World to Israel: surrender, already!

Now that Israeli bombs started raining on Hamas in Gaza, the world has sprang into "action": there are condemnations, calls for a "ceasefire" from world leaders, even demonstrations (yes, in Europe, too - big surprise, huh?) in support of the Palestinians. The "world" had been conspicuously silent when Hamas were firing rockets into towns and villages in Israel. Never mind, that those rackets were clearly intended to hit anything and anybody: children, hospitals, schools, homes. Hamas did not even try to pretend, let alone make an actual effort, to aim at military targets. (Of course, the "world" understands that: after all, these are crude rockets, a far cry from the sophisticated weapons in Israel's possessions. The Palestinians can't be held to the same standard, can they? It's like when a maniac runs into a preschool while being chased by police, and starts swinging a chair. He cracks the skulls of a few kids, but then the police open fire trying to kill the guy, and a bullet hits a kid in the leg. Wouldn't you expect the maniac to walk free while the policeman would be dragged through courts and spend years in prison for shooting a child? That's a normal state of affairs in Western societies, the standard way of thinking about such things. )

Just like the US after September 11, Israel is making the grave mistake of responding to terror, of hitting back. That's when the paper-thin veneer of sympathy evaporates, replaced by outrage and by a steady stream of media interviews with assorted "experts", who tell us that this is only going to make matters worse. It will make the terrorists stronger, increase the anger in the muslim world, blah, blah, blah. What's the alternative? The experts don't really say, but one can guess that they would like to say, "Give in, do what they want, and hope for the best. The only way to deal with terrorists is to appease them. They will win, no matter what. Stop wasting your energy fighting them."

In the case of Isreal, giving Hamas what it wants means that the Jews would all have to pack and move out, leaving Isreal to Palestinians. What sane society would agree to follow that kind of advice? This is all the more infuriating that were the Palestinians to overrun Isreal and commit genocide, it would most likely draw only timid verbal condemnations from the world, mild in comaparison to the outrage generated were an Isreali plane to drop a bomb on a school in Gaza by mistake. Now we keep hearing complaints about a "disproportionate" response byIsreal. What would be the "proportionate" response? If the Israel fired rockets indiscrimantely into Gaza, without any pay attention to what they hit? Oh, this would be decried as a barbaric act, a medieval "eye for an eye", so unbecoming of a modern, democratic  state. In other words, no matter what you do, you are always in the wrong. Lesson: do what you think is right and don't give a damn about the world's opinion.

War dividends

I know it is going to sound cynical, because there is a lot of human tragedy underneath all this, but the war in Iraq and the mess in the Middle East have produced a number of benefits for the United States (and for the rest of the world, to some extent). To name just the big ones:

1. Re-igniting the ancient feud between the Shia and the Sunni. As long as they keep duking it out amongst themselves, they will have less energy and resources left to dish it out to the Great Satan. Similarly with the other various factions: Hamas vs. Fatah in Palestine, Hizbollah in Lebabon. The rest of the world is much better off when the murderous attention of muslims is focused inward.


2. With Iran now scaring its Sunni neighbors shiiteless (or should it be "shiiteful"?), they are looking to the US as the only stabilizing force capable of keeping the deranged Iranian leadership in check. The Europeans have proved (yet again) completely helpless, and Bush is sending signal after signal that he's not going to lift a finger against Iran - one can only imagine the sense of vulnerability of countries like Saudi Arabia.


3. The fairly dramatic rise in oil prices apparently had negligible effect on the US economy, which is remarkably strong. While the higher prices were a huge windfall to the oil-producing countries, they also - and more importantly - demonstrated that the global economy is not as vulnerable to disruption coming from the Middle East as it appeared to be in the seventies. If the interest in alternative energy sources is sustained and leads to technological innovation and consumer adoption, this vulnerability will be reduced even further, to the point when (as Spengler points out in his piece), sudden disappearance of the entire Middle East may well go unnoticed.


4. If Abu Ghraib was such a public relations nightmare for the United States, imagine what the relentless carnage unleashed on innocent civilians by assorted islamic fanatics must be doing to their image in the world, including the so-called "Arab street". One would have to be completely brain dead not to feel a profound cognitive and emotional distress upon being relentlessly bombarded by news of muslims slaughtering other muslims by busload, while the "infidels" are emerging relatively unscathed from the bloodbath.


5. The power that the United States now solely wields on the global stage only increased, with many countries - including the enemies of the US - now realizing what mayhem would be unleashed if the only superpower were to disengage from the world. If we withdrew from Iraq next week, the brutal slaughter that would engulf that country would be on par with the Rwandan genocide.

Hopeless but not serious

A blunt, honest look at the irrelevance of the Middle East's instability for the rest of the world:

 "The economic significance of the Shi'ites of Iraq and Lebanon is negligible; the Palestinians represent a net drain on the world economy, as consumers of subsidies. If space aliens were to transport all of them to another planet Tuesday next, world markets would not notice." (Spengler in Asia Times)

Acting crazy

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway quotes an Autralian newspaper's report that "Israel threatened to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh if Hamas militants did not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed.", and calls it "stupid beyond belief".

I’m afraid that this (the report) is a canard, but boy, do I wish it were true! It is high time for Israel (and for the US for that matter), to start behaving a bit more irresponsibly, if not outright crazy in this war. World’s sympathy? Screw it! It ended for us soon after it became clear after 9/11 that the US would not roll over and die, but intends to punch back. Oh, the outrage! The condemnations! Israel should borrow a page from the playbook by that nutcase, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and start talking about wiping Palestine off the map, or nuking Tehran. Apparently, he gets results, with the Europeans offering a “package of incentives” so that Iran does not build The Bomb. How about a nice package of incentives from the Arab countries for not hanging a big mushroom cloud over Mecca?
You can’t get the attention of fanatical killers by playing nice. They’ve been chopping people’s heads in front of video cameras, and the world gets upset because American soldiers - the savages! - photographed naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and play-acted electrocution. If the world is going to hate the Jews and the Americans anyway, why not at least give them good reasons?