By Charles C. W. Cooke
Monday, July 07, 2025
In the New York Times, Michael D. Shear writes:
Yet many Israelis welcome the
prospect of a future in which they are no longer surrounded by well-armed
enemies determined to do them harm, even if it means being viewed negatively by
the rest of the world.
In 1981, Menachem Begin, then the
prime minister of Israel, urged Israelis to “never pause to wonder what the world
will think or say.” He told a group of American Jews that “the world may not
necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of
him.”
It has always fascinated me that, when the topic is
Israel, the idea that a country would “welcome the prospect of a future in
which they are no longer surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to do them
harm, even if it means being viewed negatively by the rest of the world” is
deemed to be surprising or debatable or controversial. There is no country in
the world that would want to be “surrounded by well-armed enemies determined to
do them harm.” Nor is there a country that would prioritize being viewed
positively by the rest of the world over eliminating that threat. Such a
position would be wholly absurd. Quite why Israel is supposed to be different
than everywhere else is unclear.
If, somehow, the United States were in the same position
as Israel — and if it were capable of fixing that — it would act in precisely
the same way as Israel has. So would Britain. So would France. So would Poland
or Mongolia or Bolivia or Chad. That is elemental statehood. The same is true
of smaller polities. If the United States broke up and Oklahoma found itself
surrounded by a bunch of armies that were hellbent on wiping it off the map,
Oklahoma’s number one priority would be changing that. That people in Oregon or
New York were upset by that would simply not matter. It would be a secondary,
or tertiary, or quaternary consideration. Human nature dictates as much, and
Israelis are humans, too.
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