(Defining Ideas-Hoover Institution) Victor Davis Hanson - Not long ago, the Economist ran an unsigned editorial blaming Middle East tensions on Israel's unwillingness "to give up its empire." It is hard to fathom how a democracy of seven million people by any stretch of the imagination is an "empire." Israel, after all, fought three existential wars over its 1947 borders, when the issue at hand was not manifest destiny, but the efforts of its many enemies to exterminate or deport its population. After the 1967 war, Israeli governments eventually withdrew from the Sinai, southern Lebanon, and Gaza - areas from which attacks were and are still staged against it. Does the world much care about the principle of occupation? Not really. Russia won't give up the southern Kurile Islands it took from Japan. Tibet ceased to exist as a sovereign country when it was absorbed by Communist China. Turkish forces since their 1974 invasion have occupied large swaths of Cyprus. The green line that runs through downtown Nicosia to divide Cyprus makes Jerusalem look united in comparison. Over 500,000 Jews have been ethnically-cleansed from Arab capitals since 1947. Why are they not considered refugees the way the Palestinians are? The point is not that the world community should not focus on Israel's disputes with its neighbors, but that it singles Israel out for its purported transgressions in a fashion that it does not for nearly identical disagreements elsewhere. The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
2012-03-29 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive