Jordan will return its ambassador to Israel. The envoy was recalled from the Jewish state late last year over tension regarding the Temple Mount. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Many Middle Eastern countries – Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others – are rich in oil. Yet their citizens live poor and backward lives. Despotic rulers terrorize their people, and try to deflect criticism of their abhorrent behavior onto Israel.

Since the fall of the USSR, radical Islam has been the world’s major force opposing reason. Anti-Zionism has always been a central element in this ideology. Israel is a small country, but it is viewed by fanatics as the most powerful evil in the world. The Palestinians are seen as the most persecuted of victims. When there was a Soviet Union, a de facto Marxist-Islamic alliance existed, united by hatred of Israel and fear of the West, with its wealth and its freedom. This coalition was inherently illogical, yet, inexplicably, it survived the war between the USSR and Afghanistan, the anti-religious policies of the Soviet Union, and the anti-Communism of Saudi Arabia.

Islamic orthodoxy is not the same thing as radical Islam. Islam came into being 1,400 years ago, long before the rebirth of the State of Israel. For many centuries, Islam was more flexible and tolerant than Christianity. It was partly the creation of Israel that introduced a new rigidity.

Israel is considered such an offense that anti-Zionism has dominated the world of Islam for half a century. Demagogues remain in power, fighting bloody wars against each other and endangering the world. Women are persecuted. Young people plan to die in a holy war instead of looking forward to life. Reason and self-interest are abandoned, and nothing remains but obscurantism.

There would have been an independent Palestine long ago were it not for anti-Zionism. Palestinian independence, now as before, can be achieved only with the Israelis, not against them. The destruction of Israel is more important to fanatics than the liberty of the Palestinian Arabs.

A great opportunity was offered to the world on November 29, 1947. The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181, dividing Palestine into six areas: three of them having a Jewish majority, the other three with an Arab majority. The partition resolution, had it been accepted by both sides, would have created a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine.

Representatives of the 600,000 Jews then living in Palestine accepted partition. The six Arab states in the UN at that time – Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen – rejected the resolution and declared war.

The world lost too, and the Islamic world lost most of all. It lost its art, its grace, its science, its creativity, and its humanity.