Europe is being slowly, and it seems willingly, crushed to death by the ‘soft’ jihad of Muslim immigration and birth increase. Europeans abase themselves before Muslim threats; fall over themselves to grant Muslim demands however unreasonable; abandon the values their ancestors fought and died for in order to appease the oppressive ideologists of Islam. European governments do anything, however dishonorable, to worm themselves into the good graces of disgusting Muslim tyrannies such as Libya and Saudi Arabia. Hardly  a word of condemnation of the ‘human rights’ record  of Muslim countries ever issues from a European leader’s mouth. Every day terrorists murder  in the name of Islam (see our left margin for the tally).

There are over 50 Muslim-dominated states. There are more than one and a quarter billion Muslims in the world, and growing. There is one tiny Jewish state. It is democratic. Its population, Jews and Arabs alike, enjoy freedom equally under the law. There is a free press, an uncorrupted judiciary. It is a country that has generously given asylum to non-Jews (such as persecuted refugees from North Africa, Muslims among them). When it is forced to defend itself with military action, it takes more trouble than any country in history to avoid civilian casualties. It has fulfilled its promises to yield territory taken in defensive wars in exchange for peace with its neighbors that they never deliver.

Yet it  is this small, beleaguered  state that is reviled, hated, accused, punished by the Europeans as a moral outrage – as if  there is a single European country that has earned the moral right to judge the Jews!

The continent is persistently and profoundly anti-Semitic. In their  blind and irrational obsession with Jew-hatred, Europeans cannot even bring themselves to acknowledge the immense contribution that Jews – a tiny minority in the world – have made to their civilization: their sciences, their philosophy, their arts, their technology, their prosperity, their power and glory. Jews are understandably pouring out of Europe by the tens of thousands, mostly to shelter in Israel – where they are threatened with annihilation by the hostile Islamic state of Iran, fast acquiring nuclear weapons.

It seems that Europeans would be more than content to see Israel annihilated. They will cheer. A last happiness for them before they themselves are overwhelmed by Islam.

And even in America, where a majority want the Jewish state to survive and flourish, there are those who positively wish for its demise – among them, we understand, the present radical left administration.

The brilliant Israeli columnist Caroline Glick paints the picture vividly in this article:

The main fantasy governing Europe’s attitude toward the Middle East is the belief in Israeli militaristic venality, fundamentalist messianism, and territorial greed. It is this fantasy that protects European leaders from the need to account for their six years of failed appeasement toward Iran, during which Iran has made its swiftest progress toward completing its nuclear weapons program.

It is the predominance of anti-Israel attitudes throughout the continent that enables European leaders to make light of the Iranian nuclear threat even as ever growing swathes of the continent fall within the range of the Islamic republic’s ballistic missiles.

A mere glance at the daily Middle East coverage of your standard European newspaper suffices to demonstrate the depths of Europe’s obsession with hating Israel. The absence of peace is always Israel’s fault. The fact that the Arabs have never accepted Israel’s right to exist is either whitewashed or justified. So too, Arab terrorism is explained away while every act – small and large – that in any way asserts Israel’s right to defend itself is pounced upon as proof of Israel’s criminality and brutality…

Israel has for years based its public diplomacy regarding Teheran’s nuclear weapons program on successive governments’ assessments that given Iran’s global reach and the threat it poses to global security, states will be more willing to act to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons than they are to acknowledge Palestinian terrorism which is employed almost exclusively against Israel. What Israeli leaders – including Netanyahu – have failed to recognize is that the antipathy of Europeans toward Israel is so great that they are willing to explain away Iran’s nuclear weapons program because it is aimed first of all against Israel. …

Such views inevitably temper any propensity European leaders may have to act against the Islamic republic…

Case in point is the newest Swedish media blood libel against Israel, and the numerous blood libels – most prominently France 2’s [TV] Muhammad al-Dura blood libel from September 2000 – that preceded it. Stories like [the Swedish newspaper] Aftonbladet‘s fiction of IDF theft of Palestinian organs and France 2’s false allegation that the IDF murders Arab children sell newspapers and raise television ratings because the popular animus against Israel is so great that people are willing to buy newspapers and watch television networks that propagate obvious lies that feed this irrational hatred. Indeed, it pays to disseminate such lies.

