Samuel Huntington’s most famous assertion was that Islam’s borders are always bloody. Thus the great scholar summed the vast chasm between Islamic and western societal concepts. Judeo-christian societal model is based on borders being drawn, equally respected on both sides for their mutual benefit, those within borders agreeing on a common set of laws to rule them. Thus diverse-origin societies can live together within rules of mutual tolerance. On the personal level Judeo-Christian mores value self-limitation, curbing of personal power, mercy toward the vanquished. The Islamic concept of a border is as an intolerable infringement on its right to enlarge, conquer, subdue, and as such must be constantly challenged. As the conquest grows subdivisions become apparent, each of which is cause for further infringement, then blood-shed. On the personal level might is right, power unleashed, while the vanquished must accept dhimmitude, or die.
As the Arab Spring slips into the Arab mayhem one outcome stands out as the common goal in all locales: Ethnic and Tribal cleansing. Unified Iraq – which was cobbled together out of three Senjaks – is breaking apart, such that Sunnis are being driven away from Shi’a majority territories, while Shi’a populace, together with Shi’a shrines, are now being systematically destroyed by the Sunnis. Kurds take over Kurdish majority cities and assert their Kurdish identity in former Iraq and Syria. In former Syria the Assad regime is effectively constructing a Sunni-rein state, where Allawi and Shi’a, together with other allied minorities, are either killing away or driving away the Sunnis to the Kingdom of Jordan, itself riven by sectarian divides, Lebanon and ISIS-land. The same applies to Lebanon whose national Government is cobbled together of sectarian representation reflecting the ability to impose will by violence. Thus “national” borders are being erased, while sectarian boundaries, equally bloody, are being formed. Smaller minorities such are Jews and Christians are either decimated or annihilated as a matter of course.
None of this should surprise anyone because this sectarian-ethnic cleansing using all means, economic, military, terrorist, and annihilationist, has been in practice now for a century, mainly directed at Jews. The Jewish commonwealth has been under annihilationist threat ever since the Ottoman Empire fell apart. The calls for the cleansing of the land, any land from Yemen to the western magrheb, of Jewish presence, were and are constant. Thus the ancient Jewish diasporas from Yemen to Tangiers were driven to extinction, while in the center of it all, what became the sovereign State of Israel is subjected to unremitting terror, barrages, and bloodying of the external and internal boundaries. In fact it’s the internal boundaries, informally set up to allow sects to live and let live, that are being constantly infringed, challenged and bloodied, the blood shed used to further inflame violence. In fact it is Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship and enjoy the advantages of the modern welfare state, are those who inflame Muslim passions the most, leading the assault. When asked, the formal leaders of the rioting communities cite various grievances. But the calls of the actual rioters, which are essentially mobs of teen-agers led from behind by seasoned activists, are annihilationist, repeating the age-old cry to kill the Jews (itbach-Al-Yahood) in the name of Allah.
It is of interest that such cries, pledges, assertions, intentions, though freely translated to Judeo-cidal militancy, though uttered by the top-echelon of Muslim society, such the head of the Arab league, or the Supreme Leader of Iran, were never censured by the West. Certainly were never a reason to impose any kind of sanction, or change affiliations, or policy. In fact they were pooh-poohed away as hyperbolic speech which carries no substance, or just hot air blown to please the inconsequential mob. Widespread terror imposed on the Jews by Arabs armed by the West was never a reason to stop the constant flow of arms. Somehow it was assumed that Jews were artificially inserted where they did not belong and that it was the right of Muslims to challenge the boundaries and cleanse them away – if they could. Calls for reciprocity against Arabs were universally condemned as Racist, Chauvinist, Colonial, Fascist, Nazi, whereas the constant din of annihilationist ideation and militancy against Jews were and are duly accepted as anti-colonial grievance.
Now comes the boomerang. Annihilationist ideation spoken and practiced on Jews, uncensored, sanctioned by silence, is now being generalized onto everyone else. Sunnis versus Shiites, Shiites and Sunnis against Christians, a purported Caliphate imposing the extremes of Jihadi demands on non-Muslims and Muslims, and widespread ethnic cleansing. Violent jihadis spread fear and terror from Mumbai to newYork, from Londonistan to Hamburg and Stockholm, demanding their special zones be cleansed of others, in conjunction with the ascendancy of Islam.
The only political entity in the Middle East not practicing ethnic cleansing, Israel, is being punished for not having exercised it as the Muslim rioting mobs move from Arab neighborhoods onto the main thoroughfares, spill into Jewish neighborhoods, with augmented use of lethal implements such as fire-bombs and murder-abductions. Clearly, the mobs, and those who lead them from behind, will be satisfied with nothing less than the final cleansing of Jews from the Muslim realm –that is what they say, mean and do. Then they can move on to internal sectarian feuding.
