An old secret that western contemporary governments use in order to protect intelligence agents is to plant them as journalists; shielded by a Constitution gives them unimpeded range to explore, divulge and develop unattractive options to shape public opinion.
Benny Avni has maintained the guise of such informed prestige on matters guarding the Near East, that he is most certainly a coveted agent who has mastered his quarry and craft with profound political consequences. His latest column asks readers to survey the landscape prior to the first shot; we need to remember with stark clarity the path that brought the West to the brink!
For Avni, the exercise in child rearing that is the Pax Americana fortuitously prepared the American citizenry for managing the tribal, ethnic conflicts that will continue to dominate the 21st century. As our citizen soldiers maintain the hard won advantages of Iraq and Afghanistan, the political acumen of American citizenry needs to rise in proportion to threats. We must remember that a lack of resolve strengthens enemies, that any engagement under the rules of proportionality equalizes inferiors, galvanizing false legitimacy.
Avni demands to know why the Palestinians prefer the manufactured aggrieved dignity of their resentments to the challenges of nationhood?
The political landscape engendered upon Israel is stark maddening logic. The western liberal model can do nothing to resolve the impending conflicts paralyzing the region. We are witnessing an unappeasable hatred for its own sake. A hatred without either visible or material reference to any rightfully understood historical claim. Palestinian self loathing creates a vacuity bordering the Satanic!
Does the Islamic mind truly believe that infidels became superior out of their alienated striving? Can a permanent exile from grace produce such superiority? How can Islam pronounce such pathetic sentiments absent any self criticism? For the Islamic radicals, their faith is of a completely absent, unhistorical, transcendent deity; radically uninvolved, unhinged from the creative order! In such nominalist logic, one may indeed do evil in order to advance a good. Murder, torture, rape and suicide bombings demonstrate a hatred that glorifies death as an act of both piety and self determination! Here hatred and demonic violence imparts grandeur that compensates a lost, ungrounded person, confused by the rapidity ushered in by modernity. Jews and infidels offer occasion to hate; this experience gives both psychological and technical form to a grasp untethered from reality.
Avni imparts an understanding repeated by Fouad Ajami, Bernard Lewis, Amir Tahari, Max Boot, Mark Helprin, Oriana Fallachi and many others who acclaim that what Osama Bin Ladin bestows throughout the arch of Islam is consolation!
Why does Islam hate? According to the great Arabic thinkers of the West noted above, the answer is surprisingly easy to understand. With the end of Colonialism, Imperialism, Slavery, Oppression, Racism and a host of cultural enormities vanquished by the West leaving Islam uninformed from a Reformation or an Enlightenment.
William Holland
William Holland 