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A Middle East Wake-Up Call

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - After Hamas fanatics bent on murder slipped across the borders of Gaza, the cause of the Palestinians has suffered. I see no prospect that any Israeli government of any party would embrace the establishment of an independent Palestinian state now. The danger that Hamas-linked genocidaires would take over is too real to make the idea acceptable to Israelis. Israeli politicians must make the survival of Israel the supreme goal of their policies. Thanks to Hamas, the goal of Palestinian independence is further off than ever. In a horrible way, the descent of death-dealing paragliders into a peaceful music festival in Israel is an apt symbol of our times. The post-Cold War trance of the West, generally living as if utopia had already arrived, has left us mentally and morally disarmed. The revisionist powers that recognize no moral limits on their power as they seek to overturn the existing world system in an ocean of blood are descending onto our festival of folly like the hell-bound paragliders of Hamas. We must soberly and deliberately address a mortal danger to everything we hold dear - and we must at long last wake up. The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.
2023-10-13 00:00:00
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