Friday, December 15, 2017
The People, For The Most Part, Have No Problem With Each Other, It Is The Leaders Who Have The Problem
Is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict the “Middle East Conflict”?
Flags image by Cole Baratte via coleinone.wordpress.com
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 685, December 15, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Is the Israel-Palestinian conflict equivalent to “the Middle East conflict,” as UN and EU officials and agencies and major media outlets characterize it? Of course not. The conflict is not nearly as lethal as many others and long ago became parochial compared to the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
“Can Trump Solve the Middle East Conflict?” ran the headlines in al-Jazeera in July 2017. A year earlier, The New York Times ran an article on students and the Middle East conflict that referred exclusively to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
The media are hardly alone in conflating the Israeli-Palestinian standoff with the Middle East conflict. They take their cue from UN officials and institutions and other international bodies. In a statement similar to those of many of his predecessors, in August 2017, UN Secretary-General António Guterres “reiterated his call for a political solution to the Middle East conflict.” The UN’s official news site on the Middle East deals exclusively with news related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Quartet, the political forum comprised of the US, Russia, the EU, and the UN, which came into existence in 2002 in Madrid to bring peace to the area, is officially known as the Middle East Quartet.
Does the conflation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Middle East conflict reflect reality? Not at all. Not only is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of many conflicts in the Middle East (true even when it was a conflict principally between Israel and Arab states), but it is not nearly one of the deadliest or most explosive. In fact, relatively speaking, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is not very violent, which may be one of the reasons it has persisted so long.
A cursory comparison with contemporary conflicts in the Middle East brings this point home. During the first intifada, the second intifada, the three rounds of violence between Hamas and Israel in the past decade, and the intermittent waves of low intensity violence, 2,000 Israeli civilians and security personnel and 11,000 Palestinians have been killed (the majority in the second intifada). To this one might add about fifty foreigners killed in acts of terrorism against Israelis. All told, the total casualty figures, including both sides, do not exceed 14,000 over the past twenty years, or 700 annually.
Compare this with the 200,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war, a conflict that is only six years old. True, the Syrian population is more than double that of the combined Israeli and Palestinian populations in the Holy Land. Nevertheless, the death rate proportionately has been fifteen times higher. Despite the Syrian government’s success against the rebels (achieved with considerable help from Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi and Afghani Shiite fighters, and Russian airpower), the end of the civil war is nowhere in sight. Is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really the Middle East conflict?
Why isn’t the internecine Iraqi conflict the Middle East conflict? According to Iraq Watch, over 100,000 Iraqis were killed during the eight years of massive US military presence in the country. To those one might add the 4,000 US troops and civilians who met their death there. On a proportionate basis, the Iraqi conflict is (and persists in being) at least five times more lethal than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And again, despite the gains made by the Iraqi Federal Army and the Iranian-controlled Shiite militias in the war against ISIS, an end to the internecine war between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq is nowhere in sight. The brutality of the Shiite militias in the “occupied” Sunni areas of Iraq increases the likelihood that variations on ISIS will rise once again.
The same is probably true of the conflicts in Libya and Yemen, where few bother to churn the terrible numbers. In these arenas, too, the end of violence is nowhere in sight. This is not to mention the “persistent, enduring and explosive” (all adjectives used to conflate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Middle East) wars of Sudan, the duration of which is almost as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But perhaps body count is not the only metric to be used when judging the centrality of a conflict. Perhaps foreign involvement ought to be considered.
It’s certainly true that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict commands foreign attention, but it does not command foreign involvement. Whereas the conflict between Israel and the Arab states during the superpower rivalry ran the risk of igniting World War III, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict long ago became parochial. The last time any Arab state or foreign organization became involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was 35 years ago, when the Syrian army tried to stop the Israeli advance into Lebanon in 1982. In 2006, Hezbollah conducted the longest military campaign to have been conducted against Israel since Israel’s War of Independence – and the Palestinians stood on the sidelines. Hezbollah returned the favor during the rounds of clashes between Israel and Hamas in 2008, 2012, and 2014. Its soldiers remained in the barracks.
As the Israeli-Palestinian trajectory has become increasingly parochial, the trajectories of the other regional conflicts have gone in the opposite direction: They began as local civil wars but evolved into regional and international conflagrations. The Syrian, Iraqi, and Yemeni conflicts have become three-tiered conflicts – civil or sectarian wars at their base, proxy wars between regional rivals (Iran, Saudi Arabia, and, to a lesser extent, Turkey), and arenas of international contest among world powers. The same Hezbollah that stayed home during the high points of violence between Israel and the Palestinians took to the battlefields of Syria on Iran’s behalf to prop up the Assad regime.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Middle East conflict? Give me a break!
