Interesting.
-------
Good By Stealth
By Tom Gross
Standpoint Mag December 2013
The media is full of stereotypes and mistakes about many issues. Yet years of experience as a foreign correspondent has led me to the conclusion that the prejudices and biases against the state of Israel are in a league of their own. There are notable exceptions, of course, but for some news outlets Israel can do no right.
Which is one reason why one of the more remarkable stories coming out of the Middle East over the last two and a half years has been largely overlooked: the bravery of Israeli doctors and civilians who have gone into war-ravaged neighbouring Syria to treat the injured, and feed and clothe refugees from all ethnic backgrounds.
Thousands of Syrian doctors have fled the country and hundreds have been killed as the Assad regime continues to bomb medical clinics as a means of terrorising population groups who oppose his government. Where they can, Israeli medics have gone in to help those few Syrian doctors still working. Other Israelis have defied the Jordanian authorities by helping Syrian refugees in that country.
Although they work independently of the Israeli government, the Israeli army has quietly supported their humanitarian actions, sometimes helping ferry them across the border. In addition to setting up field hospitals, they have brought food. The Economist pointed out in September that in Dera alone, the southern city where the anti-Assad uprising began, Israelis have distributed 300,000 meals to Syrians, as well as medication, mobile phones and chemical protection suits.
The more severely injured Syrians — particularly children — have been brought to Israel for specialised treatment, all at the expense of the Israeli government and Jewish charities. Syrians are taking a risk even entering Israel: the Syrian government makes it a crime for its citizens to go there.
One or two American news outlets have reported on the medical treatment in Israel (though not on the help being given in Syria and Jordan). In July, Jim Clancy of CNN went to the Rebecca Sieff Hospital in Safed (named after a member of the founding family of Marks & Spencer), where he noted that half of all intensive care beds were occupied by Syrian civilians wounded during the previous week alone.
In May, the New York Times reported from Nahariya Hospital in northern Israel on a three-year-old girl being given skin grafts for horrific facial injuries she sustained during a government missile attack in Syria. In the next bed, the newspaper noted, a girl, aged 12, lay in a deep sleep, having been operated on for a severe stomach wound and a hole in her back. Next to her lay another Syrian girl, 13, recovering from over a month of operations for injuries to her face, arm and leg. In Wolfson Medical Center near Tel Aviv, the life of a four-year-old Syrian girl was saved by open-heart surgery. In another hospital, a Syrian mother gave birth last month, the first Syrian born in Israel.
Although there has been hardly any coverage in British media, one Palestinian website noted: "While the Arab countries make empty promises, the Israelis have crossed the border to provide assistance to the refugees, risking their lives without a word of thank you
Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Monday, September 02, 2013
Steyn on Obama on Syria - "An Accidental War"
Excellent from Steyn. "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy."
-----
An Accidental War
National Review
August 30, 2013
By Mark Steyn
Perfunctory and ineffectual war-making in Syria is worse than nothing.
I see the Obama “reset” is going so swimmingly that the president is now threatening to go to war against a dictator who gassed his own people. Don’t worry, this isn’t anything like the dictator who gassed his own people that the discredited warmonger Bush spent 2002 and early 2003 staggering ever more punchily around the country inveighing against. The 2003 dictator who gassed his own people was the leader of the Baath Party of Iraq. The 2013 dictator who gassed his own people is the leader of the Baath Party of Syria. Whole other ball of wax. The administration’s ingenious plan is to lose this war in far less time than we usually take. In the unimprovable formulation of an unnamed official speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the White House is carefully calibrating a military action “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”
...
The problem with the American way of war is that, technologically, it can’t lose, but, in every other sense, it can’t win. No one in his right mind wants to get into a tank battle or a naval bombardment with the guys responsible for over 40 percent of the planet’s military expenditures. Which is why these days there aren’t a lot of tank battles. The consummate interventionist Robert Kagan wrote in his recent book that the American military “remains unmatched.” It’s unmatched in the sense that the only guy in town with a tennis racket isn’t going to be playing a lot of tennis matches. But the object of war, in Liddell Hart’s famous distillation, is not to destroy the enemy’s tanks (or Russian helicopters) but his will. And on that front America loses, always. The “unmatched” superpower cannot impose its will on Kabul kleptocrats, Pashtun goatherds, Egyptian generals, or Benghazi militia. There is no reason to believe Syria would be an exception to this rule. America’s inability to win ought to be a burning national question, but it’s not even being asked.
