Mark America

Abandoning our Friends?

It’s become fashionable in the media to suppose that conservatives’ support for Israel is due purely to religious considerations.  The most recent talking point from the left is that American conservatives support Israel because, as Noam Chomsky asserts, the Christians who are a substantial part of the conservative movement in the country want the Jewish population of Israel to be exterminated by Armageddon.  This assertion is offered because the left really has nothing else to offer in terms of the argument other than their endless hate-filled criticisms of both Israel and Christians.  In this way, they are able to dismiss the widespread support of Israel among conservatives as the ranting of religious zealots, in much the same way they’ve tried to dismiss the Tea Party by painting them as terrorists and racists. It’s their favorite smear, and the method by which they spread their madness.

This is the same basic tactic the left adopts in all matters, but if we examine only the strategic reasons to support Israel, what we find is that we arrive at the same logical conclusion:  Support of Israel is nearly as important to the security of the United States as our routine considerations in national defense.

Israel is a tiny sliver of land, and it is surrounded by enemies that do not recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist.  Those enemies will hate Israel until every inch of ground is conquered, and every Jew on the planet is exterminated.  Don’t make any mistake about it: These same villains intend the same end for all “infidels” including Christians, or any other non-Muslims, and also no small number of their fellow Muslims.  This is a fact.  Apologists are free to claim the opposite, but they aren’t free to invent their own facts.

The current meme among members of the Washington DC intelligentsia is that if only the Israelis would yield some land, and some more, peace would sweep over the region.  This is a bald-faced lie.  It offers Washington elites the opportunity to duck out and feign ignorance later, when the radical Islamists have their way with the region.  It also enables a few people on the right, with more libertarian ideas to pretend that the problems and threats the United States faces end at the water’s edge.  These naive people are dangerous in their own right, because they typically serve as tools for those who are far more malevolent in their intentions.

Israel is our only real ally in the region, despite the claptrap to the contrary, particularly with the advent of the media-lauded “Arab Spring” that has ousted a number of autocrats who we had over the years in various ways paid for their compliance.  This too is a failed policy, because in so doing, all we managed to do is alienate the populace to a certain degree and make them vulnerable to the radical militants.  This approach doesn’t improve the situation, and there is certainly some evidence that it has worsened things, but withholding payments and assistance to thugs, even those who some would term our thugs, is not the same as turning our backs on the people of Israel.

Israel is a nation with political freedoms for its citizens that approaches our own.  No nation is perfect, but Israel is the one nation in its region that permits political dissent without ultimately resorting to firing squads.  One need only examine the ruthless behavior of Assad in Syria, or Ahmedinejad in Iran to understand what sort of butchery the region routinely produces.  Israel is the exception, and it’s of paramount importance that we recognize this fact in our dealings with the Islamic world.

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that our current administration is determined to leave Israel alone and vulnerable, without even such support as the assurance of our vote in their favor on the UN security council.  This can have only one ultimate purpose, and that is to force Israel into permitting their country to be divided and partitioned, and ultimately destroyed.  We, the American people, who have rescued nations from tyranny around the globe, should never permit this. We, who arrived too late to prevent one holocaust, should do all we are able to prevent another, particularly when prevention merely requires standing firmly with our lone ally in the region.

The problem with abandoning Israel as some libertarians would have us do, and lately, as every leftist in the country seems inclined to do, is that rather than keeping us from war, it runs the ultimate risk of a global war from which we will not escape.  It is widely believed that Israel has a substantial nuclear arsenal.  If they are attacked in any way seen as an existential threat, we can expect them to employ that arsenal, and I would not blame them in the least.  The consequences of such an exchange would almost certainly ignite a worldwide conflagration to which we would become a party, in one way or another.

That sort of war would certainly threaten Americans at home, in a thorough way, not only in terms of subjecting us to actual warfare, but also crippling our nation as oil from that region slowed to a trickle.  Whatever your particular religious beliefs may or may not be is irrelevant to this discussion.  I don’t need to be a Christian or a Jew to know that murder is wrong, and the intention of mass murder is evil.  I realize we spend some money in our budget in support of Israel, but considering the alternatives available at present, it may well be a relative pittance to us when compared to the cost in blood and treasure we would pay if the situation there destabilized further, and Israel came under direct attack [again] by one or more of their neighbors.

It makes no sense to argue that we should withhold a few billion dollars in financial support of Israel in the name of thrifty government when the potential costs of a strategically unavoidable conflict in the region would exceed those relatively modest expenditures in the first few hours alone, never mind the human tragedy that would unfold.

When a leftist like Chomsky proposes the idea that Christians seek the death of Jews in an Armageddon, he’s not only lying, but also offering a psychological confession of what it is that he intends.  One needn’t be religiously motivated to see the crucial position of Israel in US strategic national security matters.  It takes only a basic regard for the facts on the ground to realize that to abandon Israel is to substantially subject ourselves to the ravages of war.

There are many Americans who possess only vague knowledge of the conflict in and around Israel.  Many of these have become convinced of the notion that “they’ve been fighting one another for thousands of years, and it’s best for us to simply leave it be.”  If you’ve fallen for this notion, is it because you’re tired of hearing about it?  Does it look too futile ever to be solved?  Do you falsely place both parties in this struggle on a plane of moral equivalence?  What motive is served by this frivolously thoughtless notion?

In Israel, there is no moral equivalence between the two.  Those who claim to be “Palestinean” are the un-assimilated children of refugees who fled the West Bank and Gaza because they believed the Jews were going to be eradicated, and they had been told to leave in order to make it easier for the advancing armies of Islamic states to attack mercilessly.  They are those who wished to collaborate in a holocaust.  The Jews who were expelled from Arab states sought their refuge in Israel.  Israel took them in and assimilated them into their population.  Why did the Arab states not pursue the same end after the cessation of hostilities?

It is on the basis of such a naive false moral equivalence that the elites in Washington DC now urge you to turn a blind eye.  As soon as you do so, they will feel comfortable in doing so also.  When and if that occurs, the results will be horrifying.  Don’t shrink from it.  Don’t attempt to disclaim responsibility.  Too many Americans of all manner of religions have attempted to warn you, and don’t be surprised when the consequences visit these shores.  It’s inevitable.  The people of Israel seek freedom in their land.  They have in graciousness followed a fools’ errand of attempting to buy peace with a portion of their lands to no good effect, but they have learned. That approach has been approximately like offering a mugger half your wallet willingly, whose gun is at your head, and actually holding out hope he will be satisfied with the half.  Once he has it, what is to prevent him from demanding the other half, if he still holds the gun?

This is why, despite attempts over the course of human history, the lesson remains firmly, stubbornly true: You cannot negotiate with terrorists.  There is no limiting factor, because if they are willing to wipe you out for some particular purpose, the moment you yield to their terror, they will understand it as weakness, and they will be willing to wipe you out for any motive that crosses their minds.

For the sake of our own country’s security, Israel matters a great deal.  Let the leftist and Islamist thugs who are now working together claim otherwise, but to follow their advice is surely to condemn not only Israel, but also our own country, to bloody disaster.  Most of us have known of the idea contained in the affirmation and oath: “Never again.”  Did we mean it, or is that mere bravado we spout for our own self-satisfaction?