In fact, it is only the power of the Jewish State which limits the fury of this inter- and intra-tribal violence. Were it not for the Israelis and their arcane insistence on the rule of Law, Arab tribes and clans would decimate each other via constant challenge of boundaries. Even now inter-Arab homicide rate is far higher than any count of Jewish-Arab fatalities. An outstanding example is the separation of Fatah and Hamas militants in Israeli custody and jails. Were those two factions placed together, chances are none would reach the end of their sentence.
The present spate of violent boundary-chafing raises the existential question, can the Jewish State persist in its present mode of equal application of the rule of law. The other choice, apart from lemming-like self-annihilation, is total ethnic separation along an impose-able, defensible border. Not the presently called-for Two State Solution, for that one presupposes an Israel riven with even more Arab-Muslims than before (The so called “right of return”) crammed into a far smaller territory. This abortive solution has been the main-stay of diplomacy for almost a century, always failing for one major reason: The inability of Arabs to accept any border beyond which there are no more grievances or claims. The Muslim respect for a border, is, as alluded to above, as blasphemous as accepting that Muhammad was nothing but a lying, murderous , pedophilic, wife-abusing brigand. In reality the only realistic solution is the one chosen by the muslims among themselves: The repatriation of the vast majority of Arabs now residing, and rioting to the territory beyond the natural, defensible border of the Jewish realm, which is the River Jordan.
The impartial reader is rightfully horrified by the mere suggestion that two-three million Arabs now residing with the Jewish realm (and it is, despite the artificially-drawn Green Line meandering through the Jewish highlands) might be expelled east, or west. However, in the present context of the Levant it is nothing less than par for the course. Consider that six million Syrian citizens have been moved as part of the erasure of the Syrian multinational state and transformation into single-sect duchies. Consider that three million Iraqi Christians were uprooted leaving a couple-hundred thousand still clutching at their pre-Muslim abodes. Consider that close to a million Jews were cleansed out of Arab majority countries within one generation. Consider that the UNWRA residency requirement to be considered a Palestinian is a mere couple of years, indicating that the vast majority of so-called Palestinians were recent immigrants into the yet-unincorporated Jewish State. The unimaginable crime of forcing the expulsion of three million people is quite imaginable and done everywhere and anytime – as long as the beneficiaries, or actually those being threatened with extinction, are not Jews. Jews are held to a higher standard, even if it may kill them – or maybe because it may kill them.
Once we accept that the unthinkable is indeed thinkable (I think, as many do, that Muhammad was an anti-Semitic murderous criminal, as were Hitler and his pal, Amin-Al-Husseiny) we then do a reality check as to Israel’s leadership’s options. One option is to keep the lid on things using all the means the lid had been placed on before, placation, pandering, bribery, some force, etc… The other is to do nothing and let the lava flow. And flow. And flow, scorching everything in its path as is the natural order of things when borders and boundaries of hatred and blood-lust are breached. Wait for a general outcry to reach a crescendo. Only then offer the only possible solution, and wait some more for the crescendo to propagate and amplify. Then, armed with the full consensus of the beleaguered people eyeing imminent death, do what must be done, however unpalatable and unthinkable. Because it is the new reality on the ground in the Middle East.
The idea that a Jewish government will take on, in an organized manner, the expulsion of three million Arabs, and live to tell about it, is so far fetched, so revolting, it will never happen. However, the idea that the holocaust shall be repeated is equally revolting, at least to the intended victims. Therefore the expulsion will never be an organized governmental action. That which is acceptable in Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, China, Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan etc etc ad nauseum is absolutely verboten to Jews. It will have to be spontaneous, undirected, as are the mob riots now rocking Israel. Only far larger. It is a grim future, shared by others such as France Holland and Belgium, should these countries wish to survive.
It is a decade since the most illuminating interview ever given regarding the Jewish Muslim conflagration saw print. Professor of History Benny Morris, hitherto considered a factual critic of political Zionism, laying the blame for the Palestinian refugee crisis squarely on Israel, analyzed the causes and outcomes of the 1948 Judeocidal war. His stark conclusion: The optimal outcome of the war would have been the complete transfer of Arabs over the river to the Jordanian territory. Once partition was rejected by the Arabs and hostilities initiated, the conclusion with the least future blood-shed would have been an Arab-rein Israel and a Juden rein Transjordan. It’s a decade since the Morris became the pariah of the world he had inhabited simply for uttering the truth. As the population grows, as the country becomes more dense, as Jihadi Islam garners more and more adherents, the relatively bloodless optimal outcome of 1948 becomes a huge humanitarian crisis, as we see unfolding in the Levant.
So now, all we can hope for is a miracle. Because all other eventualities are fraught with pre-ordained tragedy.
