Israel is continuously bombing in Beirut, the Gaza Strip and intermittently in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, including Palestinian cities like Tulkarm, Jenin and Nablus. Further from Israel, targets of the “Shiite Axis of Evil” in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and even Iran are being attacked. Yes, in effect, Israel is currently waging war on seven active fronts: the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. I can understand that people abroad really have no idea and probably only hear that Israel is going crazy and bombing everyone. It seems as if Israel is once again the “bully” in the neighborhood. Wonderful! Israel’s situation always reminds me of Bob Dylan’s song “Neighborhood Bully” from 1983.
Dylan wrote the song during the first Lebanon war in 1982, when northern Israel was under massive rocket fire from the PLO, prompting Israel to invade Lebanon. A scenario from over 40 years ago is repeating itself, once again making Israel the bully in its neighborhood, because “he’s just a man. His enemies say he’s in their land. They outnumber him about a million to one. He got no place to escape to, no place to run. He’s the neighborhood bully.”
Without truly understanding the Middle East situation, Western politicians reflexively call for ceasefire and de-escalation in the after every Israeli strike. I don’t think any of them really grasp how Israel wants and needs to use this unique opportunity to change the strategic balance in the region. This has fundamental consequences for the Middle East and is vital for Israel. It’s true that Israel is taking a huge risk, but ultimately this risk is also in the interest of the free Western world, isn’t it?
Everyone always has the best advice for Israel on how to combat Palestinian terror and how to strike the Shiite militia in Beirut. Not only that, but regarding the upcoming Israeli attack on Iran, everyone is advising Israel on what and how to do it. And more importantly, what not to do. Everyone abroad advises restraint. Why? If there is a real chance this time to eliminate or at least drastically reduce the Iranian nuclear threat, then it is also in the West’s interest – at least that’s how I see it. Yes, but it takes courage, and the Israeli army has found that courage again in the past three weeks. Instead of supporting and encouraging Israel, Western politicians are doing exactly the opposite.
See: Israel has lost all trepidation
French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for a peaceful solution to the Gaza conflict and thus proposes halting arms shipments to Israel. “It is essential to find a political solution and stop supplying weapons for Israel’s fight in Gaza,” Macron told the radio station France Inter. “Macron should be ashamed,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on camera last night. “What a disgrace. Israel will prevail with or without his support,” Netanyahu added. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly called for a halt to arms shipments to Israel. What do they want from Israel, that only Israel’s enemies should have weapons, and not Israel?
US President Joe Biden also said that if he were in Israel’s position, he would opt for a diplomatic solution. Okay, the US is nearing elections in November, and if war breaks out now, that’s not good for his Democratic Party. That may be, but that is not our problem. Israel is fighting an existential war, and if Israel doesn’t win this war with a knockout and regain its deterrence strategy, then Israel will lose the country. In America, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will at most lose an election.
In Germany, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock likes to criticize Israeli government officials and Jewish settlers, whom she sees as the root of all evil in the region and conflict. Baerbock also posts on Instagram, advising Israel on what tactics and methods not to use to combat Palestinian terror—”no destruction of homes and streets.” Just between us, what does Baerbock know better about counterterrorism than Israel? Her advice, like that of other Western politicians, wants only one thing from Israel: restraint and strategic calm. No one makes constructive suggestions to Israel on how to defeat Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Isn’t it Israel that shares the Western values of freedom, democracy and the Bible with Christian or Western Europe? Israel lives and exists in a different environment than the Western and “polite” Europeans and Americans. In our neighborhood in the Middle East, the State of Israel is an outsider because it is not an Islamic state like all other countries in the region. And to survive in this neighborhood, sometimes you have to be a bully. And that is even biblical. But for the politically-correct West, being a bully is incorrect, inhumane, unbiblical – but only as long as it doesn’t affect them personally.
That is why Israel currently has no choice but to be a bully in its neighborhood, as Bob Dylan wrote in his song “Neighborhood Bully” from 1983.
Those western nations think of themselves as being safe and sound from the terrorism Israel has to live in the neighborhood it lives in. But those western nations leaders have not one iota of knowledge, especially those who live in the luxury of their riches and protection from the lower classes they love to look down on, of the kind of hood Israel lives in. They act like those leaders from the last two millennia Israel has come through, pushing the Jews around because that’s what they did because they could.
We are now at the end of the book and things are changing, Israel is no longer being pushed around and the western nations leaders and uber wealthy are not liking it. They haven’t the slightest idea that all they are doing to Israel is going to come back on themselves, only worse. Read the book, is what I say to those who are down on Israel, they will see that Israel will still be standing when they, are all, dust.