{"id":8169,"date":"2015-01-29T07:38:33","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T15:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8169"},"modified":"2015-01-29T07:38:33","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T15:38:33","slug":"can-israel-survive-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/can-israel-survive-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Israel Survive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traditional pillars of the tiny democracy\u2019s security have begun to erode.<\/em><\/h3>\n
by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\"via
via NRO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I<\/span>srael is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Eight million Israelis are surrounded by some 400 million Muslims in more than 20 states. Almost all of Israel\u2019s neighbors are anti-Israeli dictatorships, monarchies, or theocracies \u2014 a number of them reduced to a state of terrorist chaos.<\/p>\n

Given the rise of radical Islam, the huge petrodollar wealth of the Middle East, and lopsided demography, how has Israel so far survived?<\/p>\n

The Jewish state has always depended on three unspoken assumptions for its tenuous existence.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, a democratic, nuclear Israel can deter larger enemies. In the Cold War, Soviet-backed Arab enemies understood that Israel\u2019s nuclear arsenal prevented them from destroying Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

Second, the Western traditions of Israel \u2014 free-market capitalism, democracy, human rights \u2014 ensured a dynamic economy, high-tech weapons, innovative industry, and stable government. In other words, 8 million Israelis could count on a greater gross domestic product, less internal violence, and more innovation than, say, nearby Egypt, a mess with ten times more people than Israel and nearly 50 times more land.<\/p>\n

Third, Israel counted on Western moral support from America and Europe, as well as military support from the United States.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s stronger allies have often come to the defense of its democratic principles and pointed out that the world applies an unfair standard to Israel, largely out of envy of its success, anti-Semitism, fear of terrorism, and fondness of oil exporters.<\/p>\n

Why, for example, does the United Nations focus so much attention on Palestinians who fled Israel nearly 70 years ago but ignore Muslims who were forced out of India, or Jews who were ethnically cleansed from the cities of the Middle East? Why doesn\u2019t the world worry that Nicosia is a more divided city than Jerusalem, or that Turkey occupies northern Cyprus, or that China occupies Tibet?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, two of these three traditional pillars of Israeli security have eroded.<\/p>\n

When the United States arbitrarily lifted tough sanctions against Iran and became a de facto partner with the Iranian theocracy in fighting the Islamic State, it almost ensured that Iran will get a nuclear bomb. Iran has claimed that it wishes to destroy Israel, as if its own apocalyptic sense of self makes it immune from classical nuclear deterrence.<\/p>\n

Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) summed up the Obama administration\u2019s current policy on Iran as \u201ctalking points that come straight out of Tehran.\u201d Obama has cynically dismissed Menendez\u2019s worries about negotiations with Iran as a reflection not of the senator\u2019s principles, but of his concerns over \u201cdonors\u201d \u2014 apparently a reference to wealthy pro-Israel American Jews.<\/p>\n

Symbolism counts, too. President Obama was about the only major world leader to skip the recent march in Paris to commemorate the victims of attacks by radical Islamic terrorists \u2014 among them Jews singled out and murdered for their faith. Likewise, he was odd world leader out when he skipped\u00a0this week\u2019s 70-year commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.<\/p>\n

Obama is not expected to meet with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will address Congress in March. An anonymous member of the Obama administration was quoted as calling Netanyahu, a combat veteran, a \u201ccoward\u201d and describing him with a related expletive. Another nameless administration official recently said Netanyahu \u201cspat in our face\u201d by accepting the congressional invitation without Obama\u2019s approval and so will pay \u201ca price\u201d \u2014 personal animus that the administration has not directed even against the leaders of a hostile Iran.<\/p>\n

Obama won\u2019t meet with Netanyahu, and yet the president had plenty of time to hold an adolescent bull session with a would-be Internet comedian decked out in Day-Glo makeup who achieved her fame by filming herself eating breakfast cereal in a bathtub full of milk.<\/p>\n

Jews have been attacked and bullied on the streets of some of the major cities of France and Sweden by radical Muslims whose anti-Semitism goes unchecked by their terrified hosts. Jewish leaders in France openly advise that Jews in that country immigrate to Israel.<\/p>\n

A prosecutor in Argentina who had investigated the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 \u2014 an attack widely believed to have been backed by Iran \u2014 was recently found dead under mysterious circumstances.<\/p>\n

Turkey, a country whose prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was praised by Obama as one of his closest friends among world leaders, has turned openly non-secular and is vehemently anti-Israel.<\/p>\n

Until there is a change of popular attitudes in Europe or a different president in the United States, Israel is on its own to deal with an Iran that has already hinted it would use a nuclear weapon to eliminate the \u201cZionist entity,\u201d with the radical Islamic madness raging on its borders, and with the global harassment of Jews.<\/p>\n

A tiny democratic beacon in the Middle East should inspire and rally Westerners. Instead, too often, Western nations shrug and assume that Israel is a headache \u2014 given that there is more oil and more terrorism on the other side.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015\u00a0Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traditional pillars of the tiny democracy\u2019s security have begun to erode. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Eight million Israelis are surrounded by some 400 million Muslims in more than 20 states. Almost all of Israel\u2019s neighbors are anti-Israeli dictatorships, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[28,97,152,11,167,846],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-27L","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9704,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-resilience-of-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":8169,"position":0},"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 "Russia"","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":810,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-anti-semitism\/","url_meta":{"origin":8169,"position":1},"title":"The New Anti-Semitism","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Not long ago,\u00a0The Economist\u00a0ran an unsigned editorial called the \u201cAuschwitz Complex.\u201d The unnamed author blamed serial Middle East tensions on both Israel\u2019s unwarranted sense of victimhood, accrued from the Holocaust, and its unwillingness to \u201cto give up its empire.\u201d As far as Israel\u2019s paranoid\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","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":8169,"position":2},"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 "December 2006"","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":2010,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/can-israel-survive\/","url_meta":{"origin":8169,"position":3},"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 "Israel"","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":10878,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-threatens-to-deal-another-blow-to-the-palestinian-cause\/","url_meta":{"origin":8169,"position":4},"title":"Trump Threatens to Deal Another Blow to the Palestinian Cause","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 By cutting off hundreds of millions in American aid to the Palestinian Authority, the president could radically alter the Middle East. \u00a0 President Trump set off another Twitter firestorm last week when he hinted that he may be considering cutting off hundreds of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5502,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/an-interview-reflections-on-iran-iraq-the-middle-east-and-the-west\/","url_meta":{"origin":8169,"position":5},"title":"An Interview: Reflections on Iran, Iraq, the Middle East and the West","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Ellis Weintraub Private Papers The Jerusalem Post\u00a0recently published a portion of Weintraub's interview with Victor Davis Hanson. What steps should be taken on Iran by Israel, the United States, or the West in general? I believe we have one to two years, a little more at best, so [the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2007"","block_context":{"text":"March 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/march-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8169"}],"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=8169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8171,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8169\/revisions\/8171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}