France 2’s Charles Enderlain, the father of the al-Dura lie, just received France’s Légion d’honneur from President Nicolas Sarkozy. Then, too, anti-Israel activist Felicia Langer just received Germany’s Federal Cross of Honor, and Israel-hater and former Irish president Mary Robinson was just awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The lesson of all of this for Israel is clear. Whether Netanyahu is dealing with Obama or European leaders, the game is rigged against us. Any move that Israel makes toward these leaders will simply facilitate their further castigation of the Jewish state and support their clear intentions to do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring the means to destroy Israel.

As we have been all too often in our history, today Israel stands alone against our enemies. We can either defeat them, or we can be defeated. The choice is ours.

A. C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, writes in his book Against All Gods (Oberon Books, London, 2007):

It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule. It is time to refuse to tiptoe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither. Faith is a commitment to belief contrary to evidence and reason… [T]o believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.

He further asserts that ‘it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a state of intellectual infancy’, and that ‘inculcating [any one of] the various competing falsehoods of the major [or minor, for that matter] faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal’.

With these opinions we agree.

But we are not  sure that he is right when he  declares in the same book that religion is on the decline, and ‘as a factor in public and international affairs it is having what might be its last – characteristically bloody – fling’.

If he is alluding to the jihad being waged by Islam on the rest of the world – as he surely is – it is certainly bloody. But whether it will prove to be religion’s last act on the world stage, or  fail in its aim to spread Islam as the predominant faith and only system of law on earth, is uncertain. A belief that mankind as a whole is continually progressing towards an ever more reason-directed future, can only be held on faith. Grayling seems to have that belief, that faith. But we do not.

With the spread of Islam through Europe, and the election of Obama in America, there is a double threat  to individual liberty, and so to the triumph of reason; because reason can flourish, create, and persuade, only where individuals are free.

Daniel Pipes writes:

US President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, John O. Brennan, conveniently outlined the administration’s present and future policy mistakes in a speech on August 6, “A New Approach for Safeguarding Americans.”…

Disturbingly, Brennan ascribes virtually every thought or policy in his speech to the wisdom of the One. This cringe-inducing lecture reminds one of a North Korean functionary paying homage to the Dear Leader.

Specifics are no better. Most fundamentally, Brennan calls for appeasing terrorists: “Even as we condemn and oppose the illegitimate tactics used by terrorists, we need to acknowledge and address the legitimate needs and grievances of ordinary people those terrorists claim to represent.” Which legitimate needs and grievances, one wonders, does he think al-Qaida represents?

Brennan carefully delineates a two-fold threat, one being “al-Qaida and its allies” and the other “violent extremism.” But the former, self-evidently, is a subset of the latter. This elementary mistake undermines his entire analysis.

He also rejects any connection between “violent extremism” and Islam: “Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself.”…

[This is] a deeply deceptive interpretation [of the meaning of ‘jihad’] intended to confuse non-Muslims and win time for Islamists. The George W. Bush administration, for all its mistakes, did not succumb to this ruse. But Brennan informs us that his boss now bases US policy on it.

The speech contains disquieting signs of ineptitude. We learn that Obama considers nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists to be “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” Fine. But how does he respond? With three feeble and nearly irrelevant steps: “leading the effort for a stronger global nonproliferation regime, launching an international effort to secure the world’s vulnerable nuclear material… and hosting a global nuclear summit.”

Nor can Brennan think straight. One example, requiring a lengthy quote. “Poverty does not cause violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause terrorism. But just as there is no excuse for the wanton slaughter of innocents, there is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death.”

Summary: Poverty and a lack of education do not cause terrorism, but a lack of education and a job make people more susceptible to the ideas leading to terrorism. What is the distinction? Woe on us when the White House accepts illogic as analysis.

Further, let’s focus on the statement “when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death,” for it contains two stunning errors. First, it assumes the socialist fiction that governments provide basic needs. No. Other than in a few commodity-rich states, governments protect and offer legal structures, while the market provides.

Second, every study on the subject finds no connection between personal stress (poverty, lack of education, unemployment) and attraction to radical Islam. If anything, massive transfers of wealth to the Middle East since 1970 contributed to the rise of radical Islam. The administration is basing its policy on a falsehood.

Where, as they say, is the adult supervision? Implementation of the inept policies outlined by Brennan spells danger for Americans, American interests and American allies. The bitter consequences of these mistakes soon enough will become apparent.

Barack Obama declared himself, in Berlin, to be a ‘citizen of the world’. It was not a mere rhetorical flourish. He has a globalist agenda under which the US will enter into a series of treaties that would subject America to foreign rule over its wealth (redistributing it world-wide), its trade, its laws, its use of energy, and even its defense.

The United Nations, that ghastly powerhouse of corruption, hypocrisy, and injustice, is envisaged as the nascent institution of world government.

Liberal left opinion tends to be against the nation state. It is the opinion of approximately half the voters in the Western world. Half the people of the free West apparently want to destroy their nations, and are literally doing so. They may explain their hatred of the nation state by reference to ‘colonialism’, as if in many cases colonies were not more prosperous, just, and free than the independent tyrannies they have become. Or they may say that the wars and massacres in the last century resulted from ‘nationalism’ so the nation must go; but their thinking would not be right, because the wars and massacres were the work of dictators, not democratic states of which the strongest opposed and defeated the aggressors.

Whatever their explanations, they have launched a movement for the suicide of Western nations.

All over the Western world men and women in national and international assemblies, ministries, academies, councils and committees devote themselves to the business of putting an end to their national identities. Patriotism to them is utterly absurd. Any manifestation of pride in their nation’s history, culture, traditions, institutions, even law, embarrasses if it doesn’t outrage them. In all the countries of Europe, and now under Obama’s leadership in the United States, they work towards their goal.

The very idea of the nation state they consider to be an anachronism; a nasty thing of the past much to be regretted. The more powerful and glorious the past, the more regretful they are. Filled with remorse for what their forefathers achieved, they will apologize to any foreigner who’ll listen to them. However hard their independence as a nation was won, their system of government developed, their individual freedom wrested from the fist of tyranny, they count it all worth nothing. Obama, whose ignorance of history should but doesn’t embarrass him, routinely apologizes for America to appalling little despotisms, and to countries that have survived as comparatively free nations only because America saved them from conquest by tyrannical powers.

National borders between European countries are already as good as gone. The EU plans to have ‘regions’ which will cross the borders of those outdated old nation states and replace them for the convenience of the central administration. American liberals – how many nobody knows – apparently look to this development across the Atlantic as a model to be emulated.

What will be lost if the nation state is lost?

For the most part, our countries have been identical with our nationalities. Our nationalities give us the inestimable gifts of an historical significance and a hopeful destiny beyond our individual lives; a meaning, a kind of immortality, a role in a drama, which, whether we are leading or bit-part players, involves us all. Just by existing as people of this or that country we may feel ourselves to be part of an endless story. Our nation is our greater self, the ‘we’ that is a greatness for every ‘I’, whether the ‘I’ be small or grand in personal achievement.  For many it is worth fighting and dying for. But now the story may end after all. For though it is possible for a nation to live on after its state is destroyed (the Jews did), the likelihood is that it will not. How many nations have disappeared from history with the loss of their settled, coherent, self-protected territory?  Top of the head guess – too many to count.

