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

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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. of the United States and it fits in quite well with the culture of the free world. We have to stop this. Because if we don't, then of course everybody running around and Basically if we're not willing to understand that bowing their heads and saying how sorry they there are values that we represent as are about the Holocaust are just a bunch of westerners, as citizens of free nations, and hypocrites because they haven't learned the that we have to defend them and that they basic lesson of the Holocaust which is you must be defended if we are to long survive as don't do that. free men and women, then we'll never be able to get over the Holocaust thing, we'll never be But how do you do that? Well, and this comes able to get over the multi-culturalism thing, to the third challenge of the Middle East that we'll never be able to confront the Arab world the Middle East presents to us, which is that and all its pathologies, and you'll never be able after World War II, if you listen to people like to understand the basic importance of Israel to the former Foreign Minister of Germany, the struggle for human liberty. Joschka Fischer, you find out that the basic rule of thumb for deciding who is moral and If you're not allowed to have an outpost of who is immoral after World War II, at least as freedom in the Middle East, even when it's a far as the Europeans are concerned, is who is speck on the map, then how can freedom be a Nationalist and who is an anti-Nationalist. safe anywhere on earth? If you're saying that Nationalism was somehow conflated with you're willing to give up the right of people to Nazism, when of course we know that that live freely anywhere, then what you're saying isn't true. I mean the British were Nationalists

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is that the right to live freely everywhere is in We don't realize that when Ayatollah Khomeini danger. in 1978 defined the primary enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the great Satan, People always say, well, why should we the United States, and the little Satan, which support Israel and Israel this and Israel that was Israel and sometimes Britain, that what and, you know, well why are you making so he was saying was first we go for the Saturday much noise and other things like that. People people and then we go for the Sunday people. don't understand that the basic importance of Israel is that we are the outpost of freedom in Israel is the appetizer, you are the dinner. If the Middle East. you don't understand that, then you're going to find yourself with Israel wiped off of the Hopefully, the experiment in Iraq will work out map with a vague recollection of a and it will point us to the direction that the conversation you once had with a lady named Arab world should be going into, which is a Caroline Glick from Jerusalem and you're going competitive political system where people are to have millions upon millions of people protected from Jihadists and can go to school inspired by the model of the destruction of a and vote and go to work and raise their Zionist entity marching on Canada and children without fear that they're going to be marching on England and marching on the murdered in the most horrible ways. United States in victory.

But we know that that freedom already exists That’s because the demise of the Jewish state in Israel. We know that if the experiment of will be the greatest strategic victory that the freedom does survive and work and succeed in Islamists have ever had, bar none. Greater Iraq, that Iraq will be Israel's best friend in the than the defeat of the Soviet Union in Arab world. More friendly and closer to Israel Afghanistan, greater than even a defeat of the than Egypt, which has had a cold peace which United States if it's stupid enough to leave has really been a cold war with Israel since Iraq without victory. 1981, closer than Jordan which is in the throes of a constant and chronic panic against the This is something that should be of concern to majority of its people who oppose Jihad and everybody, regardless of how they feel about define themselves as Palestinian. anything. At the end of the day, again, if the first challenge, the first moral challenge When we look at Israel, we have to presented by the Middle East to the West is understand that Israel is not only the forward being able to contend with and recognize the base of freedom in the Middle East; it is also a political and religious pathologies of the strategic asset to the West. Because one of Islamic world, and the second moral challenge the things that the Arabs do is that they play of the Middle East is to understand that Israel on the latent anti-Semitism of the West. They is getting short shrift by the international say, no, no, no, what we really want to do is community that has simply projected classical go after these Jews, these Israelis, these anti-Semitism on the Nationalist model of the settlers, these occupiers or whatever they Zionists in Israel, then the third challenge is to happen to call us on any particular day of the understand who we are and recognize that our week. way of life is worth defending, and that it must be defended. They say it's not about you. They say it's our fight with the Jews. Then you are able to find I believe that if we abide by these three moral all of the negative mythology of Jews that is challenges and we do it in a clear way, there is latent inside of Western societies. People say no doubt that we will emerge victorious and that if it's about the Jews, then it's not about stronger for having struggled. But if we don't, us and it's not a big deal and we don't have to and if we don't abide by any of those three fight and we don't have to worry about it. conditions or we only abide by some of them

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and not others, we will find ourselves in more precarious situations in the future.

It's not easy doing the right thing, and it's not Caroline Glick grew up in Chicago. She made easy defending ourselves particularly after for aliyah to Israel in 1991, two weeks after so many years we've been told that basically receiving her BA in Political Science from every time that we assert who we are we're Columbia University. She joined the Israel being racist. Of course it is discriminatory Defense Forces that summer and served as an because thought is discriminatory. officer for five and a half years. After leaving the IDF at the end of 1996, Ms. Glick served as Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime It's making choices. It's saying that we defend Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 1997-1998. In one thing over another thing because we June 2008 she received a Masters in Public prefer one thing over another thing. We prefer Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy freedom. I, as a woman, prefer not to have to School of Government. In the summer of 2000 wear a burlap bag over my body. I prefer to be Ms. Glick returned to Israel and began writing able to choose whom I marry and whom I at Makor Rishon newspaper, (Hebrew). In divorce and to own property. I, as a Jew, March 2002, she accepted the position of prefer to be alive and not dead. Deputy Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. Ms Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in All of these things are preferences, they're Washington, DC and travels several times a prejudices, and I discriminate when I say I year to Washington where she routinely briefs prefer life to death. But we have to recognize senior administration officials and members of that the forces being arrayed against us are Congress on issues of joint Israeli-American forces who prefer death to life. concern. On Israeli Independence Day in 2003, Ma’ariv named Ms. Glick the most prominent woman in Israel. In December 2005, Ms. Glick These are people who teach their children that was awarded the Ben Hecht award for Middle they should become suicide bombers. These East reporting from the Zionist Organization of are people who tell women that they should be America. In January 2006, she was awarded considering their wombs not as the fountains the Abramowitz Prize for Media Criticism by of life but as bomb factories to produce suicide Israel Media Watch. Ms. Glick lives in bombers. Jerusalem.

These are the pathologies of the Arab world that we are contending with every day in

Israel, and that increasingly people in the

West are contending with in a variety of ways every single day. Until we are able to recognize all three of these things, we have to attack those who aspire to a vision of humanity that is antithetical to who we are. Until we are able to understand the significance of the war against Israel to everybody in the free world, and until we're able to understand who we are and why who we are must be defended vigilantly, we'll never 2000 Barrington St., Ste. 1302 Cogswell Tower, be able to say that we are abiding by the Halifax NS B3J 3K1 moral challenges in the Middle East. phone: (902) 429-1143 fax: (902) 425-1393 E-Mail: [email protected] http://www.aims.ca

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