We bet that you can guess what country Chris Hitchens failed to mention in his 8 recommendations for battling global Islam, though he traversed the entire globe.
Not a single mention of the Jewish state, for good or for ill. Virtually every country under attack by jihadists is mentioned, from India to Nigeria to several countries in West Africa that we would write out if we trusted Microsoft to render the accents and tildas correctly. Lebanon is mentioned, with the background context of undercutting Hezbollah’s Shia ambitions. But about the country that has been under the most sustained jihadist attack for the longest time: nada.
Now, this is admittedly a tangled issue – if he had mentioned Israel, we might be bemoaning how everyone always drags Israel into every issue and how that’s a result of latent ugliness etc. See our post from like four hours ago as an example. The question – as always – is one of circumstance. Sometimes it makes no sense to bring Israel into the equation. Sometimes it makes no sense to leave it out.
It is absurd – and not a little bit revelatory – to rope in Israel when talking about how to mitigate Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq. It is similarly absurd – and similarly revelatory – to pretend that political Islam would cease its business-like takeover of France if only the US abandoned Israel.
But when talking about the global march of literally military Islam, the flip side of the coin applies: it’s impossible to deny that – as a matter of tactics and strategy – violent Islamists view the eradication of Israel as one of their primary goals. It’s similarly impossible to deny that the cause of political Islam would gain an incredible boost in moral and recruitment were they able to wipe Israel off the map. So the omission of Israel is a little glaring, especially when Hitchens advocates “a strong, open alliance with India on all fronts”. He calls on the US to demonstrate solidarity with “the other great multiethnic democracy” – as if Israel was not a mix of Jews and Arabs and Christians from all over the world.
Israel and India are the two most visible democracies under existential military threat from militant Islam. The degree to which it is existential in India’s case is questionable – although if it is not, then that makes defending Israel more pressing because it is potentially the only site at which political Islam could claim a definitive military victory, with all the propagandist spoils that one would entail. Israel is one of the most advanced countries on the planet, at the front lines in the battle to save civilization from the onslaught of radical Islam. It would be nice if liberals who recognize the nature of the battle got over their anti-Israel sensibilities, ingrained as they were through decades of smug dinner parties and aren’t-we-all-so-angry-yet-progressive bar talks.
Previously: Hitchens and Sullivan On CNN, Christopher Hitchens Has Been Kidnapped. This Is An Obvious and Undeniable Fact., OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Mark Steyn
