Netanyahu's Folly

Mike L.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is giving away the store for nothing and Barry Rubin doesn't get it and neither do I.  Rubin writes:

What is truly puzzling about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposing to release more than 100 of the worst Palestinian terrorists to have ever murdered Israelis is that it is so impossible to figure out any reason to do so. It is not just that one might oppose this plan, it is that I cannot think of a single reason for supporting it.

What is the purpose of the State of Israel if not to provide protection to the tiny, besieged minority in the Middle East against the much larger, hostile Arab majority there?  What Netanyahu and his cabinet have done is tell the world that it's open season on Jews.  Arabs can kill Jews to their Turkish Delight and Israel will, ultimately, let them go free.  And what does Israel get for betraying the families of the murdered?

Nothing at all.

Nor will it get Israel any good public image in Europe or America. On the contrary, the mass media will not tell the readers and viewers the extent of the crimes perpetrated by these terrorists or what would generate sympathy for the real victims. No. If anything the coverage will emphasize sympathy for the terrorists’ families and leave the impression that the terrorists were political prisoners arrested for no good reasons by the cruel occupation authorities.

The PA calls these murderers "political prisoners" because murdering Jews in the Middle East is considered a perfectly reasonable political act.

Israel will get no "points" from anyone for doing this.  The Arabs will continue to despise Jews for religious reasons and western progressives will continue to despise the Jewish State due to the non-conscious spread of a partially digested post-colonial theory which automatically casts the harassed Jewish minority as the powerful aggressor against a helpless (and hapless) "indigenous" culture.

How it is that the local Arabs require inducement to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one remains a mystery and no one has ever justified it.  Ever.  At no point in my years chewing on this issue has anyone ever explained to me just why it is that the local Arabs need to be bribed into accepting sovereignty within the Jewish heartland.

The reason that no one has ever explained this to me is because there is no reasonable explanation.  The truth of the matter, as we all know, is that 6 million Jews in the Middle East are surrounded by about 400 million Arabs who do not want them there.  Within Arab religious traditions the Jews are supposed to be weak and subservient.  So long as Jews are not weak and subservient they will be murdered.

So long as a Jewish State exists, therefore, the great Arab nation will seek to destroy it.

In consideration of the Arab-Israel conflict there is much talk of "honor-shame" culture within Arab-Muslim societies.  I do not know the extent of the truth of such claims, but one thing is certain.  Caving to the demands of the hostile majority will not win either respect or mercy, not from them, nor from their western allies.