Thursday, September 09, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
The American debacle in Afghanistan is
bad for America, and bad for Europe. The jihadists of the Middle
East have received a huge gift of military equipment. They may even
receive “humanitarian aid” from the US, in return for releasing some of the
Americans still in Afghanistan. The Americans may call it aid,
but everyone knows it is ransom for the release of hostages.
Psychologically, this is a massive boost to Islamic militants
everywhere. Their belief that Allah is on their side has been
confirmed. While I am probably too old to see them marching into the Vatican, unless
present trends are reversed, my children probably will. Maybe they
will find our Menorah, the one that Titus looted from the Temple in
Jerusalem in 70 CE.
America’s defeat is also bad for Israel, and not just because of the
American-made arms that the Taliban is selling to Iran and to
every swaggering group of savages who believe they have a divine
mandate to loot and rape. Even before the disaster in Afghanistan,
the forces of jihad here have been feeling the wind of history at
their backs, and have become drunk with their power to make demands
and have them met by a government which is always willing to choose,
as Churchill said, dishonor over war – and which, like Britain under
Chamberlain, got war anyway.
So when six murderous terrorists from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) and Fatah organizations escaped from an Israeli prison on
Monday, their parent organizations threatened violence. Hamas, apparently
feeling left out, also made threats of escalation and launched incendiary balloons across the
border. The tension has been growing for the past
few weeks, as Hamas makes demands for loosening of restrictions on
the entry of building materials and financial aid from Qatar, and
Israel tries vainly to satisfy them with concessions.
Recently, Israel agreed to “loan” the Palestinian
Authority about $150 million, in order to “strengthen the PA
against Hamas.” This is a strange “loan:” the source of the money is
about $186 million of funds that were collected by Israel on behalf
of the Palestinian Authority, for Palestinian taxes on imports that
pass through Israeli ports. Israel, however, withheld the money from
the PA because of an Israeli law that forbids transferring money as
long as it is used to pay stipends to imprisoned terrorists or the
families of “martyrs.” The Palestinians have refused to stop paying
their heroes, so the transfer is called a “loan” in order to
bypass the law. Wrap your head around that.
I know, it’s complicated. There is the PIJ, there is Hamas, and
there is the Fatah-dominated PLO which in effect constitutes the PA.
But here’s a rule to make it simpler: they are all waging jihad
(even Fatah, which is officially secular), they are all deploying
terrorists against us, and they are all dedicated to the idea that
if they kill enough Jews the rest of us will pick up and go back to
Poland, or wherever they believe we come from.
The new government is not quite as dysfunctional as the preceding
one, but because of the inclusion of left-wing parties and even an
Arab Islamist party – that’s right, a party whose ideology is that
Israel should be ruled according to the principles of Islamic sharia
is part of Israel’s governing coalition – it seems to be
unable to deal with the escalating chutzpah of its Palestinian
enemies.
The Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, is someone with a solid
right-wing ideology, at least he has always expressed himself as
such, but I believe that he is not able to call the shots in a
government whose majority is center-left and left. Incidentally, and
I know I will get a lot of objections to this, I think he is a
courageous person who has sacrificed his political career – I doubt
that his party will even get into the Knesset in the next election –
to extricate the country from an endless series of elections and
caretaker governments. The present situation is not good, but it was
worse before. For this, I am grateful to him.
But now is not the time for concessions. America is leaving the
Middle East, starting with Obama’s tacit decision to allow Iran to
get nuclear weapons (as long as the breakout happens after his
presidency), continuing through his inaction when Bashar al-Assad
crossed his “red line” by using chemical weapons, and now being
concluded by the empty suit in the White House. It should be clear
to every American ally in the region, especially Israel, that it is
impossible to count on support from America. Of course Israel
doesn’t need American troops to fight for it, or even military
advisors. But political developments in America make it uncertain if
it will continue to support Israel diplomatically, with military
aid, or even by selling her weapons for cash.
I don’t want to be even more negative than I have to be, but there
is a fundamental cultural instability in America that seems to be
becoming more intense with time. I suspect that Americans will soon
be concerned more with their own personal security, even their
physical safety, than anything else. Maybe it looks worse from here
than it is, but I visualize it as an engine revved far beyond its
redline, and holding there. At any moment it will fly apart.
We are living at a major historical inflection point, with America
withdrawing her influence everywhere. Unfortunately the
beneficiaries of this are Iran and the Islamists of all stripes, as
well as the totalitarian Chinese Communist party, nuclear-armed
Pakistan and North Korea, and others.
The end of the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages, which
aren’t called that for nothing. It's going to be hard for everyone.
