The Future of the War on Terror, is the War on Islam

[Warph]

"The Taliban were not the product of Afghanistan. They were the product of Pakistani Islamic Madrassas"

The Future of the War on Terror, is the War on Islam
By Daniel Greenfield  

George Will's column calling on the US to withdraw forces from Afghanistan and rely on smart strikes using drones, cruise missiles and special forces insertions, reopens a now old debate about the tactics we should be using in the War on Terror. Will's approach would revert the US back to before the days of the Bush Administration when smart strikes were used for a series of attacks that accomplished absolutely nothing.

It might be possible to use "offshore" bombing to end the Taliban, but it would not involve smart and limited attacks, but dumb and massive ones that would kill a sizable portion of Afghanistan's non-urban tribal population. That is something not even the Soviet Union was fully prepared to commit to. It is not likely that any US administration would.

While drone strikes can be quite useful within the context of a larger military operation, without that context they're nothing more than a game of "Whack a Mole", while the mole works to execute a large terrorist operation against you. You might take out a few terrorists, if you're lucky and manage to get good intel out of enemy territory, but sooner or later the terrorists will execute a 9/11 or a 7/7 on your own soil. The terrorists lose 3 or 4 people, you lose hundreds or thousands of people.

Drones and precision strikes have not fundamentally altered the nature of war. They allow the US to extend its reach, but that godlike illusion cannot actually accomplish anything useful without being able to know the location of your targets. And having eyes in the sky is nowhere near as good as having boots on the ground. Having flying sniper rifles in the sky will not end or even seriously damage the terrorist threat. The Clinton Administration, which was roughly three times as energized about fighting terrorism as the current administration is, demonstrated that.

Smart strikes are a military variation on smart power. What they have in common is the smug illusion that people sitting in D.C. office buildings can control events thousands of miles away without putting anyone or anything at risk. And neither of them substitute for the blunt ugly reality of an occupation force on the ground.

The key advantage of occupation is that it actually puts troops into a position to counter the enemy and bar him from the country's centers of power. The current US tactics may make it unlikely that we will destroy the Taliban, but in turn it makes it impossible for the Taliban and their allies to seize power or operate freely in strategic parts of Afghanistan. By invading Afghanistan and Iraq, the US successfully put its enemies on the defensive, consuming resources that they would have otherwise used for offensive operations. That is the fundamental difference between the US occupation and the Soviet one. The Soviets were motivated by expansionism, the US seeks to keep its enemies on the defensive and at bay.

But that is a modest goal and one we have paid a dear price for. Will isn't entirely wrong about the trajectory of the war. He simply has no useful solution to the problem. The US strategy has replicated too much of the Soviet strategy in Afghanistan, but has avoided alienating Afghan tribes and warlords to the extent that the USSR did, and the Taliban are not receiving the kind of counterinsurgency aid that the Mujaheddin received from the US and various other countries. But Obama's Afghan surge parallels Gorbachev's surge as a desperate attempt to quickly wrap up the problem and leave. Unlike Iraq though, we have failed to build up a credible Afghan military, and Afghanistan's democracy is simply another alliance of warlords, loosely allied with us. The Taliban can take a beating and outwait us. And it is unlikely that Americans will be prepared to patrol Afghanistan for a generation, which is the least it would take to turn the page on the Taliban for good. And yet any US withdrawal that leaves behind the Taliban will allow them to claim victory over the US.

What is the answer then? Every problem has a solution, some solutions are simply too difficult or expensive to implement. Many fall short of offering a comprehensive solution that resolves the problem, because the problem has never been stated. The US nation building project in Afghanistan is one solution, but it is a very limited solution at best. And like most limited solutions it is the product of misunderstanding the nature of the problem. And the problem is one whose name we dare not speak. Islam.

