Victory Davis Hanson questions why this is happening:
Perhaps the outrage reflects simple realpolitik — 350 million Arab Muslims versus 7 million Israelis. Perhaps it is oil: half the world’s reserves versus Israel’s nada. Perhaps it is the fear of terror: Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades. Perhaps it is anti-Semitism, which is as fashionable on the academic Left as it used to be among the neanderthal Right.
Perhaps there is also a new sense that the United States at last has fallen into line with the Western consensus, and so is hardly likely to play the old lone-wolf supporter of Israel in the press or at the U.N.
At this point, it doesn’t much matter — as this latest hysterical reaction reminds us, much of the world not only sides with Israel’s enemies but sides with them to such a degree as to suggest that, in any existential moment to come, the world either will be indifferent or will be on the side of Israeli’s enemies.
Quite frightening, when you think of it.
Indeed, very frightening – Israel is a tiny, liberal democracy of whom no one would ever hear much about except for the fact that it is routinely attacked. Working against Israel is the fact of Israel’s sublime military victories – the stunning events of the 6 Day and Yom Kippur wars remain with us. Israel towers up in the public mind as a great power – in reality, Israel is no more powerful than Sweden or Switzerland.
If the Moslem powers were to ever press the issue – be willing to exchange 5 lives for each Israeli life – they’d have won prior to Israel developing nuclear weapons. Does cowardice explain their failure to press home? Perhaps – but there is also the prospect that the leaders of the Moslem world never really cared about Israel, per se, but did care to have a convenient, foreign enemy to focus hatred upon. The merest means of distracting their own people from their impoverished and oppressed condition.
But over time all the events have come to a point – from a useful propaganda tool there has now arisen a generation of Islamists who do dream of murdering all the Jews…and they are seconded in the West who stupidly assume that the victorious power must be the flawed party. Used to despising their own nation’s glorious past, they see in Israel just an extension of what they despise in themselves. An American leftist looks over the tale of American victory, hates America for it, and when he hears of Israeli victory, assumes the worst of Israel. And as time has gone on, a distaste for Israel has degenerated in to a species of anti-Semitism.
Israel stands at the precipice. America is no longer reliable – we could have stopped the various UN actions, but didn’t. Israel can not rely upon American re-supply should a shooting war break out. There is only a vanishingly small chance that America will act against Iran’s nuclear program. And now the world his hopped up with anti-Israel fervor because Israel fell in to an Islamist PR trap over the “aid” flotilla.
Nations with their backs against the wall tend to act accordingly. A dangerous soup has been cooked and the world will have to drain it to the dregs. Because of cowardice; because of cheap moralizing; because of slick, political calculations, a lot of people may soon end up dead and the world in deep crisis. Where a bit of courage and foresight could have prevented all problems, their lack have put together the makings of a war.
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