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Terror in a Safe Space, a Year On

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - A music festival billed as providing a "safe envelope for finding inner calm, peace, harmony" ended with mass murder, rape and kidnapping and ushered the Middle East into a series of horrific wars. That is what happened a year ago outside Kibbutz Re'im at the Tribe of Nova music festival, and the horror that overtook the festivalgoers has spread far and wide since that fatal day. For Israelis and Jews everywhere, the past year has brought hard lessons in both the importance of Zionism and its difficulties. Jews in London, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and other cities have watched mobs of Jew-haters repeatedly march through the streets. Jews unwilling to denounce Israel have been ostracized and marginalized at universities. Jews across the West are wondering whether their children have a future in their own countries. Two generations of Westerners have raised their kids to believe that the world is rapidly becoming a safe space. We were consolidating a rules-based world order. Life would no longer be about sacrifice and heroism. It would be all about shopping, music festivals and feeling good about ourselves. What our elites forgot is that the rules-based world order was never more than a consequence of American and allied power, and that without the steadfast maintenance of that power, the rules by which the world lives will revert to something more like the Law of the Jungle. It turns out that the diplomacy through which presidents seek to reshape the world depends on the military power and the use of force that they want to eschew. As respect for American capacity, vision and will erodes around the world, the power of American threats and promises steadily fades. The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.
2024-10-08 00:00:00
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