The Taliban were not the product of Afghanistan. They were the product of Pakistani Islamic Madrassas
The Taliban were not the product of Afghanistan. They were the product of Pakistani Islamic Madrassas. Those Madrassas, schools of Islamic study, were themselves the product of the Partition of India into Hindu and Muslim states, and the rule of General Zia ul Haq who used the Madrassas to generate an army of guerrillas and terrorists to fight in Afghanistan... with the backing of the Carter and Reagan administrations. The Soviet invasion destabilized Afghanistan, and US backed guerrillas helped push out the Soviets, creating an opening for an Islamic militia like the Taliban to seize power.

But virtually every Muslim country or country with a sizable Muslim population has a group like the Taliban waiting in the wings, to bring "true Islamic reforms" to the corrupt political culture. It is why Al Queda has a global foothold. More importantly, it is why Europe, America, Israel and so many other lands suffer from terrorism in the first place. Islam is a militant religion. Its devotees will always rediscover the idea that all problems would be solved if only every Muslim and non-Muslim country were ruled under Islamic law, and will repeatedly take up arms to make it so.

It is possible to kill every single member of the Taliban, only to have another bunch of Madrassa grads and regional bandits form a new Taliban militia under some semi-charismatic Mullah. To understand why, imagine if there were 1 billion people in the world who viewed the ideals of Nazism as a religion, brought up their children to Heil the Fuhrer, sent them to schools that taught the values of National Socialism and funded Nazi organizations. Most of these people would not be prepared to actually go out and kill people in order to create a new Reich, but most of them would be willing to passively or financially support those who do. The result would be constant Nazi terror and attempted uprisings anywhere that the sitting government was weak, those uprisings would quickly mutate into attacks beyond the borders of those countries where they seized power, these uprisings could be temporarily put down, only to pop up again. That is because destroying them would require fighting a whole different kind of war.

That is exactly the situation we face with Islam. Understanding that means understanding the War on Terror. Misunderstanding that means treating Islamic terrorism as a regional cultural and political problem that needs to be resolved in one single place. And that is why ultimately Afghanistan is itself nothing more than a large scale version of "Whack a Mole". We have interdicted many of the Islamic terrorist factions responsible for attacking us in the first place, but those same factions are taking root domestically because of our own growing Muslim populations. With enough Madrassas in America and Europe, Pakistan and Afghanistan will simply become relay points in a war fought on our own home soil. And if you doubt that it can happen, take a closer look at France or Israel. Because it can and given time, it will.

The enemy is not simply the Taliban, it is the ideology of Islam itself. Our attempts to fight against it have been band aid approaches that rely on propping up more secular regimes and trying to stabilize destabilized regions such as Afghanistan to avoid Islamic takeovers, all the while promoting some pipe dream of a moderate Islam in our own home countries. This is the same kind of Smart Power that got us into this mess in the first place.

But how do you fight an ideology?
But how do you fight an ideology? When the USSR made a deal with Nazi Germany, they claimed that "Isms" could not be fought. And indeed Isms are not easy to fight. Nazi Germany could be defeated, but Nazism has survived. The Soviet Union fell, but Communism has not gone away. But unlike Islam, they have not become a major terrorist threat. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, the fall of Nazi Germany and the USSR destroyed the ideal embodiments of Nazism and Communism. Neither ideology has ever really recovered from that, and the number of their adherents dropped sharply and have mostly channeled their energies into empty grandstanding or into working from inside the political system to seize power. Islam has not suffered a similar defeat for nearly a century. For the Shiites, the fall of Iran might serve a similar function. For the Sunnis, no standing country embodies those virtues. The Taliban came closest, and for as long as the Taliban continue to fight, the idea of an ongoing struggle persists. Like Communism and Nazism, Islamism's adherents have also moved into working from within the system, but only as a twin to an armed strategy.