What else can endow us by birthright or adoption with that powerful plural identity which we seem to need and glory in? How will we fare as individuals without the nation state?  It places us in the scheme of things. It gives us a ‘local habitation and a name’. It defines us for ourselves and for others, clothing us in connotations derived from a certain history to intimate a special character. We inherit its language, which shapes our thoughts. It sets many of our goals, provides the chances for achieving them, holds a place for us, notes and records our existence. It protects us from foreign enemies and domestic assailants. It makes demands of us that we can fulfill with pride and delight, or chafe against. It provides the causes we may strive for or oppose. It is our home, our stage, our shelter, our fortress, our field, our base. Personified, it is our guardian, our teacher, our judge, and our avenger.

The nation state makes and enforces the rules that, at their best, allow us to live in freedom. It was one of the great steps forward of mankind when the city-states of ancient Greece embraced as citizens all those who would live in them not because they sprang from that particular soil but because they would accept a common law. The tribe was superseded by the state. (The great Spanish conservative Ortega y Gasset called it citizenship by virtue of  ius rather than rus – a commonality of law rather than of native soil.)  The citizens could have been born elsewhere, and could remain individual in their tastes and choices, but owed a common duty and allegiance to the state.  The United States of America is the greatest development of that splendid idea.

The European Union may have been intended by some of its enthusiastic founders to be a bigger nation-state itself in which people could live their individual lives as they chose provided only that they obeyed the laws that they themselves would have a hand in making through the democratic process. But it hasn’t worked out like that, and there is cause to doubt that it was ever really meant to. There were other purposes in the minds of its creators: Germany needed to dissolve its guilt for the Holocaust in the ocean of Europe; France hoped to be the hegemonic power in a union populous and rich enough to rival the United States.

In fact the EU is not a democracy. Representatives are elected to a European parliament, but that body is not a legislature and has little power to affect its laws. Tasked with homogenizing peoples who have different histories, languages, traditions, tastes and temperaments, an unelected bureaucracy rules. It is an authoritarian Kafkaesque Castle. Already a police-state-lite, the EU is on the road to totalitarianism.

True, it may not survive long enough to become as bad as the late Soviet Union because a Muslim majority will in all probability turn it in another direction. But there’s little comfort in that thought for those who have always preferred the old national independence to the new Europe with its Babel of tongues, its shameless corruption, its politically correct restrictions on freedom. If a Caliphate should be established by the emerging Muslim majority, freedom will not be merely restricted, it will be destroyed, erased from the book.

Politically correct opinion may like the prospect of the Caliphate because Islam aims to dominate the whole world and will wage jihad until it does, and then the dream of World Government will be realized.

But where, without the protection of the nation state, will the rest of us find shelter?

Jillian Becker   August 2, 2009

 Walid Phares writes:

The so-called Somali pirates are strategically different from their historical predecessors in the Caribbean or from their contemporary colleagues in archipelagoes around the world. They aren’t a vast collection of individual thugs, acting as bands replicating what successful sea gangs have accomplished for centuries before them. There are too many of them, operating from extremely long shores, all using similar methods, and are backed from hinterland forces.

 

They may seem like pirates as they seize ships and negotiate for the ransom. But these water thugs actually belong to a wider chess game. The grand ensemble of the army of little boats is in fact part of a regional Jihadi apparatus being deployed in the horn of Africa and beyond. The Jihadi grand circle building in the region is not limited to the pirates but involves hostile forces from the mid Red Sea to East Africa. The Somali pirates are merely one facet of this grand circle…

 

The end aim is to create a vast zone of insecurity stretching from East Africa to the Red Sea. A closer look allows strategists to easily realize that these are the maritime passages from the Oil rich Gulf to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and also parts of the East African alternative routes the most economic via Cape Town… This operation is of regional-international dimensions. It is about holding these passages hostage… It is a maritime Jihad striking at the Western/international lifeline on high seas to bring about a change in balance of power…

 

The so-called pirates are being used by land-based forces to drag the enemy [the non-Muslim world] into a wider war in the region …

 

Two months ago, Eritrea and the Iranian regime signed an agreement granting naval facilities to the Khomeinist military ships to use the country’s ports and eventually build a base on the Red Sea. Last month, reports signaled an alignment of military intelligence between the Sudanese and Iranian regimes and Hezbollah’s networks in the region…

 

An act of terrorism by Muslim university students, that would have killed and maimed many in the UK this Easter, has fortunately been prevented by timely detection and arrests.  

