Israel May Have Won So Far but the West Has Lost

In June 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor about 10 miles south of Baghdad. Initial reaction toward Israel was swift and full of condemnation. In fact, immediately following the attack the United Nations, the US, France and other countries condemned Israel. Just a few years later, however, there was an increasing sense that the Israelis had accomplished an important step in deterrence and by striking preemptively, assisted the US in the Gulf War. While the scenarios are not exactly similar it is reasonable to believe that the same historical turns will take place following the present Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas. In the meantime, Israel is once again being vilified for doing the right thing.
Israel was threatened by an Iraq led by Saddam Hussein who was virulently anti-Israel and was working toward acquiring atomic bomb capability which he threatened to use against the citizens of Israel. Israeli diplomats reached out to world leaders for several years prior to taking military action, in particular the French who had designed the reactor, to halt the Iraqi nuclear program. The requests fell on deaf ears. No one heard about the real world danger a nuclear capable Hussein posed. Israel was forced to act.
Hamas terrorists shoot rockets, abduct people, build terror tunnels, and threaten to kill every Israeli, to the last Jew and Christian, to, in their words “liberate” Israel. Diplomacy has not worked yet. Again Israel, when it acts to protect all of its citizens, is threatened with condemnation. Israel seems to have won this round with Hamas only to have to fight a PR war with the West. In addition, now all of this current condemnation comes with a very large measure of anti-Semitism – such is the threat of the growing Caliphate and the power it surreptitiously gives followers worldwide.
While Israel is denounced for its defensive actions in the face of terror and the threatened annihilation of Jews and Christians, we are finally hearing about the threat that ISIS, a terror group whose goals are precisely the same as those of Hamas, and has proven that it murders with abandon, even glee, poses. But even that threat is minimized by many.
Anti- Israel and anti-Zionism aside the censure threats made against Israel smacks, most importantly, of hypocrisy. It is the height of duplicity when left wing commentators, community organizers, and professors with no battlefield experience assume the role of military strategists who can decide how much firepower a country may use to protect its citizens. Moreover, when their own country decides to assist the Kurdish minority in Iraq against ISIS most of these critics voice no protest.
Israel is a strong independent country that is not afraid to take up arms to deal with real threats. Unfortunately, the Western world is slow to learn and limited in its ability to react. That is why ISIS so rapidly overran the centuries old Christian cities of the Levant, murdered thousands and despite this late to the dance reaction of the US administration is in the process of eradicating two millennia of culture and history.
Israel won this military round because it assayed the threat and reacted. The Western world has thus far lost because as a group, western countries take too long to admit a problem, is too unwilling to admit to evil, not prepared to believe that evil is directed toward their own soil, even in a post 9/11 world and much to slow to react. There are psychological phenomena that explain this restrictive view based on biases we all have and the need to accept as fact only information that confirms our preconceived world view. So it is the case that the UN can hypocritically confirm a virulently anti-Israeli diplomat to head an inquiry biased even before starting its work, or that the UK and the US and others have begun to restrict weapons to Israel while sending money and weapons to countries that subvert democracy and even support terror.
If terror goes unchecked it is only a matter of time until terror attacks begin in earnest in Western countries. If reports that terrorists have crossed the border from Mexico into the US are true than the biases may eventually change, and Israel will be viewed as a leading light. Unfortunately, few in the West, because of their preconceptions, are actively entertaining the possibility, saving their bile not for Hamas, ISIS or the others but for Israel.