{"id":11970,"date":"2019-09-05T17:48:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T00:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11970"},"modified":"2019-09-05T17:48:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T00:48:22","slug":"israels-good-and-bad-new-realities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/israels-good-and-bad-new-realities\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s Good and Bad New Realities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most radical changes in the labyrinth of the Middle East is the near cessation of the old formal hostility of the Arab nations to Israel. That does not mean that the destruction of the Jewish state is not still a commandment among hundreds of millions of Arab speakers throughout the Middle East in general and on the proverbial West Bank in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rather, a number of currents has convinced most of the Gulf monarchies, frontline Arab states such as Jordan and Egypt, and the other North African nations that of all the existential crises in the world threatening their regimes, Israel is no longer perceived as their font.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, elemental dangers to Israel arise mostly from Iran, Iranian-backed Hezbollah in the badlands of Syria and Lebanon, and Turkey. Why this fundamental realignment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One reason, of course, is Iran\u2019s likely soon-to-be nuclear status. Iran detests Israel. But such hatred is relatively recent and dates from 1979 \u2014 unlike the ancient schisms between Shiite and Sunni, Persian and Arab, and the Straits of Hormuz versus the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arab nations believe that a nuclear Iran will threaten them explicitly. They assume that a messianic Tehran is quite capable of carrying out what would be serial nuclear threats. And they are certain that such constant tensions would embolden Shiite minorities in their own states, much like millions of Eastern European Germans of the 1930s were suddenly deemed oppressed, and believed that they could be liberated only by eventual protection from and incorporation into Hitler\u2019s ascendant Third Reich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/09\/israel-new-alliances-dangerous-old-enemies\/\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review One of the most radical changes in the labyrinth of the Middle East is the near cessation of the old formal hostility of the Arab nations to Israel. That does not mean that the destruction of the Jewish state is not still a commandment among hundreds of millions of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-374","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2010,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/can-israel-survive\/","url_meta":{"origin":11970,"position":0},"title":"Can Israel Survive?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Will Israel survive? That question hasn\u2019t really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now, things are far worse\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Israel&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3734,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/israel-did-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":11970,"position":1},"title":"Israel Did it!","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"When in doubt, shout about Israel. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online These are strange times. Perennially beleaguered Israel, for instance, was hit all summer long with rockets from Lebanon and Gaza, as the world watched and kept score in an absurd new game of proportionality: Israel was to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;December 2006&quot;","block_context":{"text":"December 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/december-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9704,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-resilience-of-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":11970,"position":2},"title":"The Resilience of Israel","author":"Megan Ring","date":"January 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Despite the mess around it, Israel is in its best geostrategic position in decades. Israel would seem to be in a disastrous position, given the inevitable nuclear capabilities of Iran and the recent deterioration of its relationship with the United States, its former patron\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Russia&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":540,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-muddle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":11970,"position":3},"title":"The Muddle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online No one has any idea what the Middle East will look like next year, much less in five years \u2014 especially the revolutionary players themselves. There are not even the old familiar fault lines this revolutionary time around. Are the Sunni Gulf kingdoms\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Middle East&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5035,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-ray-of-arab-candor\/","url_meta":{"origin":11970,"position":4},"title":"A Ray of Arab Candor","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 3, 2002","format":false,"excerpt":"A U.N. report by Middle-Eastern\u00a0intellectuals\u00a0blames Arab culture and Arab tyranny for Arab problems. by Victor Davis Hanson City Journal The just-released Arab Human Development Report, commissioned by the United Nations and drafted by a group of Middle Eastern intellectuals, utterly confirms the deep pathology gripping the Arab world that Western\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;July 2002&quot;","block_context":{"text":"July 2002","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2002\/july-2002\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":476,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-humpty-dumpty-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":11970,"position":5},"title":"The Humpty-Dumpty Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The United States is backing off from the Middle East \u2014 and the Middle East from the United States. America is in the midst of the greatest domestic gas and oil revolution since the early 20th century. If even guarded predictions about new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Middle East&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11974,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11970\/revisions\/11974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}