Human Relations

Watching carefully over the space of the last year and a half, its intelligence attempting to parse all the conflicting signals and interpret how the changes of the "Arab Spring" would impact it, Israel now has a partial answer. 

The hostility of the mostly secular-led Arab Middle East states that resulted in one conflict after another as combined armies moved on Israel to dislodge it from the space it took so inconveniently in the geography has been replaced by Islamist heads of state whose reign is equally compulsively stifling of human rights, and with a decided penchant to continue the mission to destroy the Jewish state's impervious squat on Islamic soil.

Israel had been making some headway.  It did seem that after all the assaults on its sovereignty matched with its unconquerable spirit of determination to remain where heritage and history meant it to be had resulted in a resignation of formerly hostile Arab states to the practicality of getting along with a nation that was able to aid them in issues like medical and scientific advances, like desalinization and newly successful agricultural methodology.

Discreet trade between once-enemies became more the norm than bellicose rhetoric.

That was then, not all that long ago.  Now the two countries with whom Israel had been able to sign peace treaties appear uncertain of the practicality of continuing to honour those obligations attendant on peace.  Egypt is now ruled by the once-stifled Muslim Brotherhood which is seeing a remarkable upswing in its fortunes right across the Arab and Muslim world.  From Jordan to Syria, Libya to Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood reigns, if not part of the institution, on the cusp of each nation's change.

Where previously, secular pragmatists of Islamic persuasion could be persuaded to be reasonable, if only reluctantly, Israel is now faced with the dilemma of the realization that having been surrounded previously by hostile elements was merely an introduction to what real violent exclusion is like, surrounded by hostile elements that have found their metier in not only wanting to slaughter Jews, but to meet death in the process, becoming feted martyrs whose memory speaks of honour and tradition.

The world which Israel inhabits has become a more volatile, dangerous place to pitch a vast tent of inclusive pluralism.  A world where accusers passionately believe the bile they spew, that the only democratic state in the region is guilty of human rights abuses, guilty of apartheid, guilty of genocide, guilty of corruption, guilty of fomenting unrest and urgings to violence, guilty of mounting war and preying on other countries in the area, guilty of aspiring to capture their assets.

The spiral of slander slithering from the lips of the hierarchy of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, from the mouth of Turkey's Islamist government, from the sly minds of cynical mullahs and imams and the Grand Ayatollah of Iran who spin their malicious webs of propaganda into the minds of the Arab and Iranian people who grasp at the mendacious view of Jew as deceitful, inferior, demonic does its work.

The entire region has been gripped by the relentless conquest of Islamists, from the salafists and Brotherhood groups and al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists backing the Syrian rebels, to the al-Qaeda-inspired Malian takeover, the ongoing Libyan violence and predations, Jordan's growing unrest, courtesy their Brotherood faction, and even the Sinai succumbing to roving bands of Islamist jihadis. 

Iran's manipulation of the risible trust of the West, insisting it can be trusted for compliance, at the insistence of the IAEA, undeserving of ongoing sanctions that impact deleteriously on the people of Iran, then revealing one stride forward in its nuclear plans after another simply darkens the web of Middle East malevolence toward everything that is honest, straightforward and trustworthy.

Now that Israel is mired in a still-muted war of defence against the onslaught of a covertly-armed enemy whose purpose is the state's destruction, it also finds itself menaced on all flanks.  The entire Arab and Muslim world construes its push-back against insistent and constant barrages against its sovereignty and its people as having deliberately and with malice aforethought instigated a battle against innocent Muslims.

To Israel and Israel alone goes the blame, and toward it will go the punishment.  "The Egyptian people revolted against injustice and will not accept the attack on Gaza".  Nor will Turkey stand by and see 'Palestinians be punished by Israel' - whose own population cries out in fear and anger and dismay that they are once again submitted to ongoing rocket attacks, their security evaporated, their children once again traumatized.

Ordinary Palestinian Gazans do not see Israel's response toward Gaza's ongoing barrage of rockets into Israel as their problem, or their initiative, only as yet another example of the brutality that Israel metes out to Palestinians.  The connection between their ruling Hamas and various other jihadist groups that live among them firing off rockets into a neighbouring country and that country responding, simply eludes them.

"We don't belong to any political faction.  There is no Hamas presence in this neighbourhood, no training grounds, no rocket launching sites.  We are all just normal civilians here.  I never expected this to happen", said Jihad Mishawrwi, a BBC cameraman, who found his 11month old son in the morgue, his four year old son injured.

Why would it not enter the minds of these Palestinians that their Israeli counterparts are as innocent as they are, that they do not deserve to be living targets on a continual, unending platform of terror mounted by those who claim to represent the interests of the Palestinians.  That, in attempting to keep their citizens safe from harm, the IDF has few options but to monitor the activities of the terror groups among whom ordinary Palestinians live.

That it is the ongoing provocations and threats of their activities that cause their torment of a blockade, keeping them from living a normal life which any society deserves, for it is a human right.