Canary in the Coal Mine

Israel has often been called the canary in the coal mine - what happens in Israel tends to repeat itself elsewhere, usually sooner rather than later. Ironically, this is no where more true than in the Muslim world. The terrorism that was first tested out on Israeli children is now de rigeur in Baghdad. Suicide bombings - which were unheard of twenty years ago, are now common from Mauritania to Pakistan. The fighting skills that Hamas perfected against Israel was used to throw their brothers off of rooftops and to undemocratically maintain power in Gaza.

Moreover, while countless articles have been written about how the conflict has been bad for Israel, it seems to me the Arabs have fared much worse. Israel remains a vibrant democracy with an enviable economy and a strong legal system. Palestinian society is in shambles. When they remember the Nakba, they do not have to hearken back 60 years, but rather can just look around them. Sure, they blame Israel, but it is they - and not Israel - that has to endure daily suffering at the hands of their own brothers.

The Palestinians - who were once led by the secular PLO and famously included many Christians, has now been replaced by Hamas - which is rapidly weeding out Fatah along with the minuscule Christian community in Gaza. While Israel is roundly attacked for "human rights abuses" Hamas in Gaza has perfected its societal oppression and waiting for the chance to spread it to the West Bank and all of Israel. If it works in Israel, you can be sure this will impact Jordan Egypt and Lebanon.

Though I am opposed to the way Kossovars declared independence, I commend them for instinctively realizing this. Michael Totten, who usually reports from Lebanon is presently doing a series on the Balkans. Recently (April 30), he wrote:

Kosovo is the world’s newest country, and its unilateral declaration of independence is more controversial than the existence of Israel. It should be only slightly surprising, then, that many Kosovars, though most are Muslims, identify to an large extent with the Israelis. “Kosovars used to identify with the Palestinians because we Albanians are Muslims and Christians and we saw Serbia and Israel both as usurpers of land,” a prominent Kosovar recent told journalist Stephen Schwartz. “Then we looked at a map and woke up. Israelis have a population of six million, their backs to the sea, and 300 million Arab enemies. Albanians have a total population of eight million, our backs to the sea, and 200 million Slav enemies. So why should we identify with the Arabs?”

So, while columnists the world over are busy eulogizing Israel on the 60th anniversary of its founding, they may want to consider also asking about the odds of the Palestinians surviving as one people for another 60 years. Or will the fault lines of Fatah and Hamas, Christian and Muslim, Secular and Religious, and Refugee and those living in the territories, West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli Arab and non-citizen Arabs prove too much? The same could be said for most of the repressive Middle East states, where tribe, religion, ethnicity and politics are all regularly suppressed by the totalitarian regimes that rule the region.

Sure, Israel has its societal divides as well, but they are out in the open and are regularly discussed. As New York Times columnist Freedman noted in his book The World is Flat, the difference between India and Pakistan is that in India, when a poor boy looks up the hill and sees a mansion, he says "One day I will grow up and be that man." When a Pakistani boy looks up, he says, "One day I am going to kill that man." The only discussions that occur at present in Palestinian society and Muslim society as a whole, occur at the end of a rifle.

I doubt I will be around in 60 years and don't really know if Israel will be around in 60 years, but am pretty sure that Muslim dictators and the Palestinians should be the most worried right about now.