Fareed Zakaria explained why neither side in the Syrian
conflict is likely to surrender: “People fight to the end because they know
that losers in such wars get killed or ‘ethnically cleansed.’” In this kind of
war the worlds “ethnically cleansed” do not mean displaced or made refugees.
They mean, as Zakaria further explained, massacred: “Then you have phase 2,
which is the massacre of the Alawites, the 14 percent of Syria that has ruled
and that will be a bloodbath.”
Nor will the massacres and bloodbaths be limited to
combatants, or even civilian officials, if the past is any indication.
Babies, women, the elderly and everyone else will become
targets of the vengeful blood lust. Already somewhere between 80,000 and
100,000 Syrians have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians.
According to United Nations investigators, some have been killed by chemical
weapons and thermobaric bombs (that suck the oxygen out of the lungs of
everyone in the area). There have been at least 17 massacres between
mid-January and mid- May of this year alone. And there is no sign that the
bloodshed is abating.
Whether the death toll is closer to 80,000 or 100,000,
this figure is more than all the people killed in nearly a century of conflict
between Israel and its enemies – a conflict that includes half a dozen wars and
thousands of acts of terrorism and reprisals.
Even if one credits the worst allegations against the
nation state of the Jewish people, Israel has killed fewer civilians since it
came into existence 65 years ago than any country in history facing comparable
threats over so long a time frame. The world seems unaware of this remarkable
fact, because the media and international organizations focus far more on Arab
and Muslim deaths caused by Israel than on those caused by fellow Arabs and
Muslims.
Neither is Syria the first bloody battleground on which
Arabs have massacred Arabs and Muslims have massacred Muslims. Black September
in Jordan, the protracted war between Iran and Iraq, the civil war in Lebanon,
and the killings in post-Saddam Iraq are only some of the bloodiest battles
that resulted in [some 12-14 million Muslims killed at the hand of other Muslims]..
Imagine then what would happen if Israel were ever to
lose a war with its Arab and Muslim enemies (as it almost did when it was
attacked on Yom Kippur in 1973 by the Egyptian and Syrian armies.) The hatred
directed against Jews in general and Israel in particular by Israel’s enemies
is far more malignant than the animosity between Sunni and Shia Muslims or
between Muslim and Christian Arabs. It is taught in schools, preached in
mosques and repeated in the media. There would be no mercy shown. Israeli
armies would not be allowed to surrender and be repatriated, as the Egyptian
army was when it was trapped in Sinai at the end of the 1973 war.
Israeli civilians would be targeted as they already have
been by Hamas and Hezbollah rockets fired in the direction of large population
centers. The goal of the first war against Israel, as expressed by one of its
leaders, was “this will be a war of extermination.” The desire for revenge has
only grown over the course of further warfare and more defeats.
Every Israeli lives under the grim shadow of this
reality. Nor do they count on timely outside intervention to prevent massacres.
Remember, this is a nation built on the memory of the Holocaust, during which
the world – including the United States, Great Britain and Canada – shut their
gates on those seeking to escape genocide.
That is why Israel will never surrender and will always
fight to the end. That is why Israel needs a nuclear deterrent, unsatisfactory
as it may be in a part of the world where suicide in the name of Islam is a
virtue to so many of Israel’s enemies. That is why Israel must always maintain
a preventive option, whereby it attacks the enemy military that is poised to
attack Israeli civilians. That is why Israel must always maintain qualitative
military superiority over the combined resources of its enemies. This is also
why Israel should make every reasonable effort to make peace ...but without
sacrificing its security and its ability to successfully resist attack.
The first duty of every democracy is to protect its
civilians against enemy attack. Thus far, Israel, though vastly outnumbered,
has done a good job. The changes now occurring in the Arab and Muslim world
make Israel’s future somewhat less certain, as does Iran’s movement toward
nuclear weaponry capable of inflicting a second Holocaust on Israel’s six
million Jews and one million Arabs.
Yet so many in the international community seem
unsympathetic to Israel’s situation. Whenever it seeks to defend its civilians,
by attacking military targets, though inadvertently killing some civilians on
occasion, there is a disproportional outcry against the Jewish state. Selective
boycotts, divestment and other sanctions are directed only at Israel by people
ranging from Alice Walker to Steven Hawking. Israel must not allow these
immorally selective threats of delegitimation to deter it from protecting its
citizens against the threat of Syrian-type massacres.
No comments:
Post a Comment