Hunker Down With History

[everythingsxen]

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

This is why the Israeli-Arab war, now transformed into the Israeli-Muslim war (Iran is not an Arab state), persists and widens. It is why the conflict mutates and festers. It is why Israel is now fighting an organization, Hezbollah, that did not exist 30 years ago and why Hezbollah is being supported by a nation, Iran, that was once a tacit ally of Israel's. The underlying, subterranean hatred of the Jewish state in the Islamic world just keeps bubbling to the surface. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and some other Arab countries may condemn Hezbollah, but I doubt the proverbial man in their street shares that view.

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[Redstone]

1. And your point is?

Redstone

[everythingsxen]

2. No real point..

Just an interesting article I came across and I tend to try and strictly observe the rules regarding excerpts from articles.

:shrug:

[Redstone]

3. Sounds reasonable, but ends up stupid.

He says, in effct, that the Israelis should just learn to live with having rockets shot at them.

That's just fucking stupid. I'll bet $100 that he's never been within 5,000 miles of a rocket explosion.

Redstone

[everythingsxen]

4. *shrug*

I dunno. All in all the whole thing is a giant no-win scenario. Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend itself and it's people; on the other hand Palestine/Lebanon/Jordan/Syria have the same rights.

Meh.

I still blame the British. :shrug:

[Redstone]

5. Damn Brits are the ones who made the whole mess happen. I agree.

We need to tell THEM to go clean up after themselves.

(I really mean this, but I'm half Irish, so I may have a bit of anti-Brit prejudice.)

Redstone

[furman]

6. CAMERA.org: "Israel is a Mistake" - Is Mistaken

A response to this article from CAMERA.org, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
CAMERA is a "media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East."

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=38&x_article=1150

"Israel is a Mistake" - Is Mistaken
July 19, 2006 by Eric Rozenman

Washington Post syndicated columnist Richard Cohen asserts in his July 18 commentary "Hunker Down With History" that "Israel itself is a mistake." Historical ignorance and an appeasement mentality underlie such an assertion.

<snip>

Israel is not the embodiment of "the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians)." Rather, Israel embodies the return of the Jews, an indigenous people, to their ancestral homeland, in which some Jews always resided;

Approximately one-third of Israel's Jewish population are non-European Jews , including those who immigrated from throughout the Middle East, as well as from Ethiopia and India. Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews who led the Zionist movement and the late 19th, early 20th century resettlement of Eretz Yisrael - the land of Israel - envisioned a state for all Jews.

<snip>

The columnist observes that Hezbollah "did not exist 30 years ago" and that Iran "was once a tacit ally of Israel's." A little understanding is a dangerous thing. Hezbollah didn’t exist, but the Muslim Brotherhood, from which most Islamic terrorist groups spring, did. It began in Egypt in the 1920s, a reaction against Western influence in the Arab-Islamic world, including what it decried as America's lax moral and social standards. Will Cohen eventually agree to Islamic law here to erase the "mistake" of individual freedom?

<snip>

more at http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=38&x_article=1150

[Swede]

7. Saudi Arabia,Egypt and Jordan are Sunni.

So they aren't exactly Hezbollah's friends.