Israel is America’s best hope for fighting Islamist extremism

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Israel is America’s best hope for fighting Islamist extremism
Flag of Israel, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Given the rise and persistent threat of terrorism, America’s primary interest—and the West’s interest more generally—in the Middle East should be defeating Islamic extremism.

Recent history has proven that monetary support and armed occupation are ineffective methods for curbing the Middle East’s blood thirsty extremists, perhaps the most prominent example being America’s involvement with post-Hussein Iraq.

Despite more than eight years of military occupation, support, and $1 trillion in aid, the United States’ support of the Maliki government ended with its reversion to a despotic regime. No amount of America’s hawkish accountability or charitable bargaining with Iraq’s leader could have prevented the tyrannical consolidation of the country’s central government at the hands of Maliki, a man motivated by extremist sympathies, as was clear from his past involvement with the violent Dawa party. The failed attempt at sustained peace was not the result of poorly organized political structure or even the lack of national unity. The failure was in the deformed affections of a man, the result of a failed moral education. Unfortunately, such a failed moral education is not uncommon in the Middle East.

Islamist regimes disseminate anti-Semitic, hate-filled propaganda and are hostile not only to Israel but to international trade — because of the potential exposure to Western culture — and democracy more generally. During Hillsdale’s recent trip to Israel, Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist who has met with leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, shared with students how inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are convinced by Hamas’ propaganda that Jews train rats to eat Arabs and Muslims. Such propaganda instills only fear and hostility and stifles the voice of reason.

If there is any hope in providing long term change in the extremist-ridden Middle East, a deeper change must occur in the hearts and minds of the people who inhabit the region and are governed by Islamist regimes. To counteract the character deformation Islamic extremist propaganda causes, moral and political re-education is needed.

Effectively molding hearts and minds depends on both cultural influences (fashion, fads, and media) and education (political, religious, and moral).

Yet, the United States, without occupying territories in the Middle East, cannot re-educate people and combat the areas of Middle Eastern culture that are infected by the propagandists’ lies. Additionally, given the ineffective attempts at providing monetary or military support like it did for Iraq, what is America left to do? America can support the only truly democratic people and commercial power in the Middle East: Israel.

Because of its stable democratic government and free market economy, Israel is arguably the most significant nation in the Middle Eastern theater when it comes to bringing an end to Islamic extremism. Israel’s democracy gives the state the resources to educate, and therefore shape, people to democratic equality, which leads to a practice of and respect for individual freedom.

Israel’s economy supplements this political education. It exposes people living under Islamist regimes to different ways of life, tempering people with strong religious convictions with a respect for trading partners with different convictions. As a result, the Israeli socio-political climate is one that softens mores and gives rise to a jealousy for liberty.

As Montesquieu and Tocqueville both noted, commerce and political freedom are unstoppable forces. Should Israel succeed in the political education of its people and maintain a strong free market, it is only a matter of time before these people of softened mores, inclined to the political freedoms of democracy and the economic benefits of free trade, spread to the rest of the Middle East.

Insofar as America, and the rest of the West, want to see the end of Islamic extremism both at home and abroad, and insofar as sustained social change in the Middle East can only come about through educational methods and cultural change, Israel — the only Middle Eastern country which, by virtue of being the only stable democratic state and burgeoning center of international trade, possesses the political, moral, and cultural resources with which to effectively combat extremism — must be supported.

 

Mr. Eckert is a senior studying philosophy.