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Today's West Is the Product of a Far Bloodier History than Anything Israelis Have Done in Gaza

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - The outrage against Israel, fanned by a resourceful and utterly dishonest propaganda machine that often mixes fake news and biased reports to exaggerate and fabricate stories of Israeli cruelty, benefits from a global double standard. The atrocities and horrors of the Sudanese civil war dwarf anything happening in Gaza, and the world yawns. But Western leaders who flaunt their self-perceived moral purity as they condemn Israel forget the foundations on which they stand. Today's liberal, rules-based Western order is the product of a far bloodier history than anything Israelis have done or even could do in Gaza. The liberal world order is grounded on the Allied victory in World War II. The Allies, like the Israelis, weren't the aggressors in that war, but in their efforts to extirpate the scourges of Nazi nihilism and Japanese militarism, they killed as many as three million German and another one million Japanese civilians. More than 11 million Germans were forced from their long-term homes in Poland and Czechoslovakia after the guns fell silent, often in winter amid terrible shortages of food, medicine and safe water. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and British Labour leader Clement Attlee scoffed at suggestions that the Allies provide humanitarian aid to enemy civilians while the war continued. Allied demands for unconditional surrender were issued in the full knowledge that they would likely prolong the war and increase civilian suffering. But in FDR's view, the Germans had been willing to venture another world war because the first one had ended without any serious fighting inside Germany itself. Real peace could come only if the Germans and the Japanese had the spirit of resistance beaten out of them. Western leaders who insist that Israel's actions are historically unprecedented and morally unjustifiable betray an ignorance of history and unseriousness of purpose that raise fundamental questions about their fitness for the offices they hold. The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida.
2025-09-25 00:00:00
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