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Who is Avigdor Lieberman?
Lieberman is staring at the glacial destruction of Israel by demography; the way populations grow or decrease. For Israel, the numbers do not bode well. Israel’s Muslim population poses the ultimate threat to its existence. In 1949, there were 110,000 Muslim Arabs, nine percent of the population. By 2005 there were 1,141,000 or sixteen percent. They are, as Daniel Pipes, the Middle East specialist describes them, "a robust, assertive community whose leaders include a Supreme Court justice, an ambassador, members of the parliament, academics, and entrepreneurs." Lieberman is also designated the Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, a post created for him by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when Lieberman’s new party won enough seats in the Knesset to make him a power broker. Neither the liberal members of Olmert’s coalition, nor Israel’s Arab lawmakers were too pleased. Previously, Lieberman had been credited with revitalizing Likud, enabling Ariel Sharon to become Prime Minister. For a man with radical views, Lieberman is not an orator, but rather a very soft-spoken fellow. The Jewish power elite of New York who crowded the spacious 25th floor conference room of the law firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges appeared to like everything he had to say, but likely were not considering the impossibility of his proposal. Lieberman wants Israel’s Arabs to take a loyalty oath or lose voting privileges in national elections and the right to hold national office, and he wants to expel Arab, i.e. Muslim politicians from the Knesset, the equivalent of Congress. Without the loyalty oath, Muslims would become "permanent residents" without the power influence the future of Israel. The irony of this is that Islam has always had a second-class citizen status for infidels. They were called "dhimmi", subject to taxes and regulations in ways Muslims were not.
For Lieberman the issue is loyalty. How long can a Zionist nation, i.e., a nation established by and for Jews, exist with a growing Muslim population? The answer is that it can’t. Many minority groups would prefer a nation of their own, but most must settle for integration into a larger population. The Jewish Diaspora, despite pogroms and centuries of persecution, had survived, but a European-based Zionist movement in the late 1800’s, responding to widespread anti-Semitism, and later the Nazi Holocaust, convinced many Jews that only a Jewish state would insure continued survival. Author and former Pentagon strategist, Thomas P.M. Barnett, in a recent blog responded to a question that asked whether Israel could survive as a strictly Jewish state. He said that, in an "increasingly globalized world", this was highly unlikely. For any nation, "It all boils down to this question, can anybody become a full citizen of your state? Or are they restricted by reasons of race and/or religion?" This is a particularly thorny issue these days as Muslim populations continue to grow throughout Europe, Great Britain, and elsewhere in the world. Many states do put strict conditions on who can become a citizen, but it is doubtful that Israel could or would pursue Lieberman’s plan. Lieberman said he believes Arabs would be happier living among other Arabs. This has been demonstrated in Israel when communities that formerly had large Christian or Jewish populations became predominantly Arab and gave them reason to leave. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is now nearly bereft of Christians. Even in Europe today, there are predominantly Muslim areas in cities and towns where non-Muslims are not welcome. As the arithmetic of demography grinds on, Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Islamist groups could achieve their goal of "eliminating" Israel without firing a shot. They need only wait a generation or so. Exiled from Israel by the Romans in 70 A.D., Jews may suffer this fate again. "The Arabs in Israel will destroy us," said Lieberman. Of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Lieberman said, "It is a dispute about our values. It is not about territory." The values in contention are those of the West versus those of the Islamists. "It’s a fight between two civilizations." For nearly sixty years, Israel has been a strategic asset in the Middle East, but as doubts creep in about its ability and willingness to defend itself, it could lose needed support from the U.S. government. It has none in Europe. Meanwhile, having rejected statehood in 1948, Palestinian factions continue to kill each other with abandon. Lieberman said he was hopeful that "a new generation of Palestinians" would hold the key to ending the conflict that has plagued Israelis before and since 1948 when they declared their independence because "land for peace doesn’t work." That much is true. Israel is half the size of California’s San Bernardino County! Lieberman dismissed the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had anything to do with other problems in the Middle East, but the real problem is that the Middle East is ruled by despots, mullahs and monarchs, and remains the one region that, other than providing oil, wants to remain detached from the rest of the world. It thrives on oppression, guarantees no human rights, and has weak economies that provide few jobs and a bleak future for its people. America’s evangelicals and Christians around the world believe that Israel, populated by Jews, must exist for the return of Christ Jesus. That hope, like the one Zionists harbor, grows more distant with every passing day. Do you have a website or blog and would like to share my weekly commentaries with its visitors? If so, contact me, acaruba@aol.com.