Let us stipulate that many of those war-weary masses are ignorant and myopic. But at a certain level they grasp something that their leaders don’t: For a quarter-century, from Kuwait to Kosovo to Kandahar, the civilized world has gone to war only in order to save or liberate Muslims. The Pentagon is little more than central dispatch for the U.S. military’s Muslim Fast Squad. And what do we have to show for it? Liberating Syria isn’t like liberating the Netherlands: In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy. Yes, those BBC images of schoolchildren with burning flesh are heart-rending. So we’ll get rid of Assad and install the local branch of al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or whatever plucky neophyte democrat makes it to the presidential palace first — and then, instead of napalmed schoolyards, there will be, as in Egypt, burning Christian churches and women raped for going uncovered.
So what do we want in Syria? Obama can’t say, other than for him to look muscular without being mocked, like a camp bodybuilder admiring himself in the gym mirror.
Oh, well. If the British won’t be along for the ride, the French are apparently still in. What was the old gag from a decade ago during those interminable U.N. resolutions with Chirac saying “Non!” every time? Ah, yes: “Going to war without the French is like going hunting without an accordion.” Oddly enough, the worst setback for the Islamic imperialists in recent years has been President Hollande’s intervention in Mali, where, unlike the money-no-object Pentagon, the French troops had such undernourished supply lines that they had to hitch a ride to the war on C-17 transports from the Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force. And yet they won — insofar as anyone ever really wins on that benighted sod.
Meanwhile, the hyperpower is going to war because Obama wandered off prompter and accidentally made a threat. So he has to make good on it, or America will lose its credibility. But he only wants to make good on it in a perfunctory and ineffectual way. So America will lose its credibility anyway.
Maybe it’s time to learn the accordion . . .
-----
An Accidental War
National Review
August 30, 2013
By Mark Steyn
Perfunctory and ineffectual war-making in Syria is worse than nothing.
I see the Obama “reset” is going so swimmingly that the president is now threatening to go to war against a dictator who gassed his own people. Don’t worry, this isn’t anything like the dictator who gassed his own people that the discredited warmonger Bush spent 2002 and early 2003 staggering ever more punchily around the country inveighing against. The 2003 dictator who gassed his own people was the leader of the Baath Party of Iraq. The 2013 dictator who gassed his own people is the leader of the Baath Party of Syria. Whole other ball of wax. The administration’s ingenious plan is to lose this war in far less time than we usually take. In the unimprovable formulation of an unnamed official speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the White House is carefully calibrating a military action “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”
...
The problem with the American way of war is that, technologically, it can’t lose, but, in every other sense, it can’t win. No one in his right mind wants to get into a tank battle or a naval bombardment with the guys responsible for over 40 percent of the planet’s military expenditures. Which is why these days there aren’t a lot of tank battles. The consummate interventionist Robert Kagan wrote in his recent book that the American military “remains unmatched.” It’s unmatched in the sense that the only guy in town with a tennis racket isn’t going to be playing a lot of tennis matches. But the object of war, in Liddell Hart’s famous distillation, is not to destroy the enemy’s tanks (or Russian helicopters) but his will. And on that front America loses, always. The “unmatched” superpower cannot impose its will on Kabul kleptocrats, Pashtun goatherds, Egyptian generals, or Benghazi militia. There is no reason to believe Syria would be an exception to this rule. America’s inability to win ought to be a burning national question, but it’s not even being asked.