Michael Burleigh comments in the Mail (read the whole column here):  

The fact is that universities are one of the bastions of multiculturalism in Britain – and although the Government knows that this discredited policy has been disastrous for this country, it is still too nervous of the Left to abandon one of their holy grails.

Multiculturalism ostensibly celebrates individual ethnic ‘identities’ but it has been given such emphasis that each minority identity – ‘Black’, ‘Muslim’ or any other – is all too often encouraged to air a sense of grievance and victimhood, while the majority population are cast in the role of oppressors.

And for years now, terrorist recruiting sergeants – aided and abetted by a greedy liberal lawyers’ racket which encourages people to emphasise their rights rather than their duties and obligations as citizens – have exploited the multicultural havens of universities to persuade those who do feel victimised by society to try to get their own back with bombs and violence.

But if the universities are now one of the main breeding grounds of Islamist terrorism, the terrorists targets are not so rarefied… The 12 men arrested in the North-West on Wednesday … may have been plotting a mass casualty attack on nightclubs frequented by footballers this Easter weekend.

It is time now for us all to ask how long the Government is going to tolerate universities as breeding grounds for the terrorists who seek to kill innocent Britons during the most solemn holiday in the Christian calendar [or at any other time – JB].

There is only one way to tackle this deeply and dangerously ingrained problem: The Government should urgently and unequivocally abandon the multicultural creed that has allowed extremists to flourish in this country.

Sure it should. But it’s almost certainly too late. The ideology of Islam is wholly incompatible with the values of the West, but the immigrant Muslim population of Britain and Western Europe is growing while the indigenous populations are dying out.  It will not be long before Europe is an Islamic continent. 

One thing that could be done before it is too late (but will not be done of course) is – bring the European leftist ideologues, Arab-loving romantics, and Islam-besotted idiots (like Prince Charles) who actively or by sentimental encouragement opened the doors of Europe to the Muslims, to trial for treason. 

O, but – I nearly forgot – British judges are among the most guilty. 

 From Canada Free Press: 

President Obama said in Turkey to the citizens of this majority Muslim country that the United States “would never be at war with Islam.” He went on to say that the relationship the U.S. has with Islam, and the bridge he would like to build between Islam and the West, cannot and will not be based on opposition to Al Qaeda.

He then drew on his personal ties to Islam – you know, the ties he denied he had during the campaign – Obama stated that many Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. He added, “I know, because I am one of them.”

Despite Obama’s ignorance, the radical Islamization of the West has nothing to do with a wonderful concept of multiculturalism and diversity. Europe is being overrun with radical Islam, and as the radical Islamization of that continent takes place, the crime is so rampant in the Muslim neighborhoods that the police don’t even dare enter the areas.

Radical Islam’s desire, whether or not the Left, President Obama, or the touchy-feely crowd are willing to admit it, is to conquer the world. Their goals are to eliminate Israel, kill every Jew walking the Earth, and to bring down the West, transforming the Great Satan into Islamic Nations operating under the thumb of Sharia Law. Radical Islam will not ever be at peace with non-Muslim nations not to mention Muslims who do not share a belief in Sharia Law.

Sure, there will be temporary treaties that they will abide by for a few months, or even a number of years, but in the end, understand that these agreements are temporary. Radical Islam will not completely rest until all non-Muslim civilizations are destroyed, and the inhabitants are slaves under the mighty fist of an Islamic Caliphate.

Giving special privileges to such a radical, political, judicial and threatening nightmare is a mistake. Calling countries like Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, Hamas, or other radicals “friends” and negotiating with their leaders without pre-conditions and a stance that comes from a position of strength is a mistake, and very dangerous.

