The SoapBoxers

Middle East Politics

July 8, 2009

Peter Rabbit - See all 10 of my articles

 As this is my first article for this wonderful site I will keep the writing general in order to introduce my point of view to all of our readers and open discussion.  Future articles will focus on specific events in the news.  First off, my views are not a commentary on any of the religions that are involved in the conflict in the Middle East as even though I believe the conflict does stem from religious differences it also stems from man’s ultimate love and struggle for power.

In my opinion the crisis in the Middle East has been miss managed for years by virtually any government that has gotten involved as some basic fundamental understanding of the situation is missing.  Perhaps understanding may even be a strong word as these players do understand what is going on but politically and in public they cannot admit to it.  Here in my mind are the basics which drive the conflict.

One, a majority of the conflict is driven by a minority of extremists who have been very effective in using the media to portray their views as a majority view.  Two, it has to be recognized that the minority from the Muslim side that is driving this extremist view has a very simple agenda which is to eliminate Israel from the face of the planet.  This is in their doctrines, it is their mission statement (loosely using that term) and it is the political agenda that gives them power in the region.  Three, the conflict has nothing to do with a few miles of land.

These three points demonstrate why a majority of the efforts to solve the Middle East feuds have failed.  In short, organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas are extremists groups that have legitimized themselves by creating a political agenda whose only mission it to eliminate Israel.  While this mission is masked by cries of freedom for the Palestinians and cries of Israeli oppression the truth is that these organizations need the conflict to continue in order to maintain political importance till they can achieve their mission.  That leads to the root cause of the failures of the past.  All the relevant players have concentrated on appeasement of these extremist organizations in order to sacrifice a little for the greater good of ending the conflict.  But if the conflict were to end in any peaceful scenario then the big losers would be these organizations.  Why?  Well for one they would fail in their mission to destroy Israel and two they would lose political relevance in their countries as the governments would be forced to get back to dealing with financial, educational and health issues within their countries which they do not want to do.

In closing, I believe the issues in the Middle East are not very well understood by most Americans and much of Europe is very anti conflict and therefore has taken on this idea of appeasement is the way to end all conflicts.  In fact, I believe this conflict is best ended with military action and just as the US discovered a while back that you don’t negotiate with terrorists the world has to recognize that this is the same policy you need to have with extremists groups such as Hamas.  Lastly, I think the media has done a huge disservice by miss reporting on the issues and the nature of the conflict and with this actually fueling the conflict.  I realize my views may be a bit extreme for the majority of our readers but I will try and demonstrate their merits in future more specific articles.

Enjoy,

Peter Rabbit

Carrots of Wisdom
Middle East, Politics