OPINION:
As you watch scenes of horror unfolding in Israel, understand that this tragedy has been long in the making.
It didn’t start with President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which signaled weakness to the world, President Biden’s war on domestic energy production — making us dependent on our enemies for the lifeblood of our economy and military — or his decision to release $6 billion for Iran as part of a prisoner swap.
You could say that the latest offensive had its beginnings in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter helped to overthrow our longtime ally, the Shah of Iran, and install what became one of the world’s most murderous regimes.
Like his predecessor Woodrow Wilson, our 39th president was on a mission to make the world safe for democracy.
He was also a lousy judge of character who bought the assurances of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that he wanted nothing but peace with the world and would protect U.S. interests. How could you not trust a guy who called America “the great Satan” and Israel “the little Satan”?
So it was out with the shah and in with the ayatollah. There followed a quarter century of theocratic rule, the brutal repression of the Iranian people and Iran becoming the world’s chief state sponsor of terrorism.
In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accord with terrorist chieftain Yasser Arafat, ceding control of most of the West Bank to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Overnight, the PLO went from a terrorist entity to Israel’s alleged peace partner.
And what a peace partner it was. Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, have waged a relentless low-level war against Israel, even paying pensions to the families of terrorists who murdered Jews.
Oslo was to be the first stage in a comprehensive peace process that never happened.
The Palestinian Authority, which won’t even sit at the negotiating table with Israel, has said it will graciously accept whatever territory Jerusalem surrenders. Jews whose families were in the land before 1948 will be allowed to stay in a future Palestinian state.
In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon under the leadership of Prime Minister Ehud Barak. It went into Lebanon during the 1982 civil war, liberating most of the nation from Palestinian militants, until — under international pressure — all that was left was a security zone in the south to forestall future attacks.
Finally, that buffer zone was surrendered, leaving Hezbollah in de facto control of Lebanon and betraying Israel’s Christian allies in the South Lebanon Army. The rockets coming from Lebanon today are a result of yet another monumental strategic blunder.
Then there was the crowning catastrophe, Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2000 under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. This included demolishing 21 towns and uprooting 8,000 Jewish settlers.
It didn’t take long for Hamas to come to power. The PLO wasn’t bloodthirsty enough for Gazans. If there are ever free elections, Hamas would control the West Bank, too.
Unlike the PLO, Hamas has never promised peace. The latest genocidal war follows 23 years of rocket attacks and terrorist incursions.
Thus, the road to the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust goes back almost a quarter century.
Islam will never make peace with those it calls infidels. It hasn’t since Muhammad’s conquest of Mecca in 629 C.E. Within 100 years of the Prophet’s death, his followers ruled an empire stretching from the Pyrenees to the Indus River — all conquered by the sword.
In his classic “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” Harvard historian Samuel P. Huntington said future conflicts would not be between nations but religions and ideologies.
Mr. Huntington wrote that whenever Muslim populations come in contact with infidels — Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists — conflict is inevitable.
“Islam’s borders are bloody, and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
Now the West is allowing mass migration from the Muslim world. Sweden has gone from the safest country in Europe to one of the most dangerous due to the influx. And the terrorists who committed unspeakable atrocities in Israel are infiltrating our borders.
The siege of Vienna, the Mughal Empire, 9/11 and the latest Hamas atrocities — it’s the same story.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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