Secondly, Islam is to non-Muslim religions what Nazism and Communism was to Jews. The Jews had no place within an ideal Nazi or Communist state, the Nazi Final Solution depended on physical eradication, the Communist Final Solution on cultural eradication. Similarly non-Muslim religions have no place within an ideal Islamist state. This means that in majority non-Muslim countries, Muslims cannot plot political takeovers as Nazis and Communists can. They can work within the system, but only for so long since the endgame is to force everyone to live under Muslim law. And this cannot be done without a great deal of violence. Terrorism is a cheap way for a Muslim minority to try and enforce its will on a Muslim majority. It also allows for a game of "Bad Muslim - Good Muslim", in which the Bad Muslims set off bombs on buses, while the Good Muslims work with the government to "defuse extremism" by teaching the authorities to slowly accommodate Muslim demands.

Thirdly, while Communism and Nazism were urban industrial ideologies developed by Western intellectuals with the intention of creating industrialized superstates, Islam is pre-industrial and tribal. While the final Islamic goal may be a global Caliphate, the military tactics favor updated versions of nomadic raids, the key form of warfare by the Taliban, and internal infiltration in urban areas. When Nazism and Communism's superstates collapsed, the implementation of their ideology collapsed as well. Islam however is tribal and Islamism can be implemented in a handful of villages, as the Taliban demonstrated.

Fourthly, Islam is religious, and political religion exists at a much deeper cultural level than any secular political ideology can. Where political ideologies need a political structure to control or plot control of, Islam can remain dormant with only Mosques and Korans to perpetuate itself, like insects hibernating in winter, before emerging in spring bent on conquest again. Religion is taught universally and functions as the fabric of a community, beyond question, and participation in which is the price of communal membership.

Now let's look at what all these mean. The first, third and fourth conditions mean that Islam is far more decentralized, which in turn makes it much harder to suppress or destroy. The fourth condition means that as a religion it is deeply embedded, it is part of the structure of cultures and communities. The second condition means that Islam in non-Muslim countries must inevitably turn to violence as both a military and political tactic. What does all that tell us about winning the War on Terror?

It means that Islam has to be fought not just on a military level, but on a political and cultural level. Deislamization has to be the guiding approach abroad, and especially at home. Islam's cultural roots mean that it has to be resisted and uprooted at a cultural level. Bombing terrorist bases while leaving intact the Madrassas which educate and create a new generation of terrorists is a senseless waste of time that will accomplish nothing. Promoting Deislamization abroad, while throwing the Mosque gates open at home, only ushers in a new wave of terror at home.

For the War on Terror to count for anything, it must be a War on Islam, because Islam is the guiding ideology behind terrorism. Rooting out terrorism without rooting out Islam, only painfully prolongs the struggle. A number of European countries have concluded exactly that, and decided that surrendering to Islam will spare them effort and pain. That is not a choice I can support, but it is at least a choice made based on an understanding of the problem. By contrast pretending that we can fight a War on Terror without fighting a War on Islam is simply wishful thinking.

Fighting a War on Islam means making a careful study of the structures and ways in which Islam is sustained and promoted, particularly on higher education for Muslim religious scholars and on the ways in which the dilettante sons of wealthy Muslim families become entangled in such projects. The Muslim religious school trains the terrorists of tomorrow and imbues them with dreams of creating a new Islamic reality. The boys and men who study in them and then go on to higher learning as Imams and Mullahs, form the core of Islamic terrorist ideology. The Mosque serves as the base for any Muslim community, particularly abroad where the Muslim preacher can incite violence. The Koran serves as the manual for terrorism in the name of an ideal Islamic world order. In order of importance, these are the real commanders and bases of the enemy. To the extent that they are pushed back, weakened, uprooted or destroyed—we will have peace. To the extent that they prosper and spread, we will have nothing but war.

The Future of the War on Terror is a War on Islam, because Islam has declared war on us
The Future of the War on Terror is a War on Islam, because Islam has declared war on us. The debates over tactics in Afghanistan ignore the large reality that the Taliban are not an isolated phenomenon, they are what expanding Islam will always produce. While we chop away at the branches, the seeds of terror grow in our own soil waiting to sprout.

