For centuries England’s long-time foreign policy was to encourage division and conflict in Europe, thus leaving England safer.
Israel’s foreign policy is to encourage division and conflict in the Middle East, thus leaving Israel stronger. Do you think Israel’s leaders are shedding tears as Arabs tear each other apart?
It’s good for Israel right if the Arabs are occupied killing each other? The more unstable and divided and riven with internal strife the Arab countries are, perhaps the safer the Jewish state is? The whole point of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was to destabilize and divide the country into Sunni, Shia and Kurd sections, that way Iraq would be less of a threat to Israel, right?
I’m not a foreign policy expert, but if I am correct in the above, it means that what is good for the Jewish state is not good for the Middle East.
A multicultural and multiracial Europe and America is better for minorities, perhaps, because the goyim will be so busy feuding with each other and distrusting each other, so weakened by the loss of homogeneity and racial/religious/national identity, how will they find the time and will to kill Jews? A 99% pure Aryan state is a much bigger threat to Jews than a 62% one, filled with impurities.
I’m not a policy expert, but if the above is correct, then what is good for minorities is often bad for the majority. I sure hope I am missing something.
A Jewish friend says:
I wanted to weigh in on whether having a fractured Arab world benefits Israel.
Before that, I think it is important to distinguish between what constitutes Jewish interests in the United States and Canada from Jewish interests in Western Europe, from Jewish interests in Eastern Europe and Jewish interests in Israel. I am not sure that they are at all the same.
If you study the history of the modern state of Israel as a dispassionate observer, it is pretty clear that it is a colonial state. It was founded and originally populated by Jews primarily from Eastern Europe, later with a large influx from Arab countries. The Jews displaced a native Arab population, that now calls itself Palestinian, but that simply designates the area they are from.
If you believe that God promised the land to the Jews, then none of this makes any difference, but that is not the sort of argument that one makes to people who are not so religiously inclined or sympathetic to that religious view (that is to say Christian Zionists.)
Because Israel has always been in a situation where it has a large restive internal population and until it signed a peace treaty with Egypt, at war not only with its neighbors but with its neighbor’s neighbors, its policies have always been expedient and the country has exploited Arab weakness with superior tactics, but without much of a strategic vision and certainly without attempting to implement any long term strategy for the country’s survival.
Israel benefits from having stability in neighboring countries, if those countries have a government that wants peace with Israel. Egypt is the perfect example of this. It served Israel to have the country have an authoritarian government, be it led by Sadat, Mubarak or no Al-Sissi. Egypt is desperately poor, and unlike Sadat’s predecessor Nasser, these men have not been demagogues seeking to divert frustration over lack of jobs and food into antagonism toward Israel. To go to Egypt’s neighbor, Libya, I don’t think Israel wanted its stability affected. If what happened to Libya happened to Egypt it would be a disaster for Israel. Israel could launch punitive raids on the Islamic fundamentalists, but much better to have the government reign them in and to be held responsible than to have unaccountable militias launch small scale attacks.
Syria and Iraq actually pose different threats to Israel. Both were relatively secular Baathist regimes. In both cases a member of a minority held power, Assad as an Alawite in Syria, Hussein as a Sunni in a Shia majority Iraq. (In fact, only a minority can effectively govern. A majority would snuff out the rights of the minorities, something that those who supported deposing Assad seem to forget.) Israel would much rather have antagonistic regimes be strictly Islamist than be ones that protect the minority. The strict Muslim governments would have less support in the West. Even Obama recognizes this in his willingness to deal with Iran which still has a large population of Christians, and smaller populations of BaHai’s and Jews.
I don’t think Israel thinks it makes any difference in a military senses whether Hussein or Assad are in power. Neither was in a position to militarily threaten Israel. Syria did fight Israel in 1967 and 1973 but its two allies in the 67 war and its one ally in 73 both made peace with Israel. Assad is a realist and knows that by attacking Israel he is signing his own death warrant.
There has been a strain in the Israeli government since at least 1967 that believes that Jordan, which has a majority Palestinian population, should depose its monarchy and become a Palestinian state, but pretty much most Israelis have been happy with the status quo first under King Hussein and now under his son King Abdullah.
I don’t think that if the Arabs weren’t involved in infighting that they would devote their resources to building war machines to challenge Israel or to fight Israel out of solidarity with their Palestinian brothers, but many Israelis would disagree with me.
Israelis have exploited and will continue to exploit factions within the Palestinians when they see if giving them a short term tactical advantage. It has been widely reported and I think accepted that Israel provided material support to Hamas when it first was organized because they wanted to split the Palestinians. Of course, they are not happy with Hamas which has proven to be a pretty intractable and resilient opponent of Israel. But you might want to imagine what it would be like for Israel if the Palestinians both in the West Bank and Gaza and those who are refugees all accepted the PLO as their legitimate government and representative. So in that sense, at least as regards the Palestinians, it serves Israel’s interest to keep them fractious.
Chaim Amalek: “I think you are wrong about what animates this insistence on open borders. It is not that they give a damn about dusky immigrants or that they want to mongrelize America. Their concern first and last is for their fellow Jews. And in this case, Israeli Jews. Notwithstanding all their bravado, they well understand that the entire Zionist enterprise could come crashing down and that millions of Jews living in Israel would need a place to move to. They want to hold the door open to everyone now because they fear that should the time come when Jews need it (e.g., during the Hitler years) it will be closed to them as it might then be to everyone else. Rather than risk it, they hold the door open for all. But it is about providing Yidden a place to run to if the Muslims ever get their act together.”
Christoph Donnellan: “This raises an interesting question. Why has ISIS/ISIL not attacked Israel or Jewish targets anywhere? Something smells rotten here. If I were an Arab I would be a Baathist rather than an Islamist Fundie or Western stooge. Assad and Hussein themselves were and are not very powerful but their ideals are much more of a threat to Zionism than wacky Islamists who are still living in the 11th century, one reason in fact why our Israeli friends are rather cozy with the Saudis.”
