Saving Israel

Victor Davis Hanson is a mensch, about as sharp as they come. His latest Townhall column is, "Can Israel Survive?" Here are his concluding paragraphs:

The Arab Middle East damns Israel for not granting a "right of return" into Israel to Palestinians who have not lived there in nearly 70 years. But it keeps embarrassed silence about the more than half-million Jews whom Arab dictatorships much later ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and sent back into Israel. On cue, the Palestinian ambassador to the United States again brags that there will be no Jews allowed in his newly envisioned, and American subsidized, Palestinian state -- a boast with eerie historical parallels.

By now we know both what will start and deter yet another conflict in the Middle East. In the past, wars broke out when the Arab states thought they could win them and stopped when they conceded they could not.

But now a new array of factors -- ever more Islamist enemies of Israel such as Turkey and Iran, ever more likelihood of frontline Arab Islamist governments, ever more fear of Islamic terrorism, ever more unabashed anti-Semitism, ever more petrodollars flowing into the Middle East, ever more chance of nuclear Islamist states, and ever more indifference by Europe and the United States -- has probably convinced Israel's enemies that finally they can win what they could not in 1947, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006.

So brace yourself. The next war against Israel is no longer a matter of if, only when. And it will be far more deadly than any we've witnessed in quite some time.

Also at Townhall is the indication that, as vacuous as Obama's speech yesterday to the UN was, at least there's still a smidgen of dignity left in his administration because our delegation to the UN walked out during Ahmadinejad's diatribe before the UN General Assembly. Good for them!

Unlike Obama, however, I hold out no hope for peace. "Peace is hard work," the President said at the UN, and it's true. But only if both sides are willing to do the work. And right now, the enemies of Israel aren't willing.