Let us stipulate that many of those war-weary masses are ignorant and myopic. But at a certain level they grasp something that their leaders don’t: For a quarter-century, from Kuwait to Kosovo to Kandahar, the civilized world has gone to war only in order to save or liberate Muslims. The Pentagon is little more than central dispatch for the U.S. military’s Muslim Fast Squad. And what do we have to show for it? Liberating Syria isn’t like liberating the Netherlands: In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy. Yes, those BBC images of schoolchildren with burning flesh are heart-rending. So we’ll get rid of Assad and install the local branch of al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or whatever plucky neophyte democrat makes it to the presidential palace first — and then, instead of napalmed schoolyards, there will be, as in Egypt, burning Christian churches and women raped for going uncovered.
So what do we want in Syria? Obama can’t say, other than for him to look muscular without being mocked, like a camp bodybuilder admiring himself in the gym mirror.
Oh, well. If the British won’t be along for the ride, the French are apparently still in. What was the old gag from a decade ago during those interminable U.N. resolutions with Chirac saying “Non!” every time? Ah, yes: “Going to war without the French is like going hunting without an accordion.” Oddly enough, the worst setback for the Islamic imperialists in recent years has been President Hollande’s intervention in Mali, where, unlike the money-no-object Pentagon, the French troops had such undernourished supply lines that they had to hitch a ride to the war on C-17 transports from the Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force. And yet they won — insofar as anyone ever really wins on that benighted sod.
Meanwhile, the hyperpower is going to war because Obama wandered off prompter and accidentally made a threat. So he has to make good on it, or America will lose its credibility. But he only wants to make good on it in a perfunctory and ineffectual way. So America will lose its credibility anyway.
Maybe it’s time to learn the accordion . . .
Friday, March 29, 2013
Stratfor - Israel's Insightful Cynicism
Excellent analysis.
-----
Israel's Insightful Cynicism
March 27, 2013
By Robert D. Kaplan
Chief Geopolitical Analyst, Stratfor
Israel is in the process of watching a peace treaty unravel. I don't mean the one with Egypt, but the one with Syria. No, I'm not crazy. Since Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy in 1974, the Israelis have had a de facto peace agreement of sorts with the al Assad family. After all, there were clear red lines that both sides knew they shouldn't cross, as well as reasonable predictability on both sides. Forget about the uplifting rhetoric, the requirement to exchange ambassadors and the other public policy frills that normally define peace treaties. What counts in this case is that both sides observed limits and constraints, so that the contested border between them was secure. Even better, because there was no formal peace agreement in writing, neither side had to make inconvenient public and strategic concessions. Israel did not have to give up the Golan Heights, for example. And if Syria stepped over a red line in Lebanon, or say, sought a nuclear capacity as it did, Israel was free to punish it through targeted military strikes. There was usefully no peace treaty that Israel would have had to violate.
Of course, the Syrians built up a chemical arsenal and invited the Iranians all over their country and Lebanon. But no formal treaty in the real world -- given the nature of the Syrian regime -- would likely have prevented those things. In an imperfect world of naked power, the al Assads were at least tolerable. Moreover, they represented a minority sect, which prevented Syria from becoming a larger and much more powerful version of radical, Sunni Arab Gaza. In February 1993 in The Atlantic Monthly, I told readers that Syria was not a state but a writhing underworld of sectarian and ethnic divides and that the al Assads might exit the stage through an Alawite mini-state in the northwest of their country that could be quietly supported by the Israeli security services. That may yet come to pass.
Israeli political leaders may periodically tell the media that Bashar al Assad's days are numbered, but that does not necessarily mean Israelis themselves believe that is an altogether good scenario. Indeed, I strongly suspect that, for example, when the Israelis and the Russians meet, they have much in common regarding Syria. Russia is supporting the al Assad regime through arms transfers by sea and through Iraq and Iran. Israelis may see some benefits in this. Russian President Vladimir Putin may actually enjoy his meetings with Israelis -- who likely don't lecture him about human rights and the evils of the al Assad regime the way the Americans do.
True, a post-al Assad Syria may undermine Iranian influence in the Levant, which would be a great benefit to Israel, as well as to the United States. On the other hand, a post-al Assad Syria will probably be an anarchic mess in which the Iranians will skillfully back proxy guerrilla groups and still be able to move weapons around. Again, al Assad is the devil you know. And the fact that he is no longer, functionally speaking, the president of Syria but, rather, the country's leading warlord, presents challenges that Israelis would prefer not to face.
