The Middle East's Moral Challenge to the West
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The Middle East’s Moral Challenge to the West by Caroline Glick Based on remarks to the 2008 Civitas National Conference Winnipeg, MB 03 May 2008 The title of my talk today is the Middle East Then I say that the challenge morally is that Moral Challenge to the West. So I wanted to we have to act counter-intuitively and discuss that moral challenge because I think understand that no, in fact, we have to there are three basic challenges that the recognize what the pathologies that we're Middle East presents to the West. financing by trying to appease the Arabs for all of these years has done to us and what The first moral challenge that it presents to challenge it presents to us. Because when we the West is contending with Islamic radicalism look at the pathologies of the Arab world, we and the political pathologies that run the Arab see that there are no Arab States that are not world and Iran today. I think that it's tyrannies except for Iraq which is now in the important to understand these pathologies and throes of a revolution, the first in the Arab contend with them because our intuitive sense world for hundreds of years that is a true is that because we are in an oil-based revolution. economy, that our natural tendency is to say that we need oil and the oil markets are in All of these states that we've been trying to large part dependent on Arab oil, and create favour with are tyrannies. They are therefore, what we need to do is have good inherently intolerant to people who are not like relations with Arabs because they are sitting the majority, they're racist, they're misogynist, on oil. they are Islamic supremacists, they systematically oppress all minority ethnic and And so our intuitive sense is that given that we religious groups in their countries – and of need oil, we have to be nice to people who course women. produce oil. That has been the basic guiding force behind most of the Western foreign Then they use their oil wealth in order to policy towards the Arab world since around export these pathologies to the west, whether 1945. it's through indoctrination of Islamic youth, in mosques that are funded by the Saudi government or schools that are funded by the AIMS Commentary – Moral Challenge to the West July 2008 Saudi government, or whether it's through the countries that we were living in; that we were Internet and subversion and incitement to greedy; that we were whatever. All of these terrorism to get the kind of things like British- racist and hateful stereotypes of Jews that born Muslims blowing up trains in London or in have been following the Jewish people Madrid and we see these pathologies then throughout our history in exile have been come back to bite us. transformed into allegations against Israel that have no bearing in fact; that we're somehow So what we have to do is counter-intuitively or another killing Palestinians and we do it for look at the Arab world and say that it's true demonic reasons; that we are evil; that every that we're dependent on oil, but that doesn't single thing that Israel does to defend itself is mean that we should be complacent. It means an act of genocide the likes we haven't seen that we should be doing the sort of things that since Auschwitz. Robert Zubrin was talking about in terms of trying to build an alternative economic model We see these things going on and on in their for our energy sector that could rely on maniacal, demonic sort of way about Israel. something else and make them, force them to It's simply because the guilt of non-Jews for compete in an open market for energy needs. what happened to the Jewish people in the Holocaust when the Germans with the It also means being able to understand that collusion of most of the nations of Europe there's something inherently wrong and systematically committed genocide against the something inherently dangerous about a Jews of Europe and liquidated a third of our culture that is propagating this kind of hatred: members, have figured out that the way to one that is calling for the destruction of the exculpate themselves from moral responsibility very notion of human freedom which forms the for what they did 65 years ago is to project basis of our own ideology as children of the their own demonic behavior onto the Jewish west. State. So we see this kind of recalibration of anti-Jewish sentiment away from individual So that's the first basic moral challenge. Can Jews to the Jewish State. we go beyond the simple notion that if we simply appease the Arabs then everything will So the second moral challenge of the Middle be all right and understand that really East for the West is to stop it, is to stop appeasing them is feeding the beast and discriminating against Israel, is to stop making it more difficult for them to take treating Israel as the new Jew that can be responsibility for their actions, giving them no discriminated against and persecuted and reason to do so and also endangering our own victimized the same way as the Jews were for ways of life. 2000 years in exile until the establishment of the modern state of Israel 60 years ago, and The second moral challenge that the Middle to be willing to acknowledge that Israel is. The East presents to us is Israel. Israel is the Jew West needs to acknowledge that Israel should on the international scene. We see today that have and does have inherently the same right much of the discrimination against Israel in the of self-defence as every other state in the international arena is identical to the world. It needs to acknowledge that Israel is persecution that Jews have faced in exile for an inherently moral nation that doesn't do any 2000 years since the destruction of the Second of the sorts of things that we are being Temple in Jerusalem in 70 of the Common Era. accused of doing. We see that the same sort of negative Of course you can't do that. If you haven't mythologies today that were constantly being stood up to the first moral challenge, which is used against the Jews: that we killed children to acknowledge and understand the basic for their blood to make matzos; that we were pathologies of the Arab world that reject the conspiring to take over the governments of the notion of anyone other than them being in Page 2 of 5 AIMS Commentary – Moral Challenge to the West July 2008 charge in the Middle East and that, therefore, and they weren't Nazis, the Americans were propels them to want to expunge Israel from Nationalists, they weren't Nazis. I daresay, the Middle East as the only non-Islamic without knowing too well Canadian history, enclave from the Mediterranean Sea to India. that the Canadians who fought amazingly well To say, wait a minute, this is wrong and in both world wars were probably Nationalists. there's no reason for us to support your Yet they weren't Nazis. The problem wasn't aspiration to wipe Israel off the map whether Nationalism. The problem was evil. you say it in Iran or you say it in Egypt or you say it in Ramallah or you say it in Jordan or But if you come to the conclusion that the you say it in Syria or you say it in Libya or you problem was Nationalism then you also come say it in Pakistan or you say it anywhere else. to the conclusion that there's something wrong with your culture. That leads you to a view But in order for us to be able to do that, us that you have to be open to all cultures and all being the West, we have to acknowledge that cultures are somehow or another equal which Israel has an inherent right to exist. We have brings you to multi-culturalism. But multi- to stop persecuting Israel as the international culturalism is actually a perversion of the Jew and we have to realize that anti-Zionism is notion that all cultures are equal because the the deepest form of anti-Semitism. Because if only culture that's not allowed to assert itself anti-Semites say that Jews are such-and-such is your own culture. and therefore we can kill them or we can hate them or we can keep them out of our club or My basic contention is that when we look at we cannot hire them or we can just say nasty the inherent values of Western civilization, passive-aggressive things about them behind cultural values, civilizational values, moral their back, then anti-Zionism is saying that values, we see that at their base, it's a about an entire people, negating the right of a philosophical question. If you're not inherently people to self-determination, negating the a rebel, then how does liberalism fit in? I think right of a people to defend themselves in the that it fits in quite well with the culture of way that they choose, just like every other Canada and it fits in quite well with the culture nation on the face of the planet can do.