by Richard Baehr
New York Times reporter
Jody Rudoren accuses Israel of destabilizing both Israeli-Palestinian
relations and the new "unity government " of the Palestinians, and
sentencing the Palestinians to collective punishment as it seeks to
find the three boys kidnapped a week back, almost certainly by Hamas operatives.
The three kidnap victims and their families are, of course, only
deserving of a modicum of international sympathy, since they supposedly
belong to "settler families" living on land "promised to," and
rightfully belonging to the Palestinians. (In fact, only one of the
three families lives in a settlement.) In pretty much every story on the
three boys in European papers or The New York Times, it is obligatory
to mention the settler aspect, since this suggests the families to some
extent had it coming to them for their participation in a colonial
enterprise. Perhaps the only thing that could have muddied the waters
further would be if the three boys had been wearing Washington Redskins
tee shirts at the time of the kidnapping,
which would have conclusively demonstrated their lack of concern for
all those less privileged and more deserving of the world's concern.
There are of course,
plenty of destabilizing things going on in the Middle East, though
hitchhiking teenage boys, and the Israeli government's interest in
finding them while they are still alive, hardly fall in that category.
The unity agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was a
particularly destabilizing event. With no change in any of the
expressed objectives of Hamas, the unity agreement was essentially a
formal marriage between the PA and a terrorist entity committed to the
murder of Jews in Israel and anywhere else they could find them. That
agreement was bound to destabilize Israeli-Palestinian relations, as was
the kidnapping of three teenage boys by the new partner in the PA
government.
The Israeli search for
the kidnappers and their victims is what governments in civilized
countries do to protect their people. Kidnapping children is what
terrorist regimes do and is designed to destabilize. Hamas clearly sees
a path to power in the West Bank, much as it has achieved power in
Gaza. Forcing the PA on the defensive -- appearing to accede to Israeli
demands to cooperate in the search for the kidnappers, while Hamas
remains resolute in supporting such attacks, is bound to improve Hamas'
standing versus the PA among a population that loves to glorify
terrorist killings and kidnappings and prefers them over deals with the
"Zionist entity."
The Hamas message of how Jews should be treated anywhere you can find them seemed to have been well understood in Europe -- in Paris and Brussels and Antwerp in
recent days. In Antwerp, it appeared to be Jewish 5-year-olds that
proved so unsettling and destabilizing to the Muslim attackers.
It is of course no
surprise that the attacks in Europe are occurring now with such
increased frequency. The European governments, as evidenced by the
latest craven capitulation by their diplomats to Arab and Muslim
demands in the "Declaration Adopted at the Third European Union-League
of Arab States Foreign Affairs Ministerial Meeting" in Athens last week have
effectively become mouthpieces for the Palestinian Authority and the
Arab League. Since the Palestinian Authority now also means Hamas, it
is no surprise that European nations have been speaking with forked
tongues about the kidnapping and its aftermath. One might say that the
attacks on Jews in European cities have been destabilizing to the
normal life that has been promised to all the citizens of the social
welfare paradises that presumably exist on the continent. But fear not,
since most of the attacks are characterized by these governments as
actions by "lone wolves," and there can't be too many of those types
around among Europe's more than twenty million Muslims, a significant
number of whom have clearly been radicalized in recent decades. That
very destabilizing radicalization process is one that the EU nations are
afraid to confront due to their near total commitment to the
multicultural enterprise, despite its evident failure to produce any
real assimilation.
Outside of the
Israeli-Palestinian arena, there have been plenty of destabilizing
events the past few years and days in the Middle East. Unfortunately
for those who claim that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
so central to calming the region, the instability in Egypt, Syria,
Libya, and now Iraq appear to be completely unrelated to the flow and
the ups and downs of the so-called peace process. On the other hand,
the perception of a disappearance of American resolve in the region has
undoubtedly played a real destabilizing role. Would Sunni jihadists be
in the position they are now in Syria and Iraq had the Obama
administration been clearer on our goals and on whom we were supporting
in the Syrian civil war, and not wavered on enforcing our red lines?
Had we left a small military force in Iraq and applied more pressure on
the Maliki government to be more inclusive, would the country be in
its current state of near collapse with the possibility of splitting
apart into religious/ethnic areas dominated by Kurds, Sunnis and
Shiites?
To hear what comes out of the State Department these days, or for that matter from NASA, or the Veterans Affairs Department,
American domestic and foreign policy objectives seem to focus on just a
few areas -- climate change; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
initiatives, and a little further down the list, celebrating Muslim
achievements in space so as to lift their self-esteem. Of course, also
near the top of the agenda is insuring that the United States and other
countries have healthy school lunches.
The triviality of
American foreign policy initiatives and the leadership vacuum we have
created abroad, which others are moving quickly to fill (in very
destabilizing fashion), appear to be deliberate -- an attempt to reduce
our American footprint and avoid even the threat of military
engagement.
The next shoe to drop will probably be with Iran and its nuclear program.
What will be sold as a "victory" for the United States in the
negotiations will be a deal that culminates Obama's five-year courtship
of the mullahs, and has led to "their rejoining the community of
nations" and presumably behaving more responsibly (as in our
subcontracting to them the military effort to derail the assault by the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as it approaches Baghdad). The
nuclear deal if it is signed, will preserve Iran's ability to enrich
uranium, maintain existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, enable only
those inspections Iran is comfortable with, and significantly reduce
current sanctions directed against the regime -- a reward presumably
for not making a bomb this week, but only a bit later or whenever it
chooses to. The fact that American and European pressure on Iran will
have been removed, will be destabilizing. Iran will be freer to throw
its weight around, with its economy on the mend, and the "international
community" moving on to worry about other things than its nuclear
program.
The killing of Osama bin Laden
was supposed to be the capstone to the president's foreign policy
achievements -- ending the wars abroad, and wrapping up our business
with al-Qaida, producing a new stable world order, with a more
comfortable, reduced American role as one among many. It seems more
likely today that what the administration views as its achievements are
seen abroad as neglect and negligence. Unfortunately, neglect and
negligence are destabilizing.
Richard Baehr
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=8811
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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