The assumption that the west believes in nothing strongly enough to fight for it has fuelled conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere. Around the world, aggressors gain the advantage because they know that western democracies that say they’ll bring them to heel don’t actually mean it.
From Iran to North Korea, from China to the Palestinians, rogue states, terrorist regimes and other aggressors have been able to continue their murderous, expansionist activities because they think that, however much the west may threaten them, it won’t follow through.
So the Palestinians never believed the west meant it when it told them they had to accept the right of Israel to exist. Why should they have believed this, when until 2016 at least the west never stopped excusing, funding and incentivising their aggression?
The one exception to this has been US President Donald Trump, who called the Palestinians’ manipulative bluff. Told by the rest of the west that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would provoke the Arab world to violence, he ignored this and moved it anyway.
Not only was there no such uprising, but now the Palestinians have been marginalised by an Arab world that’s increasingly making its peace with Israel in a way that was previously unthinkable.
That’s largely due in turn to Trump taking the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions on the regime. He thus showed that, unlike former President Barack Obama or the British and the Europeans, when he said he intended to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons he really did mean it.
Now there are fears that President-elect Joe Biden may reactivate the Iran deal and start pumping money again into the regime’s nefarious activities; or he may once again incentivise the Palestinians’ agenda of destroying Israel; or he may allow China to walk all over him in its drive to dominate the west.
This is based on the fear that Biden may behave as the left always behave. They have no red lines of principle over stopping aggressors and protecting their victims. Instead, their doctrine of moral equivalence means that they make no such value judgments between aggressor and victim.
Their red line is instead merely to keep negotiations and peace processes going. The result is that they excuse and empower aggressors just to keep them from walking out of the talks.
So when they claim to be against tyranny, racism and oppression, the world’s tyrants, racists and oppressors know they don’t mean what they say.
Britain now faces more battles with the EU The free world faces more battles with Iran, China, Russia, Islamic jihadists and other lethal foes. The Jews face their interminable battle against those who wish to destroy them.
What the Brexit deal reminds us is that hypocrites are dismissed with contempt as paper tigers; and that for freedom, justice and democracy to win against aggression, injustice and tyranny, the leaders of the free world must not pay mere lip-service to defending the former but actually mean what they say. Jewish News Syndicate, Melanie Phillips.
