More of the Same (when will it end?)
On one hand, Hizb’Allah rearms. Syria gets Russian missile systems so new even the Russian Army hasn’t received them for deployment. Hamas continues its pacification of the Gaza Strip, creating the path-of-no-return that American advisor Karl Rove so wanted to make, and failed, for his party.
On the other hand Israeli ministers continue to be put under criminal investigation for abuse of power, removing PLO terrorists from their wanted lists to appease the weak moderates in the West Bank, and continuing to pay a bare lip service in reining back Israeli fanatic ultra-nationalists, who get away with abuse and assault on Israeli soldiers and police at best, and foment insurrection within the ranks of the military at worst.
It’s true that the West has never learned how to truly deal with the Middle East (it’s much easier to work with a despot than a democracy in that part of the world). But Israel, with a population steeped in all the world’s cultures, has shown not to be the ‘light to the nations’ as it was charged in the bible, but yet another corrupt and in many cases morally bankrupt entity.
Perhaps. But Israel has not stooped to commit the evils proclaimed by many of its neighbors (and carried out by them). And Israeli’s as a people, have never stopped striving to embrace the idea that fixing the world is a core belief. Even if that requires overcoming the internal inertia that is modern Israel.