Israel’s Prospects Have Never Been Brighter
As Arab Spring Fades Into Winter of Discontent
By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun
Up until the mid-1960s, when I was young, the television news and airwaves at this time of year were full of references to the “Holy Land.” There were endless melodious carols and much sacred music portraying cities such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and many other geographic names such as the Jordan River, and even Babylon, in sanctified tones, as quiet, spiritual places. Of course, decades of bloodshed, terrorism, and confected and orchestrated sectarian hatred have engulfed the region since those days and have diluted those Christmas time references and altered the tenor of seasonal comment.
After the freshet of euphoric early responses to the so-called Arab Spring, it has become fashionable to wring hands and declaim the dire challenges to Israel. The usual sources of placatory advice for the Jewish state cranked up to maximum volume as Tom Friedman and his benign but rather predictable ilk warned the Israeli government to stop building settlements and put out a conciliatory peace proposal to the Arab powers before the Muslim Brotherhood took over in Cairo. There appears to be a widespread consensus that Israel’s position has never been more precarious, especially in the light of Turkey’s recent belligerent posturings and abandonment of its longstanding kindly disposition toward the Jewish state.
It is a proverbially tumultuous area, and predictions about the Middle East are extremely hazardous, but I think that Israel’s prospects have never been brighter. The Arab powers are in complete disarray within and among each other. The Islamists may be gaining ground but all indications are that the Arab masses are finally becoming more skeptical about the endless recourse to the red herring of Israel by their leaders to distract them from the despotism and misrule that has been imposed upon them by theocracies and secular states alike throughout the post-colonial era.
Even if the Islamists shoulder aside the military in Egypt, only the military could return to a war policy against Israel and the Egyptian army won’t do it. The hotheads can burn the Israeli flag in Tahrir Square in Cairo and even sack the Israeli embassy as they started to do last month, but no one is taking Egypt back to war with Israel.
President Assad of Syria cannot survive as the absolute ruler of that country. The sequential litmus tests of this sort of discontent are: Will the regime order that live ammunition be fired at the people? (The shah and Mubartrak failed this test.) Will the order be carried out? (Ceausescu failed this test and they shot him instead.) And if it is carried out, will it subdue the unrest? Assad, like Qadaffi, is failing this test.
There are steady defections from the Syrian army, pressures from the Arab league, which is always ineffectual but is something of a weather vane, and the Syrian army is incapable of silencing discontent as Assad’s father did with the wholesale murder of thousands of his countrymen with chemical weapons. The enfeeblement of Syria will weaken Hezbollah and Hamas, and fray the supply line from Iran, and reduce pressure on Israel.
The Palestinian attempt at United Nations membership has failed; the claimed community of interest between Hamas and the PLO is a Swiss cheese, the ultimate quarrel among thieves; West Bank prosperity continues to increase and violence in Israel is at a recent historic low. There have been large oil and natural gas discoveries just offshore in Israel; the problems of Europe are in distinct contrast to Israel’s sharply rising levels of prosperity and economic growth. And the new state of South Sudan is decrying Arab racism, and Muslim racism generally against black peoples, and has cracked the solidarity of the Arab-led claque in international organizations which has turned many of those organizations into Israel-bashing fronts. It is setting up its embassy in Israel in Jerusalem.
No Arab country has stable political institutions, and none of the non-oil producing Arab states can generate any serious economic growth. After the usual posturing and primping, this fact will take hold in Egypt. The agitation about settlements is nonsense. Israel demonstrated in Sinai and in Gaza that it is prepared to uproot settlers for peace. This is just another episode in the protracted Arab canard about trading an instantly revocable peace for irretrievable Israeli concessions of land. Israel should just continue to prosper and build its economy, and not negotiate with any entity that does not accept at the outset the right to exist of the Jewish state, albeit with borders still to be defined precisely.
Except perhaps for the demented genocidal ravings from Tehran, which may have to await a new administration in Washington to receive the abatement it requires, the rest of Muslim sabre-rattling against Israel is just histrionics. Turkey won’t send anymore ships to Palestine, and nothing will happen in the Arab world until some of the Arab countries, like the Eastern Muslims (Indonesia and Malaysia), develop some capacity for self-government, generate economic growth, and start to bootstrap themselves out of underdevelopment, as East and South Asia and most of Latin America have been doing.
References to the Holy Land are rare. And Christmas carols and sacred music that celebrate wondrous events and saintly people in the Biblical lands may hit a wall of momentary implausibility. But more purposeful hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers” still resonate well.
So does Hatikvah.
I wish all readers a happy 2012.
LONG LIVE ISRAEL!!!!
Ditto!!!
Amen!
Nice article!! I love the optimism. Having a can do attitude is generally the first step to success.
How does the ol’ jailbird stay plugged in to current events as well as he does?
He has much less to distract him!