The War against Islam will have to be fought more on a cultural and political level, than on a military level, because that is where the roots dig deep into the rotten soil. That will require a whole other kind of global alliance, an alliance of cultures and religions threatened by Islam, around the world. It will require cooperation between Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and many others as well. It will involve distributing the truth about Islam, countering Islam's political gains with strong anti-Muslim activist coalitions and shutting Islamic organizations out of the political process and away from their attempts at mainstreaming Islam. Much of this is already underway today. But far beyond that it will require deporting Imams who preach anything but good citizenship, shuttering mosques and madrassas and halting and even reversing Islamic immigration.

On a military level, we will have to make it clear that any Muslim terrorist attack will result in utter devastation for the source countries involved. Muslim terrorists can kill thousands, but we can kill a thousand times that. And the sooner we make it clear that will respond with ruthless force, the less likely it is that we will face a situation where we have to. Nation building may have a role where the conditions are favorable to the rise and rule of secular authorities, but if we have the courage, deterrence through destruction is a better use of our resources, than deterrence through backing puppet regimes that could not survive without our troops to protect them.

We know who the enemy is. It is not simply the terrorists lurking at their base camps, it is the cleric in Al Azhar University who signs off on a Fatwa that legitimizes murdering our people. That cleric is a much better target than the terrorists, because the cleric provides the ideology that creates Islamic terrorism in the first place. If we are to use "Smart Strikes", than let us be really smart about it by making sure that we do not waste time striking at a tentacle of the octopus, when we can strike at the head instead.

The War on Terror will not end by entering a bunker and finding the "Leader of Terrorism" dead. Islamic terrorism has no leader, it has motivation. Breaking Islam of its enthusiasm for power and expansionism is the only way we will win. Victory is possible. The only question is do we want it badly enough.

[Anmar]

what a pile of crap

[srkruzich]

what a pile of crap

What your really saying is you don't have a clue as to how art of war is conducted.   IF you actually researched anything about stopping islamic terrorism you woul dknow that the reason Turkey is our ally is because they stopped this madness.  They did it by removing all these islamic schools that teach the young to kill the infidel.   It took generation or two to do this.   

It has always been a war on islam.  To believe that it wasn't is foolish. 

[larryJ]

One of the greatest and best things about this forum is that many different subjects are addressed and a lot of them are things I do not have a lot of knowledge of.  So, I go to the 'net and look them up.  I really learn so much. 

Turkey controls Islam by regulating how the religion is taught.  While its Constitution is similar to ours regarding separation of Church and State, it does keep on eye on its religious leaders and forbids any violent teachings in the schools and churches. 

I wanted to recount an incident that happened while I was serving in Korea.  Korea was/is protected by the U.N. so there are troops there from all over the world.  There was a base that was a Turkish army unit not far from where I was.  They were not sociable in the sense that you could go to a club and share a beer, etc., (alcohol is not part of their lifestyle), but they were respectful when greeting you.  The incident was that a Korean was caught on their base trying to steal some personal items and got caught.  If this happened on a U.S. compound, the intruder would turned over to civilian authorities and dealt with by them.  Not so on the Turks compound.  The intruder was beheaded and hung on the fence next to the entry gate for a few days.  They didn't seem to have much problems with theft after that.  I can well imagine, with an attitude like that, their control over Islamic violence would be sufficient enough to keep any militant groups quiet.

Larryj

[srkruzich]

One of the greatest and best things about this forum is that many different subjects are addressed and a lot of them are things I do not have a lot of knowledge of.  So, I go to the 'net and look them up.  I really learn so much. 

Turkey controls Islam by regulating how the religion is taught.  While its Constitution is similar to ours regarding separation of Church and State, it does keep on eye on its religious leaders and forbids any violent teachings in the schools and churches. 