What about Hezbollah, in this admittedly cynical Israeli view? Hezbollah is not a strategic threat to Israel. Hezbollah fighters are not about to march en masse over the border into Haifa and Tiberias. Anti-missile systems like Iron Dome and David's Sling could reasonably contain the military threat from the north. Then there are Israel's bomb shelters -- a one-time only expense. Hezbollah, moreover, needs Israel. For without a powerful Israel, Hezbollah would be robbed of the existential adversary that provides Hezbollah with its immense prestige in the Lebanese political universe, making Hezbollah so much more than just another Shiite group battling Sunnis.
Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006 is known as a disaster. But it did have its positive side effects: Israel has had seven years of relative peace on its northern border, even as the war usefully exposed many inadequacies in the Israeli military and reserve system that had been building for years and were henceforth decisively repaired, making Israel stronger as a consequence.
Threats abound, truly. The collapse of the al Assad regime may lead to a weapons free-for-all -- just like in post-Gadhafi Libya -- that might force Israel to "mow the lawn" again in southern Lebanon. As for Hassan Nasrallah, the charismatic and capable Hezbollah leader, maybe he, too, is the devil you know, informally obeying red lines with Israel since 2006. Nasrallah appears to be less extreme than his deputy, Naim Qassim, who would take over if Nasrallah were ever assassinated by the Israelis, unless the Sunnis in a Lebanon and Syria thrown into utter, post-al Assad chaos assassinate him sooner.
Then there is Gaza: once again, like southern Lebanon, "mow the lawn" once or twice a decade, though this might be harder in a post-Arab Spring geopolitical environment because of the greater danger of unhinging Israeli-Egyptian relations. Still, in Gaza there is no existential threat, nor a real solution, regardless of what the diplomats say. Idealists in the West talk about peace; realists inside Israel talk about spacing out limited wars by enough years so that Israeli society can continue to thrive in the meantime. As one highly placed Israeli security analyst explained to me, the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean have periodic hurricanes. After each one, people rebuild, even as they are aware that a decade or so down the road there will be another hurricane. Israel's wars are like that, he said.
Presently a real underlying worry for Israel appears to be Jordan. Yes, King Abdullah has so far expertly manipulated the growing unrest there, but to speculate about the collapse of the Hashemite dynasty is only prudent. More anarchy. More reason to heed Ariel Sharon's analysis of four decades ago to the effect that Jordan is the real Palestinian state, more so than the West Bank. And because Jordan and Saudi Arabia could conceivably unravel in coming decades, maybe Israel should seek to avoid attacking Iran -- which along with Israel is the only real state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Iranian Plateau. Iran may have a repulsive regime, but its society is probably healthier than most in the Arab world. So there is some hope.
You get the picture. Israel had a convenient situation for decades, surrounded as it was by stable Arab dictatorships. Israel could promote itself as the region's only real democracy, even as it quietly depended on the likes of Hosni Mubarak, the al Assad clan and the Hashemites to ensure order and more-or-less few surprises. Now dictators are falling and anarchy is on the rise. Fighting state armies of the kind that the Arab dictators built in wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 was simpler compared totoday's wars: Because the Arabs never really believed in their dysfunctional states, they didn't always fight very well in state-organized formations. But sub-state militaries like Hezbollah and Hamas have been more of a challenge. In the old days, Israel could destroy an Egyptian air force on the ground and solve its security dilemma in the south. Nowadays, to repeat, there are no solutions for Israel: only sub-state adversaries that hide among civilian concentrations in order to attack your own civilian concentrations. No peace ever, therefore, just periodic wars, hopefully spaced-out.
The Middle East today has turned out perfectly if you are a Jewish West Bank settler. The divisions within Palestinian ranks, coupled with the increasing anarchy of the Arab world, mean the opportunities for territorial concessions on Israel's part have diminished. In fact, Israel's only option may be more unilateral withdrawals. That is probably the only thing the settlers have to worry about.
