Awaiting Armageddon

By Alan Caruba

I do not know what it is about Islam and liberalism that causes both to turn logic and truth on its head, but we have been witnessing it in different ways in recent days.

First there was the "humanitarian" flotilla running the Israeli blockade of Gaza and then there was the appalling anti-Semitism of Helen Thomas, formerly of the front row in the White House press room.

Suffice it to say that the so-called Palestinians are not living in a state of "occupation." They have repeatedly been offered a state of their own, but have refused it for some six decades. They exist as wards of the United Nations.

Israel is a sovereign nation and has been since May 16, 1948. Its ancient sovereignty dates back to the days of David and Solomon. I say "so-called" because Palestine was the name applied to Israel by a Roman emperor in an effort to make the world forget that Jews had been living in their own land for over a thousand years before being driven into exile.

Arabs who live in Israel are called Israelis because they are citizens there. They number more than a million and, while most are Muslim, about nine percent are Christian. So, while the enemies of Israel talk exclusively in terms of its Jewish population, they are ignoring a sizeable number who are Muslims. It need also be said they enjoy freedoms that their counterparts in other Middle Eastern nations do not.

What I have always found astonishing is the way the Arab nations surrounding Israel and who have attacked it repeatedly nonetheless regard Israel as the aggressor.

This is the same strange logic that says al Qaeda destroyed the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon, but is blameless because they did so in response to U.S. policies in the Middle East. It is the same sick logic and contempt for everything that is not Islamic that pursues the creation of a mosque within walking distance of ground zero.

Not surprisingly, after 9/11 the U.S. responded with military action against the Afghanistan base of Al Qaeda operations, followed thereafter with an invasion of Iraq, the second such military action after having initially driven the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The result was the end of the three-decade regime of Saddam Hussein. The Saudis and oil-rich Gulf states were the major beneficiaries.

There is not a single justification for the "humanitarian" flotilla, one ship of which was filled with men who violently resisted the boarding by Israelis under long established international law regarding blockades.

Tons of humanitarian aid is routinely delivered daily to Gaza after inspection. The inspection is necessary because, since having withdrawn from Gaza as a gesture of peace in 2005, the area has been used to launch thousands of rockets. Even the Egyptians who share a border with Gaza maintain a comparable blockade to ensure weapons are not smuggled into the Hamas hotbed of hatred for Israel.

So far in its short history, Israel has fought a 1948 War of Independence against several Arab armies. The famed Six-Day War followed in 1967. In 1973, the Israelis were attacked on one of the holiest days of their calendar, Yom Kippur, by a coalition of Arab nations. They also endured Yassir Arafat's PLO Intifada of terror bombings

In 1982 the first Lebanon War was a response to constant terror attacks on northern Israel. It was followed in 2006 by a second Lebanon War in response to the abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, a proxy Islamic organization funded and armed by Iran. The most recent Israeli 2009 military engagement against Gaza was a response to constant rocketing and attacks. The blockade is part of the way Israel must cope with a self-defined enemy.

In every case, the Israelis were accused of being the aggressors. Arab nations insisted they were "occupiers" in a land in which Jews had lived for 3,500 years and called their home despite an exile that had existed for 2,000 years prior to the reestablishment of Israel. It followed the Nazi Holocaust that killed six million European Jews during World War Two.

Throughout the Middle East and most particularly in the United Nations, Israel has always been called the aggressor. The same irrational hatred for Jews that has existed everywhere for centuries explains why Israelis are armed to the teeth and why Jews worldwide are experiencing a rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

What worries Israelis these days and should worry Americans as well is the policy of the Obama administration that has clearly turned against Israel, emboldening its enemies. It shames the history of friendship that has existed since Israel was reestablished over sixty years ago.

It is an invitation for war in the Middle East, one that has been joined by Turkey, a nation that has abandoned its history of secular governance in favor of the Islamism that threatens Western nations in particular and the world in general.

Allowing Iran to acquire nuclear arms will tip the world into a global conflict whose casualties are incalculable.

America needs to assert its support for Israel, if only in its own interest. America is being infiltrated by Islamic terrorists and it has a growing number of home-grown ones. Having elected a president whose stated preference is for Islam, the prospects are not good. In the words of Islamists, Israel is the "Little Satan" and America is the "Big Satan."

Commentator, J.D. Longstreet summed up the threat. "I am not optimistic that hatred of the Jews will end, or even lessen any time soon. In fact, I expect it to get much, much, worse and eventually lead the nations of the world to a place known as the Megiddo Valley and the final battle known as the Battle of Armageddon."

Will the armed might of the U.S., already present in the Middle East in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in the Persian Gulf, be used to thwart this? That question waits upon the decision of Barack Hussein Obama.

© Alan Caruba