I wanted to recount an incident that happened while I was serving in Korea.  Korea was/is protected by the U.N. so there are troops there from all over the world.  There was a base that was a Turkish army unit not far from where I was.  They were not sociable in the sense that you could go to a club and share a beer, etc., (alcohol is not part of their lifestyle), but they were respectful when greeting you.  The incident was that a Korean was caught on their base trying to steal some personal items and got caught.  If this happened on a U.S. compound, the intruder would turned over to civilian authorities and dealt with by them.  Not so on the Turks compound.  The intruder was beheaded and hung on the fence next to the entry gate for a few days.  They didn't seem to have much problems with theft after that.  I can well imagine, with an attitude like that, their control over Islamic violence would be sufficient enough to keep any militant groups quiet.

Larryj

Exactly Larry,  the Turks have the solution to the problem.  IF we do the same, guess what. No problem.

[Warph]

what a pile of crap

Really... I thought you would have agreed on this article.... tell me why it's a pile of crap. 

You didn't read it, did you?

[Anmar]

Turkey supresses religion, it is not like our country.  They enforce secularism at the end of a baton.  Nobody is allowed to practice any religion.  Just like the Taliban beat women for not wearing whatever religious clothing, th eTurks beat people FOR wearing those same clothes.

And warph, it's crap and you know it.  Just another article to push your neoconservative Agenda.

[Warph]

Turkey supresses religion, it is not like our country.  They enforce secularism at the end of a baton.  Nobody is allowed to practice any religion.  Just like the Taliban beat women for not wearing whatever religious clothing, th eTurks beat people FOR wearing those same clothes.

And warph, it's crap and you know it.  Just another article to push your neoconservative Agenda.

You still haven't told why it is "crap".... tell me in your own words, little man.

[Warph]

While we are waiting on anmar to answer my question, I thought I'd throw in a few myths about Israel.

Myth 1: "Israel was created because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust."

This left wing myth has been widely repeated, most recently by Desmond Tutu. While blatantly false on a level that even the most serious anti-Israel historian can recognize, it persists because its function is to delegitimize as the product of post-war colonial guilt, rather than longstanding Israeli national aspirations.
Israel was not created in 1947. By 1947, Israel already was a functioning country with a language, culture, agriculture, universities, newspapers and military forces which proved capable of defending against the armies of several Arab nations. The only thing that happened after the Holocaust was a UN vote in 1947 was for a partition plan that was never implemented because the Arab world instead chose to try and destroy Israel. Israel however would have declared independence and fought for its own survival, with the same exact outcome, regardless of UN Resolution 181. This vote is often described as creating Israel, but it was more accurately an attempt to settle the borders of Israel that failed because of Arab genocidal hostility that expressed itself not only toward Israel, but toward the Jews living in Arab lands.

Nor did post-war European colonialism create Israel. Britain, which was the colonial power in the region, was against Israel's independence and abstained in the UN vote. The majority of votes for Resolution 181 came from non-European countries, primarily in Latin America and Eastern Europe, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Peru and Poland, Ukraine and the Soviet Union. 7 European countries voted Yes, most of them Northern European states such as Sweden and Denmark, which experienced only a limited impact of the Holocaust. 12 Latin American countries voted Yes. Twice the number. And all of them countries that had their own national aspirations and had fought against colonialism.

Post-Holocaust guilt was not the reason Resolution 181 passed. Less than a third of the 33 votes came from countries where the Holocaust had taken place. The reasons were varied and different. Some Latin American countries identified with Israel's national aspirations and some sought economic ties. Truman was influenced by the desire for Jewish votes in an upcoming election. The Soviet Union wanted to sabotage Britain's colonial program. The motives of different countries were varied and complex. Iran for example voted against the resolution and yet became the second country to recognize the new State of Israel.

Left wing activists may insist that Resolution 181 was a racist act, but in fact half the countries who voted for it were non-white, and most of the countries who voted for it were non-European. Therefore the myth that Israel was created after the Holocaust by guilty Europeans, a myth that has been bandied about by everyone from Desmond Tutu to Wallace Shawn to Barack Obama is just that, a myth. Israel would have existed regardless of the Holocaust or UN Resolution 181, which was voted for primarily by non-European countries in any case. Those who repeat the myth are therefore demonstrating either extreme ignorance or extreme deceptiveness.


