The Middle East's Perpetual War

Ever since its founding in 1948 the Israelis have been fighting a defensive war against their neighbors, particularly the Palestinians. Their neighbors attack and Israel responds until the attack is repulsed and their enemies are too weakened to continue.

Then the world prevails upon Israel to relent, to show restraint, and retreat from the field which, of course, allows their enemy to recover, regroup, resupply, and at some future date restart the whole cycle all over again.

It seems like an exercise in endless futility, but this is the status quo in the Middle East, and it will continue until Israel's foes, who have sworn its destruction, ultimately wear it down and destroy it. It often seems that this would not bother the West overmuch, which perversely views the stronger more civilized side in a dispute to be ipso facto the evil aggressor and oppressor.

Nevertheless, the prospect of their ultimate destruction should at least bother Israel, one would think, unless, like the rest of the West, they've succumbed to the notion, promoted by the left for the last eighty years or so, that the civilized nations of the world just don't deserve to survive.

Roger Simon at PJ Media once made a shocking suggestion as to how perpetual war in the Middle East might be ended. He opined that perhaps it's time for Israel to create a new status quo. Perhaps it's time to eliminate Hamas in Gaza:

A permanent truce, i.e., genuine peace, does not seem part of the vocabulary of jihadists whose sworn goal is to make the world Islamic, sooner or later, like it or not. They just take a time out when it looks as if they could be in trouble, like a hockey player with a twisted ankle.

As an example, Hamas is known for its hudnas, cooling down (or pretending to) and then heating up again as soon as possible to do what the beginning of its charter always promised it would do — destroy Israel.

For years the bien pensant of the West (Europe, the U.S.) have urged, actually put strong pressure on, Israel to play the hudna game with Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the rest of the sociopathic Islamofascist crew. The Israelis, from a humanistic tradition and anxious to be thought well of, have acquiesced, even when they have the extreme whip hand.

The results have been as one would predict: another war, another hudna and on and on. This has been going on since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 - even before that really. In other words, for a long while.

Maybe it’s time for a different approach. How about just...winning?

Whether one agrees with Simon or not it's true enough that what many Israelis realize but many other Westerners seemingly don't is that radical Islam is in a state of permanent war with the world. It's a war that's been raging since the 7th century and will continue until Islam is the only religion in the world (actually it will continue beyond that as Muslims will be killing each other to decide which sect of Islam will be the only sect in the world).

We will never be safe from this threat. To think that it's at an end, or that we have somehow made peace with the Islamists, is to confuse their temporary tactic of hudna with a genuine desire for peace.

The world shouts "peace, peace" but there is no peace. The Islamists don't want peace, they want total victory. That's why it often seems that there's no pacific solution to the conflict in the Middle East and no realistic prospect of compromise.

Tragically, any clear-eyed American foreign policy must take that as its starting point. To do otherwise is to substitute wishful thinking and self-delusion for objective reality.