Comment on the Belmont Club: "Days of Rage"

for the first time there are voices questioning Israel’s strategic value
That from the Times of London, which is owned by the same News Corporation that owns Fox in America and has as its second largest investor the Saudi Prince al-Taweed.

There are voices now questioning America's strategic value.

This was brilliant on the Israeli part. The Arabs riot over the reconstruction of a house of worship that the Jordanians destroyed in a war crime. The Arabs stand unabashedly with the legacy of hate that used the Jewish grave stones on the Mount of Olives to line latrines. This has nothing to do with housing or property rights and that lie is shredded. This explosion of violence, like the violence over Rachel's Tomb, is about the Islamic effort to eradicate the memory that anyone may have of a prior claim to anywhere that they have declared ex cathedra to be Dar al-Islam. The Israelis can now announce that they are starting an emergency mission to rescue threatened religious sites. They can move into Bethlehem, where Palestinian gunmen once desecrated the Church of the Nativity. They can even move to eject the Islamic Waqf from its control over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

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The problem with the American system as outlined by Petreaus, is that it will not work. The betrayal of the non-communist Polish and Yugoslav forces in WW-II was justified by two things. First the compromised relations of some of the Yugoslav Chetniks with the Germans. Second by the need to support the Russians in the face of an existential threat. Both betrayals of recognized allies were of dubious merit given the realities of the time. Certainly the betrayal of the Poles at Yalta was reprehensible.

Neither is analogous to the position of Israel in relation to the Iranians and the Arabs. If during the Cold War we had sacrificed Japan to China to buy support for a strike on the Soviets it would have approached this level of perfidy. The Sunni will pocket our gift and treat us with scorn.

This isn't even to gain support for an American strike on Iran but to gain support for the Arabs not supporting an Israeli strike and instead choosing an American strategic shield. Given that we have just destroyed the credibility of that shield they would be foolish to be impressed by the offer.