I am writing this moments after the announcement of the Israel Defense Force that they have invaded Gaza. The first thing that struck me is that, for now at least, it is not Mark Steyn’s prescient America Alone. It is Israel Alone!
Not that they don’t appear to have secret friends like the Egyptians, who think Hamas is cracked, and the Saudis, who oppose anything connected to the Iranian mullahs (again like Hamas). But secret friends are fickle and therefore prey to the Arab Street, the EU and other forces that despise Israel for various reasons, conscious and unconscious. Even that great, good friend the US may be evanescent. Undoubtedly, George W. Bush supports Israel – arguably more than any other American president – but Barack Obama? We just don’t know. There are conflicting signs.
So it is Israel Alone, fighting the good fight against religious totalitarianism, misogyny, homophobia, global Sharia… I could go on, but Israel’s enemies are not going to believe me anyway. They have their brains filtered through Annie Lennox – like taking you College Boards on LSD. The singer is leading anti-Israel marches through London. [Didn’t Lennox once have a bad divorce from an Israeli guy?-ed. I didn’t know that. Perhaps the New York Times will check it out for us.]
But what’s interesting about these marches – and the demonstrations inside Israel by Arab Israelis – is that they are not all that well attended, barely in the tens of thousands. Many of us old Vietnam protestors remembers hundreds of thousands. Does that mean something? Most certainly they will build, but how much? And what does this mean? Do Israel’s enemies – some of them anyway – suffer from moral confusion? How does a liberal or a leftist justify supporting a regime of religious fanatics whose ideology, when examined, is in complete contra-distinction to everything they claim they stand for?
Well, we wouldn’t want to fry Annie Lennox’s synapses and give the poor greying rocker a nervous breakdown. Nor would we want to trouble her with the fact that the IDF major who gave the briefing to Skye News linked above – Avital Leibovich – is a woman. For all we know, she’s shacking up with Annie’s ex-husband. [You are nasty.-ed. Hey, this is war.]
So for now this is Israel Alone, without Nicolas Sarkozy, Javier Solana, Bernard Kouchner, Ban Kai Moon, Amnesty International and the rest of the global bien pensants who claim to have their (and humanity’s) best interests at heart. None of them has yet to present a decent moral argument in favor of Hamas or come close to explaining what they would do if a neighboring country was firing missiles into their back yard. Somehow that latter problem is never addressed.
Perhaps Annie Lennox can explain.
UPDATE: Here’s another approach to the situation, from PJM commenter LennyB, I thought worth highlighting.
MORE: Well, Contre nous de la tyrannie... Our good friends the oh-so-progressive French, who gave us Drancy, are condemning the Israeli incursion (and the Hamas rockets – for “equivalency” bien sur). Sarkozy is turning out to be quite the prize schmuck. Nevertheless, as of now, the IDF seems to be doing very well without him.
BETTER NEWS: The Czechs, now replacing the reactionary French at the helm of the EU, see things more clearly. “Why am I one of the few that have expressed understanding for Israel? … I am enjoying the luxury of telling the truth,” Schwarzenberg told the daily.
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