Cohen: Israel is a Mistake

In what may be one of the more misguided columns ever written by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, today he argues that the nation of Israel is a mistake:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

This is why the Israeli-Arab war, now transformed into the Israeli-Muslim war (Iran is not an Arab state), persists and widens. It is why the conflict mutates and festers. It is why Israel is now fighting an organization, Hezbollah, that did not exist 30 years ago and why Hezbollah is being supported by a nation, Iran, that was once a tacit ally of Israel's. The underlying, subterranean hatred of the Jewish state in the Islamic world just keeps bubbling to the surface. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and some other Arab countries may condemn Hezbollah, but I doubt the proverbial man in their street shares that view.

There is no point in condemning Hezbollah. Zealots are not amenable to reason. And there's not much point, either, in condemning Hamas. It is a fetid, anti-Semitic outfit whose organizing principle is hatred of Israel. There is, though, a point in cautioning Israel to exercise restraint -- not for the sake of its enemies but for itself. Whatever happens, Israel must not use its military might to win back what it has already chosen to lose: the buffer zone in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip itself.

There's no point in condemning the terrorists who started the war? Just because they won't listen? What drivel. Granted, both neither organization is known for good sense and logic, but that doesn't mean they get a pass for the acts of terrorism that they are perpetrating.

If you study end times at all, you can almost see the forces lining up for the battles that will mark the last days. Israel may be a mistake to the angry left (and their anti-Semitism has come out loud and strong since the fighting started a few days ago), but Israel will out last all of us, despite the bad ideas of some of their leaders.

They'll never be able to give up enough land to appease the Arabs so they might as well quit trying. Take back the Gaza, establish a security zone in Southern Lebanon, and hold onto everything else they currently control. That's just about the only option available to them under the current conditions.

Meanwhile the rest of the world needs to get out of the way and let the Israelis finish eliminating the terrorist organizations and infrastructure that threaten their nation.