Myth 2: "European Nations Gave the Jews a Land Already Inhabited by a People."

This is one of the more common myths that seeks to strike at the legitimacy of the creation of the modern state of Israel, and treats the Jews as a foreign body within the land. This is a continuation of the anti-semitic stereotypes of the Jews as eternal wanderers and eternal foreigners.

The fact of the matter is that Jews had an ongoing presence in the land going back thousands of years, that was only interrupted by massacres and expulsions, after which the Jews population would once again attempt to reestablish itself. Greek, Roman, Arab and Ottoman colonialism expelled Jewish populations and attempted to replace them with their own populations in order to gain a foothold in the land. Unlike them however the Jews remained the land's indigenous population.

Throughout history Jews struggled to achieve independence with armed revolts from Roman and Byzantine rule. The last such revolt took place somewhat more than a thousand years before the creation of the modern State of Israel, rather than two thousand as most people believe. Jewish attempts to revive the State of Israel were repeatedly and brutally suppressed, in at least one case by outright genocide. Nor was that the only genocide that Jews in Israel experienced.

Nevertheless attempts at a fledgling Jewish state continued even after the Crusader genocide of the Jewish population in the 1500's with an attempt to create a Jewish autonomous territory under Selim I by Don Yosef Nassi, as Lord of Tiberias. Further negotiations for the creation of a Jewish state continued in the 18th and 19th centuries. After Ottoman obstinacy made it clear that statehood was hopeless, Jewish freedom fighters in the form of the NILI group and the Jewish Legion aided in the British conquest of the region hoping to receive their own state.

While indeed much of the population of Israel came from outside the land, that was because thousands of years of massacres and warfare had depopulated the area. When Western observers visited Israel in the 19th century, they found that the land was barren and had a low population, both Jewish and Arab. In fact Israel was so sparsely populated, that its entire population in 1850, a mere 350,000 people, could fit into modern day Tel Aviv with room to spare. This is all the more striking when you consider that we are talking about a territory several times the size of modern day Israel.

Alphonse de Lamartine visited Israel in 1835 and wrote; "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence ... as we should have expected before the entombed gates of Pompeii or Herculaneam a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, on the highways, in the country ... the tomb of a whole people". 30 years Mark Twain wrote, "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction. ...One may ride ten miles (16 km) hereabouts and not see ten human beings."

In 1857 the British Consul James Finn wrote a book called Byeways in Palestine that chronicled his journeys across the region. In his introduction he wrote rather prophetically, "These notices will show that the land is one of remarkable fertility wherever cultivated, even in a slight degree—witness the vast wheat-plains of the south; and is one of extreme beauty—witness the green hill-country of the north; although such qualities are by no means confined to those districts... Thus it is not necessary, it is not just, that believers in the Bible, in order to hold fast their confidence in its predictions for the future, should rush into the extreme of pronouncing the Holy Land to be cursed in its present capabilities. It is verily and indeed cursed in its government and in its want of population; but still the soil is that of "a land which the Lord thy God careth for." There is a deep meaning in the words, "The earth is the Lord's," when applied to that peculiar country; for it is a reserved property, an estate in abeyance, and not even in a subordinate sense can it be the fief of the men whom it eats up. (Numb. xiii. 32, and Ezek. xxxvi. 13, 14.) I have seen enough to convince me that astonishing will be the amount p. viiiof its produce, and the rapidity also, when the obstacles now existing are removed."

Finn repeated this theme when writing to the Earl of Clarendon, "the country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population." That population would and did have to come from abroad.