But the Zionist dream lives on. Jerusalem and much of the rest of Israel are thriving. Light rail and pedestrian walkways make Jerusalem more vibrant than ever. The Arabs in the Old City survive well -- under the circumstances, that is -- on the "Jewish" side of the "fence," where the standard of living and quality of life is so much better than on the Arab side. The "fence" is both a monstrosity in abstract moralistic terms and a practical solution in an age of repeated diplomatic failure and fewer and fewer diplomatic opportunities. From 28 percent of the gross domestic product in the mid-1970s, Israeli military spending is down to between 6 and 8 percent of the country's GDP. Life is good in Israel. The unemployment rate is lower than in the United States and Europe, despite high housing costs and the need for reform in health care and education. One could argue that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- so vilified in the West -- has not handled the economy altogether badly.
But what about idealism? What about a better, more humane Middle East? What about the wise and talented statesmen who periodically see opportunities where others see none? What about slowing down Israel's drift to a quasi-Apartheid society, characterized by Israeli domination of the more numerous Arabs and something certainly not in Israel's interest? These are all real things to constantly keep in mind and to struggle for. But the Levant remains a zero-sum struggle for physical survival. So it is a place where there will always be benefits to dealing with strong dictators. Given their geographical circumstances, Israelis can be forgiven their cynicism.
-----
Israel's Insightful Cynicism
March 27, 2013
By Robert D. Kaplan
Chief Geopolitical Analyst, Stratfor
Israel is in the process of watching a peace treaty unravel. I don't mean the one with Egypt, but the one with Syria. No, I'm not crazy. Since Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy in 1974, the Israelis have had a de facto peace agreement of sorts with the al Assad family. After all, there were clear red lines that both sides knew they shouldn't cross, as well as reasonable predictability on both sides. Forget about the uplifting rhetoric, the requirement to exchange ambassadors and the other public policy frills that normally define peace treaties. What counts in this case is that both sides observed limits and constraints, so that the contested border between them was secure. Even better, because there was no formal peace agreement in writing, neither side had to make inconvenient public and strategic concessions. Israel did not have to give up the Golan Heights, for example. And if Syria stepped over a red line in Lebanon, or say, sought a nuclear capacity as it did, Israel was free to punish it through targeted military strikes. There was usefully no peace treaty that Israel would have had to violate.
Of course, the Syrians built up a chemical arsenal and invited the Iranians all over their country and Lebanon. But no formal treaty in the real world -- given the nature of the Syrian regime -- would likely have prevented those things. In an imperfect world of naked power, the al Assads were at least tolerable. Moreover, they represented a minority sect, which prevented Syria from becoming a larger and much more powerful version of radical, Sunni Arab Gaza. In February 1993 in The Atlantic Monthly, I told readers that Syria was not a state but a writhing underworld of sectarian and ethnic divides and that the al Assads might exit the stage through an Alawite mini-state in the northwest of their country that could be quietly supported by the Israeli security services. That may yet come to pass.
Israeli political leaders may periodically tell the media that Bashar al Assad's days are numbered, but that does not necessarily mean Israelis themselves believe that is an altogether good scenario. Indeed, I strongly suspect that, for example, when the Israelis and the Russians meet, they have much in common regarding Syria. Russia is supporting the al Assad regime through arms transfers by sea and through Iraq and Iran. Israelis may see some benefits in this. Russian President Vladimir Putin may actually enjoy his meetings with Israelis -- who likely don't lecture him about human rights and the evils of the al Assad regime the way the Americans do.
True, a post-al Assad Syria may undermine Iranian influence in the Levant, which would be a great benefit to Israel, as well as to the United States. On the other hand, a post-al Assad Syria will probably be an anarchic mess in which the Iranians will skillfully back proxy guerrilla groups and still be able to move weapons around. Again, al Assad is the devil you know. And the fact that he is no longer, functionally speaking, the president of Syria but, rather, the country's leading warlord, presents challenges that Israelis would prefer not to face.