Being in jail does is irrelevant. He is serving time for a conviction of a crime. His arguments on this issue must be viewed objectively and not coloured by his status. His crime has nothing to do with the subject he is writing about. And on that he is articulate and right on the mark. He is to be applauded for not losing any of that ability while serving his sentence. He is spot on
Conrad Black has his sights set in the right direction. He has come out of jail with his flag flying high and his optimistic
outlook is infectious. Most encuraging
Thank God for clear-thinkers like Black who have not become shills for Islamofascism.
Happy New Year to all!
I couldn’t agree more. Israel should expedite the development of all resources;
build up the West Bank area; take the offensive economically in all areas; take
the demeanor of a Nation that is confident and in control of it’s destiny. Israel
is not a defeated nation. The Arab Spring revolts should jump-start Israel’s resolve
with a little help from their friends. You don’t put the welfare of your people up to
a “Vote” by those who would destroy you. You attack the problem!! KNOW YOU’RE HISTORY.
A cautionary note. As fundamentalist extremists increase their power and extend their reach and support among the Arabs, the odds for increased terror against Israel and the West also increase. I do hope my pessimism about the majority of Arabs wanting to further regress and slide into more violence is exaggerated or unfounded. Anyway, best wishes for 2012.
Alex
The moral clarity and courage of South Sudan puts the west to shame.
The question is, now that Oslo is technically breached, should Israel have any negotiations which discuss giving up land to a “palestinian” entity or should it completely rethink. I think Israel should annul Oslo, extend sovereignty to the west bank, expel the PLO and their militias (who arrived from Tunisia by way of oslo accords), and open discussion only on completing the other side of the exchange of populations which began with the Jews fleeing arab countries. The re-settlement of the west bankers in Jordan or Gaza would address the Jewish refugees who fled, if this issue is not demanded to be addressed the Jews will always be swindled using double standards.
G-d bless Conrad Black for his ongoing support of Israel which
is continually supported through his intellectual approach
to writing about our homeland and continuing kudos to
Ted Belman for making such articles widely available.
SNG
I hate to rain on this parade, but I think Black’s optimism does nothing to help the cause of Israel, or Jews more generally. In fact I believe that Black’s optimism, but more especially the positive reaction we can see in the comments above, is indicative of a rather serious psychological pathology, one that routinely gets large multitudes of Jews killed.
The way to defend the Jewish people is to focus on the dangers, and find practical solutions. This (naturally) requires pessimism. The “optimists” got a lot of people killed in WWII. I feel so strongly about this that I have published an article-length reply to Conrad Black’s nonsense:
“Optimism is dangerous: Israelis, and Jews more generally, are better served by healthy pessimism”; Historical and Investigative Research; 29 December 2011; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/optimism_is_dangerous.htm
Francisco,
Fortunately, your article has been posted here; and unfortunately, the response is as bad as that to Black’s original article. The majority of posters on Israpundit are not “optimists”; they are delusional; and anyone who does not share their delusions is promptly labeled as an “antisemite”. It’s as the Christian apostle said, “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape;” and as Yarmiyahu was thrown into the pit at the order of double-minded King Zedekiah, who was afraid of his ministers who refused to hear the prophet, so is the case today. Thank you, however, for your sober assessment.
As much as one can rationalise external dangers, Israel is at the present time as much at risk from internal strife. Equality between the sexes cannot be questioned within a democracy and the behaviour of the ultra-orthodox puts them on par with the muslims we decry.
Apparently you are guided by the MSM. Or he MSM controllers. But we are not precisely willing to accept hits passing as interest on “equality”.
There is no difference between sexes rights in Israel. It does not take the proverbial rocket scientist to see who is the President of the Supreme Court here or who is the Parliament opposition leader, just to mention two examples and that after having had Golda as Prime Minister. Women Generals, women Nobel Prize winners, etc.
Pray tell us how many women Presidents has the US had? Would you like us to expand of this? because we can Michelle.
Having been a Senior-Fellow Engineer US DoD military avionic programs made me privy to many other precious US peculiarities regarding women discrimination. Do we want that to be spread a bit?
We could you know.
And while you are at it, could you tell us how you people feel about the 482 “Indian” Reservations still underfoot of the US Ministry of the Interior? I visited many of them and could relate to the audiences some juicy tidbits. Do we need to gon into it?
Are the Hamish life styles changing to meet some of the pseudo democratic cockoo’s standards? I doubt that very much. I lived very near the Lancaster to Ohio Hamish sectors.
The fact that a few extreme Orthodox Jews did stupid, abhorrent things does not even remotely compare to the vicious linkeage your insert in your comment and that intend to take on up front.
I am not going to allow suave make believe posturing like yours hiding sinister intents.
Are you comparing the actions of a few isolated but not murderous individuals with what Iran does or what Saudi Arabia acts against anyone not Moslem, etc?
Please thread carefully and do not offend our intelligence.
Basically mind your own business because you people have vastly more things to clean up that we have here.