Posted: 24 May 2009 11:21 PM PDT When early in the 20th century Germany faced a variety of complex economic, military and political problems, the Nazi propaganda organ, "Der Sturmer" boiled them down to a simple message, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck". In a flash, Germany's defeat in WW1, the worldwide economic depression and its political turmoil could all be blamed on the Jews. And of course if the Jews were gone, everything would be alright in Germany again.  That same message has dominated the diplomatic and political rhetoric on the Middle East, with American and European diplomats, pundits and politicians claiming that the problems in the Middle East would be healed if only it wasn't for Israel. This latest echo of, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck" in regard to the Middle East blames the existence of Israel for the general instability, violence and terrorism in the Middle East. An accompanying illustration naturally features a Der Sturmer caricature of a Jewish "lobbyist" controlling American foreign policy. If you were to believe this Sturmeresque critique of what's wrong in the Middle East, if we simply removed the tiny state of Israel, 1/80th the size of Iran. Islamic terrorism would go the way of the Dodo, women and religious minorities would have rights and Europe, America and the Muslim world would be able to join hands and sing Kumbaya. If only it wasn't for Israel. Never mind that much of the actual instability comes from the fact that the map of the Middle East was a clumsy colonial hodgepodge of imaginary states with ancient names, ruled by bandits and warlords, styling themselves Kings and Emirs. Virtually every ruling house in the Middle East that was backed by the England, France or the US... is despised by their own populations. The Egyptian and Iraqi monarchs were deposed. The regime of the Shah was overthrown. Their replacements, Nasser and Saddam, were Soviet allied and anti-American thugs and dictators. This had nothing to do with Israel, and everything to do with the fact that the same Western foreign ministries now blasting Israel, tried to rule the Middle East through weak and unpopular governments. Something the USSR was happy enough to take advantage of. It was a problem that recurred in Asia with spectacularly deadly results and two devastating wars involving the United States. All without Israel ever being in the area. Indeed without Israel ever being located there, the same pattern of Marxist dictatorships and Muslim terrorists have rampaged through the region. This did not prevent Gandhi from regurgitating his own version of "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck", arguing that India would be at peace, if the Muslims were just allowed to have Jerusalem. Yet despite the Jordanian seizure of East Jerusalem, Partition went ahead anyway, not to mention the bloodbaths in Bangladesh, Kashmir and East Timor. Or the current nuclear standoff between Pakistan and India. Thus far no one has tried to claim that the problem could be resolved by Israel giving up its capital.  Middle East's instability goes on. Somehow Shia and Sunni would have stopped fighting each other, Syria would stop dreaming of conquering Lebanon for good, Saddam would have never tried for Kuwait, and the Saudis wouldn't be pouring all their resources into promoting Islamism abroad-- if only it wasn't for Israel. Yet if anything Israel has served as a stabilizing factor, creating buffer zones between many of the Arab regimes that would otherwise be doing their best to swallow each other. Israel was the only reason Syria hadn't taken Lebanon and Jordan. Instead Arab nations have been forced to stage their conquests in a direction away from Israel, witness Egypt going West to Yemen, or Syria nibbling away at Lebanon, without being able to take the whole thing in one bite. The squabbling Arab League has only one common interest, and that is Israel. The barest fragments of Arab unity are directed around Israel. It has actually been pressure to make peace with Israel that has been far more destabilizing, than the presence of Israel itself. Too much of the world has swallowed the Arab argument that Israel is all that stands in the way regional stability, the same argument that Hitler made over Czechoslovakia. The Peace Process has been an attempt to stabilize the region by creating a terrorist state run first by Arafat, and now by his successors and Hamas. This "Experiment in Terror" has not brought stability, on the contrary it has increased terrorism and spread instability... something for which Israel is paradoxically being blamed. But that is the whole point of "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck", to distill a complex set of problems, into a single bigoted tautology. Whether in Germany or the Middle East, it is easier to blame the Jews, than to address the real problems. Nazism and Islamism were both violent reactionary responses to real social problems. The Muslim world, like post-WW1 Germany, has experienced humiliating defeats in war and responded with irrational violence and hate, backed by a paranoid mythology of persecution. And those who cannot learn from their mistakes find it much easier to brandish a Koran or Mein Kampf, and cry for the death of the infidels.  And as in the Pre-WW2 period, too many in the West have bought into the victimology of the sociopathic mass murderers and the idea that conceding a country or two to them, might buy us "peace in our time". Now some 70 years after Munich, Barack Hussein Obama is pressuring Israel to let itself be carved up in order to appease Islamic terrorists, claiming that the solution to the Middle East's problems lie through Israel. 130 years after a liberal politician coined the phrase, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck", Western liberals are back to reducing a complex series of regional problems to the "Jewish Question".  |
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