History Lives

Israel is reborn on the land God first gave to his chosen people over 3,000 years ago. To get there, the Jewish nation in exile kept its dream alive for nearly 2,000 years. With that kind of history, the time since the Turks were at the gates of Vienna occupying much of Christian Europe was almost yesterday—1683. The thousand years from Muhammad’s death to 1683 Vienna were a thousand years of Muslim triumph.

And now, with oil so precious, Muslim nations control two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves. Is it any wonder Muslims look forward to rebalancing history in their favor?

I earlier noted how al Qaeda’s bin Laden and Iran’s Ahmadinejad both seek to restore Islam to its rightful place in the world by ending Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and Palestine—just as Saladin drove the Crusaders from Jerusalem in 1187 following the Christians’ century-long occupation. As bin Laden is the putative Sunni Saladin, so is Ahmadinejad emerging as the Shiite Saladin, eclipsing his Sunni rival, thanks to U.S. responses to 9.11 in Afghanistan and Iraq that have set back al Qaeda.

Threatened by Iran, Israel is once again fighting for its existence. Westerners and Russians attack Israel for its “disproportionate” response to Hamas and Hizbullah. Yet Israel may be doing the right thing. Terrorists are supposed to be such difficult opponents because their warfare is asymmetrical—they kill so many with so little. So maybe Israel’s disproportionate response is the right response.

I was fascinated by Spielberg’s anti-war film, “Munich.” On the DVD, Spielberg almost apologizes for portraying Israel in a bad light. He needn’t have. Israel botched some of its reprisals against Black September, and has no doubt learned the lessons of its failures. Where Spielberg saw a case for humanity over revenge, I saw a case for more effective killing.

Modern warfare is about highly-targeted use of power, because democracies have no stomach for killing. Before the U.S. started succeeding in low-casualty warfare in the Gulf, in Afghanistan, and yes, in Iraq, Israel had pioneered the techniques first in the Six Days War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973). Israel then did mess up in Lebanon in 1982; we’ll see how it has learned from that experience.