Egyptian "nationalism" was, under the surface, simply the old anti-Infidel feelings, never far from the surface even among those supposedly "soft" and "easy-going" Egyptians, such as the daily prayers against the Infidels that Edward Lane, in his celebrated "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians," notes was part of a Muslim's upbringing in Egypt in the 1830s and 1840s (google "Andrew Bostom" and "Edward Lane" to pull up that prayer). Of course, as long as the Western powers possessed power and wealth that they were willing to use to protect local non-Muslims, the Muslims in turn had to be circumspect. Today, Arab oil wealth, and the apparent ability of those Arabs and Muslims who do not possess that wealth to nonetheless extract, in ever greater amounts, continued foreign aid from Infidels (and need not ever go hat in hand to the rich Arabs), which in the fear of stopping such aid exhibited by those same Infidels, and the self-assured way in which the recipients take, demand more, and never once modify their anti-Infidel venom, exhibits all the characteristics of the classic Jizyah whihc had to be paid by the non-Muslims, to the Muslims, if those non-Muslims, as "Protected People," still want to be -- "Protected."

Not very long ago -- less than a century ago -- no one would have confused the Middle East with something called "the Arab world." There were, especially in what is present-day Lebanon, and Syria, and iraq, all sorts of Christian communities, living in their own villages, and in many places, Jews as well (Baghdad was the second city, after Jerusalem, for Jews anywhere outside Europe and America; 1/3 of Baghdad's population was Jewish). But since the beginning of World War I, everywhere that Muslims rule, non-Muslims have been subject to greater persecution, dispossession, and even murder or mass-murder, and have been harried out, or left in fear, lands that they had lived in for a long time. This is true everywhere. The population of HIndus has gone way down in both Pakistan (from 15% in 1947, to 1.5% today) and Bangladesh (from 35% in 1947, to 8% today), and 400,000 Kashnmiri Pandits were forced to leave Kashmir. In Malaysia the proportion of Hindus and Chinese in the country, has gone steadily down, and the the "Bumiputra" system reqyures the more industrious non-Muslims to hire, and promote Muslims, which is simply a disguised Jizyah.

The inaccurate and even cruel (to the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Armenians, the Mandeans, the Jews, the Zoroastrians, the Armenians, the Berbers, the Kurds, the Copts, and a hundred other groups) phrase "the Arab world" derived from the success of Arab propaganda. The formation of the Arab League, which owed so much to Anthony Eden, and which promoted in the outside world the idea that these lands, long ago conquered by Muslims, but where, in ever-diminishing numbers, groups that were what remained of those peoples who had long predated the Arabs and the arrival of Islam (and over time, of course, many of their members had simply converted to Islam -- who knows how many of those Muslims in Iraq are simply the descendants of the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and the Jews who once lived in Mesopotamia when Islam arrived?), still remained well into the twentieth century. Read, for example, Gertrude Bell's archeological works, and one will find Christian villages here, there, and everywhere. There are Christian communities still, here, there and not quite so everywhere. And the physical evidence has not been entirely destroyed. American officers and men living in Tikrit, in the complex of buildings around Saddam's hometown palace, with the Kurd-tended garden, were fascinated to discvoer that on the grounds, with a new mosque built over it, were the remains of the 13th-century church -- a kind of emblematic reminder, in stone, of what the history of the Middle East has been all about.

