Western politicians were thinking wishfully when they decided to resurrect an Israeli state on land held for centuries by Arabs. Passed from watch to watch, the Israeli-Palestinian problem continues to elude the skills of politicians.
Our fractured era has proved unequal to the challenge. Desperate Israelis borrowed a page from America's Afghanistan book and decided to hunt down and kill Palestinian terrorists with the exception of Arafat.
This action, sensible on one level, has had unintended consequences. The stability of what are called moderate Arab states and the U.S.'s anti-terrorist coalition in the Middle East are threatened.
The Israeli-Palestinian relationship was never promising. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviets stirred the pot. Diplomacy tries to contain rabid Palestinians raised to hate Israel. The U.S. will continue pushing peace, but the problem will have an ending only when the Arabs give up or the Israelis are decimated.
The U.S. is caught in a problem about which it can do nothing and from which it cannot disentangle.
That being the case, the U.S. should draw the lessons from the cultural conflict and cease replicating a similar if not worse situation in its own country.
Israel is a Jewish—not a multicultural—state. Imagine Israel's fate if it had to contend with a Palestinian vote.
Imagine Israel's predicament if the country permitted massive non-Jewish immigration and, in addition, was undergoing a silent invasion by illegal Palestinian immigrants. Imagine, also, that Israeli schools taught that Jewish males were hegemonic racists and sexists who oppressed Jewish women and Arabs. Imagine, further, that Israel had civil rights laws that made Jews second class citizens and bestowed "minority preferences" on Palestinians and other Arabs. Combine this package with guilt-ridden political leadership. What chance would Israel have?
As dangerous as its situation is, Israel has none of these disadvantages. The U.S., however, has every one of them.
Thirty-five years of an insane U.S. immigration policy has shattered the "melting pot." Fellow feelings and common purpose have given way to the racial spoils system, where everyone except white males qualifies for preferential government treatment.
Alien cultures and languages have taken root in U.S. soil. The Southwest and California are rapidly becoming Mexican provinces. In U.S. colleges, African-American and Latino studies teach hatred of white people. Women's studies teach hatred of men. American white males are as demonized in their own country as Jews are in Palestine.
The U.S. has far more serious problems than Israel. Preoccupied with Israel's problems, the U.S. cannot recognize its own.
This despite the fact that we are drowning in evidence that our Tower of Babel is falling apart.
For example, in Newsweek (April 8) Joseph C. Phillips expresses his shock at the vehemence at which young blacks vilify America and voice "sentiments that are anti-American at their core." "My racial pride was called into question," he writes, "when I took exception to the characterization of the destruction of the Twin Towers as the 'chickens coming home to roost.'"
On April 6 the Washington Times reported that black and Hispanic activists have agreed to band together to fight against white America's "dominant culture," which preferred minorities perceive as "deviant" and hostile.
Christine Stolba recently examined the textbooks used in women's studies courses in American universities. She found that women are taught that they, too, are victims, controlled by male dominance of their belief formation just as black slaves were dominated by their white masters. Young women are taught to view their fathers as a "foreign male element" that comes between them and their mothers. [Read the entire report in PDF.]
What future does a country have that destroys its homogeneity, constructs doctrines that guarantee both discord and the destruction of comity among the genders and diverse races, and then sanctifies the corroding myths with "civil rights" laws that make white males second class citizens?
The U.S. is in greater peril than Israel. Little wonder our politicians prefer to distract themselves and the public with inconsistency by chasing after terrorists in distant Afghanistan, while sending peace missions to stop Israel from doing likewise along its own borders.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
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