What about Hezbollah, in this admittedly cynical Israeli view? Hezbollah is not a strategic threat to Israel. Hezbollah fighters are not about to march en masse over the border into Haifa and Tiberias. Anti-missile systems like Iron Dome and David's Sling could reasonably contain the military threat from the north. Then there are Israel's bomb shelters -- a one-time only expense. Hezbollah, moreover, needs Israel. For without a powerful Israel, Hezbollah would be robbed of the existential adversary that provides Hezbollah with its immense prestige in the Lebanese political universe, making Hezbollah so much more than just another Shiite group battling Sunnis.
Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006 is known as a disaster. But it did have its positive side effects: Israel has had seven years of relative peace on its northern border, even as the war usefully exposed many inadequacies in the Israeli military and reserve system that had been building for years and were henceforth decisively repaired, making Israel stronger as a consequence.
Threats abound, truly. The collapse of the al Assad regime may lead to a weapons free-for-all -- just like in post-Gadhafi Libya -- that might force Israel to "mow the lawn" again in southern Lebanon. As for Hassan Nasrallah, the charismatic and capable Hezbollah leader, maybe he, too, is the devil you know, informally obeying red lines with Israel since 2006. Nasrallah appears to be less extreme than his deputy, Naim Qassim, who would take over if Nasrallah were ever assassinated by the Israelis, unless the Sunnis in a Lebanon and Syria thrown into utter, post-al Assad chaos assassinate him sooner.
Then there is Gaza: once again, like southern Lebanon, "mow the lawn" once or twice a decade, though this might be harder in a post-Arab Spring geopolitical environment because of the greater danger of unhinging Israeli-Egyptian relations. Still, in Gaza there is no existential threat, nor a real solution, regardless of what the diplomats say. Idealists in the West talk about peace; realists inside Israel talk about spacing out limited wars by enough years so that Israeli society can continue to thrive in the meantime. As one highly placed Israeli security analyst explained to me, the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean have periodic hurricanes. After each one, people rebuild, even as they are aware that a decade or so down the road there will be another hurricane. Israel's wars are like that, he said.
Presently a real underlying worry for Israel appears to be Jordan. Yes, King Abdullah has so far expertly manipulated the growing unrest there, but to speculate about the collapse of the Hashemite dynasty is only prudent. More anarchy. More reason to heed Ariel Sharon's analysis of four decades ago to the effect that Jordan is the real Palestinian state, more so than the West Bank. And because Jordan and Saudi Arabia could conceivably unravel in coming decades, maybe Israel should seek to avoid attacking Iran -- which along with Israel is the only real state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Iranian Plateau. Iran may have a repulsive regime, but its society is probably healthier than most in the Arab world. So there is some hope.
You get the picture. Israel had a convenient situation for decades, surrounded as it was by stable Arab dictatorships. Israel could promote itself as the region's only real democracy, even as it quietly depended on the likes of Hosni Mubarak, the al Assad clan and the Hashemites to ensure order and more-or-less few surprises. Now dictators are falling and anarchy is on the rise. Fighting state armies of the kind that the Arab dictators built in wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 was simpler compared totoday's wars: Because the Arabs never really believed in their dysfunctional states, they didn't always fight very well in state-organized formations. But sub-state militaries like Hezbollah and Hamas have been more of a challenge. In the old days, Israel could destroy an Egyptian air force on the ground and solve its security dilemma in the south. Nowadays, to repeat, there are no solutions for Israel: only sub-state adversaries that hide among civilian concentrations in order to attack your own civilian concentrations. No peace ever, therefore, just periodic wars, hopefully spaced-out.
The Middle East today has turned out perfectly if you are a Jewish West Bank settler. The divisions within Palestinian ranks, coupled with the increasing anarchy of the Arab world, mean the opportunities for territorial concessions on Israel's part have diminished. In fact, Israel's only option may be more unilateral withdrawals. That is probably the only thing the settlers have to worry about.
