Melanie Phillips: The Middle East’s fateful moment
The West refused to see that the Palestinian cause was the principal means by which the Islamists realized they could destroy Israel and conquer the free world for Islam. The Palestinian cause has accordingly brought together the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood—whose military wing consists of Hamas, Al-Qaeda and ISIS—and the Shi’ite fanatics of Iran.Bassam Tawil: Palestinian Libels Against Jews: No Difference Between Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas
The most lethal component of this infernal alliance is Iran because it has become a regional hegemon. And it is America that has enabled that to happen.
As president, Obama viewed Iran as an essential component of a new Middle East order. The aim was apparently a balance of powers in the region which would ensure that everyone was forced to rub along with each other.
The strategy of taming Iran by bringing it in from the cold led to the 2015 nuclear deal which, falsely claiming to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, explicitly legitimized such a development after only a few years delay and funneled billions in sanctions relief into Tehran’s war chest.
This was the equivalent not only of giving a box of matches to an arsonist but providing the kerosene and the dry tinder as well.
The Biden administration has continued with the kumbaya liberal fantasy that genocidal fanaticism can be neutralized by negotiated concessions. In practice, this appeasement of the implacable and unconscionable means letting Israel swing in the murderous winds of the Palestinian and Iranian agendas.
Virtually none of this is understood by the Western public whose media and leaders, in cahoots with the Hamas-compliant international human rights and humanitarian establishment, have instead demonized Israel and incited hatred of the Jews with malicious falsehoods about Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
People in the West have been indoctrinated by the BBC, The New York Times and others that Israel is the reason for the war in Gaza, Israel is the problem and this crisis is all Israel’s fault.
They have heard virtually nothing about Hezbollah’s daily rocket and missile attacks. They are told nothing about the plight of tens of thousands of Israelis who have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel by the war and been made refugees in their own country. They saw almost no reports at all of the fires that consumed northern Israel this week.
Consequently, when Israel goes to war in Lebanon to defend its people against annihilation it will be vilified and demonized even more intensely as the region’s aggressor.
But it is in fact Biden and Obama’s America, whose delusional fantasies facilitated the Oct. 7 pogrom, empowered the enemies of civilization and are hanging Israel out to dry, that is now leading the world into a terrible war.
The only problem is: the claim [that Jews are trying to take over the Al-Aqsa Mosque] is not true. Of course, there are no such plans. These plans only exist in the deranged imaginations of the Palestinian leaders fabricating the accusations against the Jews. In fact, it was Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who gave control over the Temple Mount to the Islamic Wakf authorities in 1967.How Israel Remains Sane under Pressure
In reality, Arafat had agreed that non-Muslims may, at certain times, tour the exterior of the Al-Aqsa Mosque -- the gardens and patios -- as long as they do not go inside and pray there.
Abbas and his media nevertheless continue to portray the peaceful visits by Jews to the Temple Mount as violent incursions. On June 5, 2024, Abbas's official news agency Wafa reported: "Hundreds of Israeli colonists today broke into the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque...[they] raided the holy Islamic Mosque from al-Maghariba Gate and took provocative tours in its compounds."
Needless to say, Abbas is again lying: no Jew had "raided" or "broken into" the mosque.
The Biden administration and some European countries that want to give the Palestinians a state fail to recognize that, when it comes to rejecting Israel's right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people and denying any Jewish link to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, there is no real difference between Abbas and Hamas. If anyone is desecrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque, it is Palestinians who are using it to justify murder -- of Jews.
In the past decade, U.S. political discourse has become increasingly shrill, while social cohesion appears to be fraying. By contrast, Israel—part of which is literally on fire—has been fighting its longest and most harrowing war since 1948, yet society seems to be functioning quite well. Cole Aronson makes the case that Israel is the “saner” of two countries.
The Iranian fusillade in the early hours of April 14 was Israel’s scariest moment since October 7. . . . But ten hours later, the two large supermarkets near my apartment were full of diapers, milk, bread, and eggs. The mall had four floors of squealing kids. No surge in crime, no looting, no riots. The largest missile and drone launch in history, and Israel didn’t even have to muddle through. It could just carry on.
While some of its detractors have tried to portray Israel as a “nation gone mad,” Aronson notes that this is not at all so:
Israelis are brusque and they are sometimes even frantic. But they deal rationally with danger, which is to say they can distinguish real threats and harms from fake ones. The industriousness with which coastal Americans manufacture and perform grievances is not a habit of Israel’s public character. Israelis resent hypocrisy and they grumble about their elites. But revolution is not popularly demanded, statues aren’t torn down, memorials aren’t desecrated, the nation’s founders aren’t contemned. Israelis pay dearly to govern themselves, and so can’t afford civic disdain.
Americans live free from armed invaders under a masterful, basically peaceful constitutional system. Things have been good for a long time. The republic’s achievements seem commonplace, so commonplace they aren’t even recognized as achievements. . . . America has responded to its generous inheritance with a listless hysteria.