In early December, Bill Gertz, a Washington Times reporter who is wired into the intelligence community, wrote that "U.S. intelligence agencies think al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are alive and still plotting attacks, even though both have eluded a massive manhunt for more than five years since the September 11 terrorist attacks." The Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates offered the opinion that "his ability to directly organize and plan the kind of attacks against that hurt us so badly in September of 2001 is very limited now," adding "and I think it’s important to keep him on the run." Why do I have a bad feeling that no one in our massive intelligence community has any idea whether bin Laden is alive or dead and surely no clue where he might be? We have offered rewards in the millions for him and no one has picked up the phone to rat him out. Frankly, I find that rather impressive. So, while presumably special operations teams and CIA operatives scour the 1,500 mile border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the 2,000 mile border between the United States and Mexico continues to be porous enough for any ambitious alien to amble across at will. Could bin Laden be hiding out in Cleveland? Are we, in fact, making any progress? Or has Bin Laden become, as some members of the intelligence commentary are fond of saying, "Bin Forgotten"? It is true that the U.S. has not suffered a major attack on the homeland since 2001, but it is equally true that bin Laden’s al Qaeda patiently waited from 1993 when they first bombed the World Trade Center until they could get it right the second time. Given that timetable, we are due another attack in 2007. However, our enemies are not stupid. They are not likely to re-energize the American determination to destroy them while they are making plans for the next decade and beyond. Numerous experts tell us that the motivating factor throughout the Middle East is to drive out the infidels—that’s us—who have troops stationed on their "sacred" soil. This has been the motivating factor of the unremitting enmity for Israel before and since it declared independence in 1948. Come out! Come out wherever you are, Osama! I would much rather have you issuing fatuous fatwas than plotting horrid things because we know that you are very good at blowing up U.S. embassies, killing sailors by blowing big holes in our warships, and dreaming up the most horrible scenarios. The bad news, of course, is that it doesn’t matter at this point if bin Laden is alive or dead. Peter L. Bergen, the author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know", one of the best books that examines his life, says bin Laden’s longtime goal has been to destabilize and bring down the House of Saud. In an odd, if not bizarre, juxtaposition, Saudi Arabia has not only proven helpful to the United States by controlling the price of oil, but is also the locus of the Wahhabi fundamentalist brand of Islam that recruits the disaffected among them to join and supports al Qaeda. The U.S. has no really good choices when it comes to Saudi Arabia. Its survival depends on putting bin Laden out of business. Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, all Sunni, are equally at pains to defuse the al Qaeda bomb while, at the same time, casting a baleful eye on the Shiite lunatics running Iran. Meanwhile, Pakistan has retreated from the effort and its neighbor Afghanistan only wants to be left alone to raise poppies for the worldwide heroin market. Syria, a gangster nation, longs to again swallow up Lebanon. The Palestinians who fashion themselves "refugees" have not shown any capacity for creating a nation of their own. The anti-Western doctrine that feeds bin Laden’s fundamentalist desire to impose a strict sharia law and control on all Muslim nations is helped by the general failure of their economies and nobody wants to be impolite enough to suggest that sharia is part of the reason for that failure. Sweden probably has a greater gross national product than all of them combined. These Islamic nations are failures in every sense of the word. They are famed as human rights failures. They are failures when it comes to any form of technological or scientific innovation and development. They are universally despotic with no real representative government, save rubber-stamp legislatures. They spend more on armaments than on infrastructure. They distrust each other. They fear us, but less so with every passing day the West shows a lack of resolution; our demand that they join the rest of the world by ending their political oppression and by tending to their waning economies—all that oil is not going to last forever. In short, they need to become participants in the real world, not the one in which all their problems get blamed on us. It is, unfortunately, the nature of Arab culture to encourage poetic rhetoric while keeping the men perennial adolescents and their women as chattel. In the meantime, bin Laden and those he inspires with his ascetic life, can continue to wage his war on the House of Saud and the other kingdoms of the region, inspiring a war of the weak, i.e., the use of suicide bombers and improvised devices that kill non-combatants in the marketplaces of Baghdad, a nightclub in Bali, on buses and in the subways of London, on trains in Spain, and skyscrapers in Manhattan. They have nothing to offer the world other than to demand that we get down on our hands and knees, press our foreheads to the ground, and face Mecca five times a day. The West continues to "invade" their world with our movies, our music, our fashions, and our freedoms. For this reason alone, we may yet win and I think, in his heart of hearts, Osama bin Laden knows it. Have you ever donated to the Center? If not, now’s a good time to make up for it because we need your donation to sustain our communications programs. If you prefer, you can send a check to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. THANKS!
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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In mid-December, at the invitation of the Middle East Forum, I attended a luncheon in New York whose featured speaker was Avigdor Lieberman, a Deputy Prime Minster of Israel. He wants the Arabs out of Israel. It cannot be done.
Have you noticed how little news there’s been of Osama bin Laden? Hardly a peep for months now and no new videos.