The President can proclaim all he wants that the West, or that the United States is not at war with radical Islam, but like it or not, radical Islam is at war with America, Israel, Europe, and anyone else that is not under their control.

 A European socialist party actually begins to resent dhimmitude!

This from Canada Free Press:

Two weeks ago, the Netherlands’ biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch "tolerance." …

If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims’ obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor’s chairperson, was  exceptional.

The paper said: "The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance."

Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of "loss and estrangement" felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.

Always few in number, the Jewish people have made an enormous contribution to the benefit of mankind – far greater than any other people proportionate to its size. As a people, the Jews have done no harm to others, yet they are hated. They have never wanted to rule the world, yet they are accused of that crazy ambition. Islam openly declares its aim to dominate the world and is not reviled for doing so. Islam has made no significant contributions to mankind, contrary to popular assertions that it made a few way back in the Middle Ages – a claim that does not stand up under scrutiny. And at present Islam is waging a jihad to bring its darkness down over civilization.

The following quotation is not about the general Islamic intolerance of the Jews and their one small, tolerant, democratic state, but about Arab aggression in particular. What the author says is true as far as it goes, but it should always be borne in mind that the Arabs are supported in their genocidal hostility  to Israel by the vast Islamic world, a majority of Europeans, and most of the international political left. Even Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States, is trying to impose a ‘solution’  (to its extreme, unrelenting victimization!) on Israel which can only make its  struggle for survival more desperate.        

From Steven Plaut’s Front Page Magazine article (read the whole of it here):

The Arab-Israeli war is not about land, and it cannot be resolved by Israel’s relinquishing land.  

The Arab world already controls territory nearly twice that of the United States (including Alaska), whereas all of Israel cannot be seen on most world maps. When Israel was occupying nothing outside of its pre-1967 borders, the Arab world refused to come to terms with its existence and is no more willing to do so today, even if Israel were to return to those same borders.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about Israel refusing to share land and resources with Palestinians but about the absolute refusal of the Arab world to acquiesce in the existence of any Jewish-majority political entity within any set of borders in the Middle East.

This misrepresentation of the conflict serves to prolong it, precisely because it misleads. The Arab world insists that Israel trade land for peace not because it is prepared to in turn offer Israel peace for the land it vacates, but because a smaller Israel will be that much easier to destroy. And even if Israel consisted of nothing more than downtown Tel Aviv, the Arab world would consider it to be an imperialist affront sitting on stolen Arab land – an illegal "settlement." …

"Talks" cannot produce peace in the Middle East and in fact have harmful effects.  

There is a Western obsession with the idea that all world problems can be resolved through talking. But how many international conflicts can be said to have been resolved strictly through talking? Especially in the Middle East, there can be no doubt that talking does not resolve hostilities. It makes them worse… The conflict is not about hurt feelings but about the refusal of the Arab world to come to terms with Israel’s existence, period, in any set of borders and regardless of whether Jerusalem remains under Israeli control.

There is no "two-state solution" or "one-state solution" to the Arab Israeli conflict.  

The latter solution is particularly popular on the left. Under that scenario, Israel is enfolded into a larger "secular democratic Arab state" with an Arab Muslim majority. It is in fact little more than a prescription for a Rwanda-style genocide of Jews. This is little doubt that a significant number of those proposing such a solution would really like to see this happen.

More important, there is no "two-state solution" to the Middle East conflict. Those speaking about a two-state solution really mean a 24-state solution, meaning the Arabs retain the 22 states they already have, adding a 23rd state of "Palestine" in parts of the West Bank and Gaza and pre-1967 Israeli territories, with Israel remaining the Jewish state – the 24th state in the plan – for the moment. 

