Another must read contributed by Mike Walker, USMC Colonel (retired)
Comments on a dubious e-mail
All,
You are familiar with all manner of bunk communicated via e-mail. Received the same probably spurious e-mail from two friends today but felt it was worth sending on a few words in reply. It dealt with Israel, the New York Times, and Islam. In a nutshell, it posited that the problem facing Israel is Islam.
Is Islam the primary ‘problem’ facing Israel? I argue no. Anti-Semitism is more accurate but still wanting and neither term explains the essential support of the political left in the West. We need to look carefully at some of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict to get a better understanding.
During the first decades following the birth of the State of Israel the bordering regimes and organizations fighting to destroy Israel were overwhelmingly both secular socialists and Arab nationalists. This, over time, made them attractive to the western left especially after the Cold War put Israel squarely in the western camp.
That is the critical fact in understanding why so many in the left in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere are so vehemently anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian today.
Starting in the 1970’s, the violent radical left (Rote Armee Faktion (RAF) in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, Japanese Red Army, etc) were all brothers and sisters in arms against Israel. The RAF trained in the Middle East (to include Saddam's Iraq) under the sponsorship of Palestinian terrorist groups and they coordinated their attacks (recall the hijackings carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization designed to free RAF prisoners in German jails). The Japanese Red Army was actually formed in Lebanon not Japan and its leader was also a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Their shared opinion on religion was that it was an archaic opiate of the masses à la Marx. Islam played no role for the radical left, Arab or otherwise, yet the goal, the destruction of the State of Israel, remained unchanged from that of the 1940’s and 1950’s.
These radicals have long been romanticized as heroes by too many on the left both here and abroad. That means that a pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli policy is de rigueur in those circles today. If you are an authentic leftist then you must oppose the State of Israel and you must take up the Palestinian cause. There are, however, contradictory forces working away at the ranks in the left that make this issue more controversial and offers a hint to a different outcome in the future.
The main contradictory force came to life with the rise of the Islamic theocracy movement that began in Iran in 1979 under the Shi'a ayatollahs that sent shock waves throughout the Islamic world. This gave rise to bin Laden as a leader in a Sunni counterrevolutionary movement and re-legitimized the Sunni theocracy philosophy preached by the Muslim Brotherhood.
It created an endless friction point for the far left that abhors the concept of God, religion, and the male-dominated culture associated with radical Islam. This works to weaken the decades-old and unquestioning support of the Palestinian cause and rejection of the State of Israel by the left.
The second is the inescapable fact that there are millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians at the same place. Neither is going to go away and somehow both need a state. That is the legitimate argument that strengthens the left in its anti-Israeli crusade yet causes a dilemma regarding the fate of the citizens of Israel except for the most extreme and genocidal of their brethren.
The final force at work is the old adage 'My enemy's enemy is my friend.' Both the hard left in the West and the Islamist radicals hate the capitalist democratic system. As it stands today, both are more than ready to hold their respective noses and grasp the hand of the other in common cause against the free-market West. But that begs the question, what will happen if the common enemy is removed? As Hobbes put it, life during that ensuing civil war will be nasty, brutish, and short.
It is true that Islam plays a greater role today than at any other time in the ranks of those bent on destroying Israel but as the historical record shows it has never been a necessary and sufficient condition to seek that destruction.
Semper Fi,
Mike