Prof. Hillel Frisch is a professor of political studies and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Finally Someone Speaks Clearly On NFLI (NFL Idiots)
Enough with the Victimhood: Millionaire Athletes and Their Lost Cause
I must admit I have never in my life purchased a ticket to a sports event. I am not a sports enthusiast. But I am an American black citizen, and I have had it up to the gills with black people who embrace victimhood. I also highly resent my being expected to do the same in order to affirm my “blackness.”Black victims these days, for the most part, are the product of decades of Black Americans being used primarily by white progressive leftists to advance an anti-American agenda.The current brouhaha surrounding the despicable behavior of NFL athletes toward the National Anthem and the American flag is a prime example of what the Left has done to my race.One must assume these players and their guilt-conflicted white coaches and owners (and victimhood-inflicted black coaches) are being manipulated by the Left, because no intelligent, thinking people would deliberately cut themselves off at the knees. Essentially, what these young misguided mostly black men are doing is ensuring the demise of their lucrative paychecks. Further, I would wager that if these teams consisted of all white athletes, none of this idiocy would be allowed. We are witnessing this travesty because the vast majority of players are black and can whine “oppression” if appropriate action is taken against them for their unconscionable behavior.The twisted reasoning that claims these protests are to highlight “injustice” and “police brutality” is a laughable crock. What they do in fact is dishonor valued symbols of this nation’s heritage and cover over truth about black crime.Black males bear the brunt of police encounters because black males commit disproportionately more crimes. Police encounters with black men are so often confrontational because so many of these men, especially the young, don’t think “compliance” applies to them. They foolishly assume they are above the law and disrespect for police officers is an act of honor.These young blacks, sadly, took much of their direction from racists Barack Obama and Eric Holder during Obama’s destructive, eight-year regime and Holder’s corruption of the Justice Department. These two men, abusing their federal powers, gave young blacks the impression they need not heed the law, because laws are somehow unjust when they are applied to black Americans. The NFL lot, and any other athletes taking a similar stance, are also influenced by Obama’s and Holder’s disdain for law and law enforcement.I am not familiar with one case where a black suspect to a crime was not proven legally to have caused the behavior against him, particularly in cases where the police officer involved was exonerated by facts. Michael Brown of “hands up, don’t shoot” infamy is one good example. Blatant lies were spread to cloud the truth about Brown’s case.Back in the day when I was growing up in the racially segregated South, the opposite prevailed in many cases. There was much injustice particularly toward black men, but not today. Today, too many blacks have been fed the notion that it is now “pay-back” time, and they can flaunt their lawlessness because some whites flaunted theirs during an earlier time in our nation’s history.Although Obama and Holder no longer wield power in this country, some of their minions continue on the pernicious path of “paying back” American whites for wrongs, real or imagined. But as the saying goes, there is a new Sheriff in town and he is not guilt-conflicted. He expects fair play under law and tolerating pay-back is not part of his agenda. Black Americans, when they break the law, can no longer claim victim status simply because they are black. Those days are over.American laws and law enforcement personnel will be respected in America, again; our traditions and values will not be impugned in America without consequences, again. Anybody unsettled about this turn of events is welcome to leave this country. I suggest all the black players try a country in Africa, and see how successful they will be at making millions playing games. They will all soon learn what oppression really means.Some self-directed, independent-thinking blacks (and there are many of us) have offered that if these millionaire protestors want to tackle some real problems, they might consider the thousands of black children killed in abortions annually (by the progressive Left), or perhaps the many, many young blacks murdered routinely on inner-city streets by other young blacks (in cities run by progressive, leftist Democrats), or the downright criminal state of education of black inner-city children, orchestrated by the progressive leftist National Education Association (NEA). The NEA’s aim is to produce unintelligent pawns to feed the cause of progressivism.I am annoyed by the expressions of “sincerity” gracing the faces of the NFL protestors—as if to convey the “hallowedness” of their cause. In actuality, they provide a picture of grown men allowing themselves to be made fools of by the progressive Left. I don’t doubt, however, that some of these men have been coerced into compliance with this lost cause, either through threats of violence or shunning (from coaches and players). Alejandro Villanueva of the Pittsburgh Steelers and former Army ranger is very likely a victim of such threats. He was publicly castigated by his leftist coach for his patriotism. The coach demanded unity behind an ignorant cause.And finally, this issue has nothing to do with First Amendment rights. President Trump’s speaking out against the clownish behavior of the athletes, on behalf of the majority of American citizens, does not mean he can or would stop any of these misguided people from making fools of themselves. To restrict them, as a government entity, would indeed be a violation of the First Amendment. But their employers, if they were to develop even a modicum of testicular fortitude, could and should fire them for doing major damage to the bottom line of the business. The rest of us non-millionaire “Joes” would certainly be pink-slipped by an employer if we dared to be so clueless about the necessity of profits and so disdainful of the sensibilities of customers.I will wait patiently for the true sports enthusiasts to vent their rage by simply boycotting the games. It will be sweet revenge to witness the slain goose cease producing its golden eggs.© Sylvia Thompson
9/30/2017
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