Barricades birthday

From The Australian by Daniel Pipes May 09, 2008 [my own emphasis added - SL]:

... for all its achievements, the Jewish state lives under a curse ...a multi-pronged peril that includes nearly every means imaginable: weapons of mass destruction, conventional military attack, terrorism, internal subversion, economic blockade, demographic assault and ideological undermining. No other contemporary state faces such an array of threats; indeed, probably none in history has.

The enemies of Israel divide into two main camps: the Left and the Muslims, with the far Right a minor third element. The Left includes a rabid edge (International ANSWER - Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, Noam Chomsky) and a more polite centre (the UN General Assembly, left-liberal political parties, the mainstream media, mainline churches, school textbooks).

In the final analysis, however, the Left serves less as a force in its own right than as an auxiliary for the primary anti-Zionist actor, which is the Muslim population. This latter, in turn, can be divided into three distinct groupings.

First come the foreign states: Five armed forces that invaded Israel on its independence in May 1948, and then neighbouring armies, air forces, and navies fought in the wars of 1956, 1967, 1970, and 1973. While the conventional threat has somewhat receded, Egypt's US-financed arms build-up presents one danger and the threats from weapons of mass destruction (especially from Iran but also from Syria and potentially from many other states) present an even greater one.

Second come the external Palestinians, those living outside Israel. Sidelined by governments from 1948 until 1967, Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organisation got their opportunity with the defeat of three states' armed forces in the Six-Day War. Subsequent developments, such as the 1982 Lebanon war and the 1993 Oslo accords, confirmed the centrality of external Palestinians. Today, they drive the conflict, through violence (terrorism, missiles from Gaza) and even more importantly by driving world opinion against Israel via a public relations effort that resonates widely among Muslims and the Left.

Third come the Muslim citizens of Israel, the sleepers in the equation. They benefited from Israel's open ways to grow in numbers and to evolve from a docile and ineffective community into an assertive one that increasingly rejects the Jewish nature of the Israeli state, with potentially profound consequences for the future identity of that state....

...Israel, having survived countless threats to its existence over the past six decades, and having done so with its honour intact, offers a reason for its population to celebrate. But the rejoicing cannot last long, for it's right back to the barricades to defend against the next threat.