And along with the Arab League, there was the steadily growing public relations effort of Saudi Arabia, the most malevolent, because the most Muslim, of countires. ARAMCO, which should have been purely a commercial enterprise, began to perform, with its glossy magazines, and glossier books, to "inform Americans" about Saudi Arabia and the Arab World. Oh, it did alright. It raised a gneration of people to believe that the meeting between King Fahd and FDR on that carrier was just about the most wonderful and important thing in the relations of the United STates to the "Arab World," and that while some Arabs were bad because they were pro-Soviet, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, the good Arabs, good not despite but because they were so devout, and everyone knew that Islam and Communism were immiscible ideological liquids, the Arabs of whom the very best were the true-blue Saudis, who would never let their American friends down. We didn't have to have an energy policy, didn't have to start investing in other technologies, didn't have to put a steadily-rising tax on gasoline, because Saudi Arabia was our "staunch ally," always had been, always would be, and that was enough. Didn't Sheikh Yamani, "Harvard-educated" Sheikh Yamani (Harvard Business School, that is), tell us so? Didn't a succession of ambassadors -- not just the Saudi Ambassadors to Washingotn, but also a succession the American ambassadors in Riyadh, eager to parrot the Saudi line on all things -- constantly reassure us about how close Saudi Arabia, its rulers (half of whom probably went to the University of Southern California, and became great admirers of America and Americans, as they will hasten to insist), and its people, were to the United States. Not everyone agreed. J. B. Kelly, in "Of Valuable OIl and Worthless Policies," begged to differ. But though J. B. Kelly spent a year or two in Washington at the Heritage Institute back in 1981 or so, few were inclined to listen to him, or to realize that he had been an adviser to those sheikdoms and sultanates in the Gulf that worried most about Saudi bullying (especially to Zayed of Abu Dhabi), and was one of the few Westerners who possessed a knowledge (on the Frontier Question) that the local Arabs needed, and he could not be bought or bullied, and remained distinctly unimpressed by the locals, though perfectly willing to see the difference between, say, the Omanis (who were the most appealing of the Arabs of the peninsula) and the Saudis (the least appealing, and certainly the most contemptuous of the West, and the most aggressive toward their own smaller neighbors). No, even after ARAMCO was taken over by the Saudis, the corporate spirit, among all those who were busy recycling petro-dollars, was to keep promoting the idea that Saudi Arabia was and is and always will be our friend, that there was no need to constrain the use to which Saudi revenues were put, all over the Western and the Islamic countries, nor to check the growth of small armies, within each Western country, of distinct groups of Saudi hirelings, eager to give lectures, write Op/Ed pieces, and to work to promote Saudi interests. Saudi (and other Arab) money was carefully deployed. First, in Washington, at Georgetown, with not one but two Centers having to do with Arab or Islamic matters. Then there was an Islamic studies operation, during the Clinton years, funded in Arkansas. King Abdul Aziz chairs hither and yon. It had gone so swimmingly in England (at Exeter, Durham, and elsewhere); the same good results could be expected here. Money to Harvard Law School, for its Islamic studies -- and where if the students have ever heard the word "jizyah, much less even heard mention the work of scholars on Islamic law and on the legal status of dhimmis, it would not be because Frank Vogel, who is an Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law as well as a regular profesosr, had been spreading the word. The dismal state of American knowledge of Islam is in large part a direct result of the success of Saudi Arabia in its propaganda, and its buying up, paying for, academic centers and institutes and individual well-cushioned chairs for this or that professor who in turn will be unlikely to say anything about Islam that might just rock this or that boat -- and right now, more than one Western Ship of State has, on the subject of Islam and the Jihad, become indistingushable from a Ship of Fools, or Narrenschiff, and those Narrenschiffen need to be rocked so badly that the captain and the crew will reconsider that "course they are staying" and not only in Iraq, but if they are flying a European flag, come to realize that for those Muslims who have settled within their countries, that particular European flag will always be just -- a flag of convenience.

Caroline Glick is right to note how foolish much of Israel's policy has been. The country has, by and large, not been led by those equal to the task. The forces arrayed against them, the money they control, the appeals they can make to atavistic urges (antisemitism infects 10-20% of the European population; those suffering from the pathology, if they are clever and well-placed, can in turn infect, or give a form fruste of the disease to another 20-30% of the population, which helps to explain the viciousness of how, in the European press and radio and television, Israel -- and the "Palestinians" -- are presented). But their politicians are not more foolish, nor their people more blind, than those who now rule in England, or France, or elsewhere in Europe, or for that matter, in North Americfa. But had they been better, had they long ago correctly defined the relentless siege against them as a classic Jihad, had they directed their own attention, and that of others, to the principles and teachings of Islam, though it would have been harder for Israel in its attempt to further alliances with certain non-Arab Muslim states in their "secularist" phases (Iran under the Shah, Turkey when it was still ruled by keepers, and not challengers, of Kemalism), states that had their own raisons d'etat for seeking allies against the Arabs for whom they bore an historic hostility and even frequently-expressed contempt, this might have been better for all Infidels. It would have made some people, quite a while ago, more aware that they had to look into Islam, and that they could no longer rely on the kind of people who have infiltrated into MESA Nostra, and nearly monopolized the supposed disinterested study of Islam.

Indeed.....On the morning news, 4 Israeli's killed several wounded at bus stop in the West Bank in drive by shooting. Palestinian group claims responsibility.

So much for the Jews making concessions and trying to live in peace.

It's like trying to leave the Mob.

Yes, me again. Hugh, I admire your patience in typing your entry. Very illuminating.

The jihadists emotional state is the classic narcissistic, grandiose, nobody-else-counts-but-me
mentality found in many people who live in and who survive oppressive environments, generally personal ones but ones that are legitimated within the society, and generally sustained by hysteria, xenophobia and of course lots of money supplied by people who benefit from this hysteria.
It's essentially immature but unfortunately needs patience and aeons to sort it out. In the meantime, the best way to defend against it is to set very strong boundaries against these (far easier said than done) and most crucial, of all, recognition that this is what type of people they are. It should be easier in so far as these sorts of people exist in every culture - it's just Muslims art the moment predominate by sheer weight of numbers and loud loud rhetoric. Oh did I mention they LOOOOVE attention. More to this topic, But I'll stop here.