Israel sits on some disputed real estate. Perhaps you had heard. The vigor with which it is disputed is somewhat curious given that it is tiny, mostly desert and in a pretty rough neighborhood. Indeed it is the neighbors who press their claims. The claimants are arab and muslim. The holders are jewish and jewish. Yes, there are arabs and muslims in Zion but if they are loyal Zionists they keep that to themselves. Israel is a jewish nation for a jewish people who are about as religious as any western people which is to say some are not at all and some are devoutly so. There have been many, many denunciations of this state of affairs as some sort of racism and yes, it IS some sort of racism. It is the sort of racism practiced by a race that is threatened with extinction every day by explicitly racist actors with apocalyptic religious tastes of their own.

Is it, even now, disputable that the will of the arab/muslim world (and we do not forget Iran’s Persians) is to destroy Israel? The closest thing Israel had to an ally or even neutral party in the area was Egypt. Under Hosni Mubarak Egypt refrained from attacking Israel militarily but this was about the limit of their forbearance. In Egypt as in the rest of this unfree world, education, media, culture and politics are shot-through with state manufactured anti-semitism of a crudity and scope that we lucky people can scarcely conceive. Now with no Hosni keeping up appearances this ulcerous fact is out on the street. With the strongman gone Tahiri Square rings with the calls not just for war on Israel; that is for soft-hearted moderates, but for the murder of all jews as a religious obligation. And these cats take their religion seriously, I think. They pray five times a day in a kowtow towards their capitol. They openly thirst for a universal and unflinching application of sharia, their sacred law. This law calls for death and mutilation and vicious punishments for any infraction and the greatest infraction of all is apostasy, constantly redefined with greater and greater strictness. So it is across the region with very few exceptions. In tiny Tunis there is a responsible and passably robust secularist movement. Iraq has a functioning if rickety system of consensual government that is still wildly anti-semitic but a bit more practical. As for the rest, if the government is not explicitly itching to complete the Holocaust (oh, which by the way never happened anyhow), they are implicitly so and this is the one element of governance the population agrees with wholeheartedly.

So let us stipulate that yes, in part, Zionism IS racism. But anti-Zionism is in full racism. It is a racism that since Versaille has depopulated the Middle East of very nearly every jew that could not escape to Israel. And this was not just deportation but murder, rape and looting on as close to an industrial scale as the nomadic perpetrators could handle while there was absolutely NO threat from their victims. Let this take charges of racism off the table and we are left with the practical matter; given the givens, any softening of Israeli immigration policy towards arabs and muslims will shortly lead to her hideous demise. Always Israel has sat on the edge of this bubbling pot. Even with a phone book worth of arab scalps on her belt, the incursions are continuous. Rockets fall on Israel daily. Bombelts are somewhat out of fashion but that is only because they have lately detonated only their carriers or a soldier or two, not from any softening of the mystique of martyrdom. Outside and inside Israel are vicious enemies who use the unending supply of jihadi apprentices they create to prosecute a war they have never surrendered though they have been beaten in honorable combat time and time again.

But even the dishonorable attacks of the proxy armies and freelance lunatics may be less hazardous to Israeli survival than the baffling pronouncements and actions of her friends and the confused hesitation these may cause. It is not just the usual blandishments for military or diplomatic “patience” and “restraint”, the two mumbled virtues always demanded of Israel and never expected from her foes. Now, while chaos burns throughout the region the “restraint” called for is restraint of the life processes of the nation herself, this one jot of decency in the sand. What else can we make of the claims that the expansion of jewish “settlements” is a proximate cause of arab/muslim hostility? This was absurd enough when a “settlement” was a century old orchard in Gaza but now the term has expanded, malevolently and intentionally until it is applied by the President himself to the construction of apartment blocks in Jerusalem. The claimants, you see, consider all of Israel their own possession. While no one without connections or bribes (or both) can lay title to an acre in Egypt or Libya or Saudi Arabia the would-be squatters assert clear title to every inch of Israel. They intend to do a bit of remodeling, turning every jewish living room into a raping pit; every synagogue to a mosque and every block to a ruin as they have the rest of their world.

Enough was enough long ago in any moral sense but now the practical has come knocking as well. Mubarak could be bought off, and so he was. The royals of Jordan likewise. The Syrians and the Libyans could at least be cowed; after all a military dictatorship won’t last long without the military so neither Assad nor Khadaffy would risk that. But these options are exhausted as much for Netanyahu as the arab thugs. While the precarious accomodations of the last fifty years come crumbling down across the desert world, war between Israel and all others saunters straight towards us and it seems no one will mention it. Bad manners, I suppose.

If the arabs want war they will have it. And the jews must assume they will be alone. Possibly the British and/or French would intervene… Suez and all that but if anything has become clear in recent weeks it is that America will do nothing, at least not in time. Even if Obama were a dedicated friend of Israel, which he is not, he will dither this as he has dithered everything else and in any case he is a forceful advocate for the arabs’ claims. There is only one out from this disaster and it seems unlikely. The arabs at large must surrender their claims on Israel.
At root, this war like so many, would be a glorified real estate dispute. We have it, you want it. You try to take it. In avoiding this disaster Israel would be well justified in using every ounce of her might. And she could destroy Cairo, Damascus and Tehran in an afternoon, if necessary. To keep it from becoming necessary the arabs, whomever of their leaders come to prominence, must make a public quitclaim of their so-called interests in Israel. They must demonstrate an understanding of the simple  truth that there is not a palace or hovel on this earth that sits on land more justly held than does Israel hold her tiny patch. In other terms, it is that old sticking point about Israel’s right to exist. If those rising to power across these lands want to prevent the brutal destruction of their nations, armies and populations; a destruction they have courted recklessly since Israel’s birth and been saved from THRICE by American intervention they must make it plain to Israel that they will let her breathe in peace. The hope for this is slim but the rewards would be great. If there are arab/muslim leaders who will say this and ONLY this they will be heroes to be celebrated as well as friends to be aided. There are few, precious few players who might fit this description but in them lies the only hope, not for Israel but for the arab world. This is your fifth second chance, arab friends. Best take it.

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