Two generations later in 1920, after the British conquest, the Arab population had hardly doubled. Yet in only a generation after that it had reached 1.3 million, primarily from Arab immigrants to Israel from Egypt attracted by growing Jewish industry. Those immigrants would in turn make up the bulk of the "Palestinian cause" with prominent Palestinian Arabs such as Yasser Arafat and Edward Said stemming from Cairo. Then there was the Lebanon born original chief of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Ahmed Shukairy.

Cairo, unlike Jerusalem, had been a booming center under the Ottoman Empire, with a bulging population. From the 1880's to the 1930's, Cairo's population tripled. The resulting stresses vastly overpopulated the area leading to the extreme slum conditions that European visitors would often describe. And part of that excess population came Israel's way.

While Jewish immigration to Israel was visible, Arab immigration was invisible, requiring only that a Syrian or Egyptian get on a donkey and ride in the right direction. But the rising role of Israel produced both Arab and Jewish immigration to the land, for economic and political reasons.

Those same critics of Israel did not and do not object to Arab immigration, even though it was part of a colonizing process that displaced the native Jewish population. Instead they show their double standard by objecting only to Jewish immigration. Ironically enough today it is the Arab migration to Europe that occupies the countries of many of those same critics as the newfound populations begin taking over countries that "already have a people."

In Australia and elsewhere, Muslim immigrants has already begun laying out a new history, claiming that the land belonged to them all along. In France, the riots have been described as a French Intifada. Both processes demonstrate how ethnic and national groups can create a mythology of ownership from square one in countries where they never had much of a presence. That same mythology is behind the claim that the Palestine territory administered by the Romans was actually some sort of unique Arab nationality whose rights have been denied.

Europeans did not "give" Israel a land already inhabited by the Arabs. The Arabs were simply one of the regional populations, and were in the majority because they had conquered and displaced local populations. And while there are numerous oppressed indigenous populations in the Middle East, including the Assyrians, the Kurds, the Copts, the Gypsies of the Middle East (the Dom), the Azeri and the Zoroastrians. Arab Muslims are not on that list except in the minds of Western liberals. Instead Arab Muslims rule all but two countries in the Middle East and 99 percent of the region. 11 million square kilometers to Israel's 20,000.


Myth 3. "The Creation of Israel Denied the National Rights of the Palestinian People"

Palestine is a region, not an Arab nationality. It is not an Arab word, but a corruption of a word meaning Philistine. At no time has there been a Palestinian Arab kingdom, state or political entity, until it was created by Israel as part of a treaty with Arafat. Palestinian nationhood is a fraud that none of the Arab powers who endorse it believe, as they themselves proved when they annexed or ruled the land that would become the so-called "Occupied Territories", once Israel recaptured it in the Six Day War in 1967. Over two decades, no Palestinian state was ever created when Judea, Samaria and Gaza were in the hands of Egypt and Jordan. Only after two major military defeats caused the Arab powers to abandon future wars with Israel, did they decide to endorse that particular bit of mythology.

Furthermore it was the Arab powers who rejected the 1947 UN Partition plan that would have created two states, one Jewish and one Arab. It was the Arab side that rejected the plan and chose war, and then urged Arabs in Israel to leave so that they would be out of harm's way when the Jews were driven into the sea, thereby creating the refugee camps. If anyone denied the "National Rights of the Palestinian People", it was the Arab powers. But then the national rights card has always been a fraud, as can be demonstrated when the PLO's founding chairman, Ahmed Shukairy, proclaimed in the UN in 1956, "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria". The PLO did not call for a state until after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 made it clear that brute force alone would not allow the regional Arab powers to seize Israel by force.
Since 1992 when the PLO received an autonomous territory, it has made no serious effort to actually run a country. Instead virtually all of its resources have been poured into its militias which it has used to carry out terrorism against Israel, and its propaganda corps which tours the world complaining about Israel. That is because none of the so-called Palestinian leaders have any interest in actually creating a state, as Clinton finally discovered to his shame and humiliation when Yasir Arafat turned down his grand 99 percent peace plan. If the Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs camped out in Israel's backyard actually wanted to exercise their "National Rights", they could have done so over the past 17 years. Instead all they've done is try to kill Israelis on behalf of their Arab and Persian backers. After billions of dollars in international aid, the only thing that works in the Palestinian Authority are the AK-47's.