That such a solution will not end the conflict but only signal the commencement of its next stage has long been the quasi-official position of virtually all Palestinian groups, which have long insisted that any two-state solution is but a stage in a plan of stages, after which will come additional steps ultimately ending Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

The original partition plan of the United Nations had proposed that an Arab Palestinian state arise alongside Israel in 1948. The Arab world rejected this plan altogether. It had no interest in adding one more Arab Islamic state to its portfolio. It went to war to prevent the creation of any Jewish state. 

The two-state solution is no more realistic an option today than it was in 1948. It is ultimately as much of an existential threat to Jewish survival in the Middle East as the one-state solution. Creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel would be a major step in the escalation of the Arab war against Israel’s existence … 

The US victory in Iraq is bigger than even President Bush and his outgoing administration seem to realize. 

First, it can now be proclaimed as victory: 

 If Barack Obama had gotten his way, Iraq would now be in the hands of Islamists, and America’s image would have suffered a crushing blow. He voted to cut off funding for the troops, just when they needed it most, and still refuses to admit he was wrong.

Well, he was wrong, and George W. Bush deserves credit for refusing to back down when all around him were losing heart: “The war is over and we won.” [Quotations from Little Green Footballs]

And, secondly, how big and important the victory is can be best be understood from a study published by the Hudson Institute’s Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World. It tells how the jihadists in Iraq, Zarqawi and his successors, prepared to re-establish the caliphate. They even had the caliph chosen and ready. They saw this as a step to Islamic world domination. After Zarqawi himself was killed in June 2006, his followers ‘determined to turn Iraq into a battleground [and] the incubator for their grand vision of a unified Islamic empire under the aegis of a ruling caliph.’ This vision enthralled a new generation of jihadists. As  a winning ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq’ (assuming, as it were, the al-Qaeda franchise) they could have drawn thousands more fighters. They declared an ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ which was to be the center of victorious Islam, with Baghdad as its capital. Had the surge not take place, had it not turned the local tribal leaders against the jihadis, the triumph of militant Islam over the United States would have been seen throughout the Islamic world as a victory of historic proportions, ‘a victorious Islamic regeneration’; a caliphate might well have been established, and the non-Muslim world subjected to an onslaught of terrorism – possibly nuclear terrorism – without precedent.

The study is long, but very interesting and well worth reading. Here are two riveting passages from it:

The American public was uncurious as to the identity, nature, and goals of its enemy in Iraq. And, unfortunately, U.S. leaders and commanders were mostly complicit in such willful unawareness. The lack of interest on the part of the public was partly due to bitter partisan recriminations over the Bush administration’s policy in waging the Iraq war, and over who in Washington was to blame for the insurgency that ensued. Consequently, the doctrines of the Bush administration regarding preemptive strikes and democracy in the Middle East came under incessant scrutiny from the administration’s domestic political foes. Meanwhile, the doctrines of the jihadists were overlooked or, in the few cases where they were considered, dismissed as esoteric. Fantastical as they may be, these doctrines do indeed motivate and inform the enemy’s actions and strategy, and their significance was not recognized…

The corollary to the military defeat now being experienced by the jihadists is the even more agonizing prospect of doctrinal collapse: the heralded caliphate is stillborn, and the glorious vision of a reinvigorated Islamic state has been smashed. The anguish and demoralization brought about by this byproduct of battlefield victory cannot be overstated. To smash the dreams of a man who lives for a cause, who endures cruel deserts and damp caves while awaiting martyrdom, is a fate far worse than death. In a battle of wills, young men are able to summon the necessary willpower to press a button and to detonate themselves among innocent bystanders. They do so for the cause of jihad, and for the deferred utopia of a resurrected and avenging Islamic world power. Nothing breaks the will of the individual jihadist more than to see his ideology begin to bear fruit, only to watch that fruit rot away right before his eyes. Such has been the impact of the Zarqawist Islamic State of Iraq—the caliphate-to-be, under the Commander of the Faithful Abu Umar al-Baghdadi the Qurayshite—and such the bitter aftertaste of its ruinous downfall.