But the Zionist dream lives on. Jerusalem and much of the rest of Israel are thriving. Light rail and pedestrian walkways make Jerusalem more vibrant than ever. The Arabs in the Old City survive well -- under the circumstances, that is -- on the "Jewish" side of the "fence," where the standard of living and quality of life is so much better than on the Arab side. The "fence" is both a monstrosity in abstract moralistic terms and a practical solution in an age of repeated diplomatic failure and fewer and fewer diplomatic opportunities. From 28 percent of the gross domestic product in the mid-1970s, Israeli military spending is down to between 6 and 8 percent of the country's GDP. Life is good in Israel. The unemployment rate is lower than in the United States and Europe, despite high housing costs and the need for reform in health care and education. One could argue that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- so vilified in the West -- has not handled the economy altogether badly.
But what about idealism? What about a better, more humane Middle East? What about the wise and talented statesmen who periodically see opportunities where others see none? What about slowing down Israel's drift to a quasi-Apartheid society, characterized by Israeli domination of the more numerous Arabs and something certainly not in Israel's interest? These are all real things to constantly keep in mind and to struggle for. But the Levant remains a zero-sum struggle for physical survival. So it is a place where there will always be benefits to dealing with strong dictators. Given their geographical circumstances, Israelis can be forgiven their cynicism.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Murray on 'dual-loyalty' Brits joining the anti-Assad jihad
In a thought-provoking piece, Murray challenges the assumption that those Brits who are flying off to Syria to fight Assad are likely to be the kind of people we should be praising.
Who Would You Fight For?
Gatestone Institute
by Douglas Murray
October 18, 2012
...
During the civil war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, every side committed some variety of atrocities on the others. The worst, in brutality as well as numbers, were committed by Serbs, but, as in any civil war, nobody came away clean. To say that everybody did bad things is not to claim that everybody was equally guilty. But run the following thought around: It is early in the Balkan conflict. You are a British citizen. You happen to be a Christian and you are also – though this may not necessarily play a part – pale-skinned. Let us imagine that you have heard clear word of violence against Christian Serbs in parts of the former Yugoslavia. Or fast-forward two decades and say that this same person becomes aware of the suffering of Christians in Syria amid the recent violence. None of these parallels is exact, but then none ever is exact.
But what would we think of a person who in the 1990s had seen violence against Serbs in the nascent civil war and decided to go off and fight with – and for – them? What would we think if they then explained their reason for doing so as being that their "white, Christian, brothers were suffering, that being a bystander while such suffering went on was intolerable and that they and their kind needed to come to their aid"?
My own response would be that the person in question was clearly some very nasty variety of sectarian. Presumably a religious sectarian, though if the person referred clearly to some common heritage, let alone skin-pigmentation, then I might easily presume that they were also a nasty racist. My expectation then, as now, would be that the press would not regard them as being people of any honor. Certainly people would not write of their efforts with any kind of admiration – either sublimated or overt.
...
Who Would You Fight For?
Gatestone Institute
by Douglas Murray
October 18, 2012
...
During the civil war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, every side committed some variety of atrocities on the others. The worst, in brutality as well as numbers, were committed by Serbs, but, as in any civil war, nobody came away clean. To say that everybody did bad things is not to claim that everybody was equally guilty. But run the following thought around: It is early in the Balkan conflict. You are a British citizen. You happen to be a Christian and you are also – though this may not necessarily play a part – pale-skinned. Let us imagine that you have heard clear word of violence against Christian Serbs in parts of the former Yugoslavia. Or fast-forward two decades and say that this same person becomes aware of the suffering of Christians in Syria amid the recent violence. None of these parallels is exact, but then none ever is exact.
But what would we think of a person who in the 1990s had seen violence against Serbs in the nascent civil war and decided to go off and fight with – and for – them? What would we think if they then explained their reason for doing so as being that their "white, Christian, brothers were suffering, that being a bystander while such suffering went on was intolerable and that they and their kind needed to come to their aid"?
My own response would be that the person in question was clearly some very nasty variety of sectarian. Presumably a religious sectarian, though if the person referred clearly to some common heritage, let alone skin-pigmentation, then I might easily presume that they were also a nasty racist. My expectation then, as now, would be that the press would not regard them as being people of any honor. Certainly people would not write of their efforts with any kind of admiration – either sublimated or overt.
...
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