Time and time again there were repeated opportunities to create a Palestinian state. Whether it was in 1947 by accepting UN Resolution 181, or in 1948 through 1967 at the hands of the Arab powers, or in 1992 through 2009 in cooperation with Israel and the US-- there were nearly four decades in which a Palestinian state could have been created. Compare that to the mere 25 years of the so-called Occupation from 1967 to 1992 by comparison. The reason there is no "Palestinian State" is because no one actually wants one. Palestinian Nationalism has as much substance as any piece of wartime propaganda. Its one and only goal is to rally Arabs, Muslims and fellow travelers to complete the goal that was frustrated in 1947-- the destruction of Israel.


Myth 4. "Israel is an Artificial Entity and Racist Jewish State."

The same "European Imperialist Colonialists" whom left wing historians and activists pretend to despise, even though they themselves are nothing more than another generation of the same, turned most of the Middle East into Arab Muslim states, creating artificial countries such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan, the latter ruled by a failed Saudi royal family, named after historical nations. Yet somehow none of the historians and activists object to any of these countries, they object only to Israel. Somehow condemning the Kurds, Assyrian Christians, Copts and the region's numerous other minorities to be ruled by intolerant Arab rulers is perfectly acceptable in their book.

The myth of Arab Muslim victimhood is cheap propaganda stemming from the failed Arab attempt to destroy Israel and drive its Jewish population "into the sea." It is funded by the wells of oil money flowing from wealthy Arab Muslim dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia, and perpetuated by leftist activists repeating an Anti-Israel Soviet line, which is itself an outdated relic from the Communist support of Arab Nationalist dictatorships in Egypt, Syria and Iraq.

Israel offers more freedom to its citizens and non-citizens than every Arab state in the region. That is why African migrants try to make their way through Egypt to get to Israel. Israel hosts believers from many of the persecuted religions in the region, most notably the Bahai. It has given shelter to a wide variety of peoples from around the world, even down to the Vietnamese boat people. All of them get along, except for Arab Muslims, whose anger is driven by their belief that only they should be able to rule in Israel, as in every other part of the Middle East.

If Leftist activists really wish to agitate on behalf of oppressed and displaced peoples in the Middle East, perhaps instead of following the despicable example of Human Rights Watch in panhandling for Saudi money with which to slander Israel, they should take a look at the situation in trendy fashionable Dubai, a country where most of the population consists of guest workers who are treated as slaves and who die by the thousands. Or perhaps to Iran, where a Persian Muslim minority rules over an Azeri majority, and suppresses their culture, langauge and national aspirations. And then there is the matter of an independent Kurdish state and the rights of the Kurdish people to reclaim Kirkuk, after Saddam's ethnic cleansing. There is the plight of the Copts in Egypt, who are denied basic human rights.

But instead the left continues to pander to the irrational bigoted demands of the region's Arab Muslim majority to suppress the region's only non-Muslim state, in favor of yet another Arab Muslim country. That blatant disregard for the rights of anyone who is not an Arab Muslim is precisely the reason why the Jews of Israel had to fight for national independence. It is likely why the Kurds in Iraq will have to fight for independence as well.

The cult of orientalism insists that only Arab Muslims have national rights in the Middle East. Israel serves to deny that, and to instead proclaim the national rights of the indigenous population of Israel, a country and a people that predate Arab colonialism, and will outlive it as well.

[Anmar]

Its crap.  You are an ardent neoconservative zionist, your goal is to push the United States into a world-wide war on Israel's enemies.  It is not in our interests to do so.  All the propaganda you post is to sway people towards that opinion.  Let Israel fight her own wars.  We don't need to sacrifice American troops for Israeli foreign policy.