Naturally, the UN Security Council, which always stands at the ready to condemn Israel, responded to Turkey’s call with a first draft of a resolution attacking Israel for defending itself. As it happens, the draft resolution isn’t so bad, for a relentlessly anti-Israel organization (and I’m talking here about the UN, not the Obama administration). But the UN would be worthless if it weren’t the primary tool for Israel’s isolation from the rest of the world. (Giving Gaza free access to Iranian arms, or the West Bank a state, isn’t going to change that, no matter what this administration thinks.)
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The Turks, who had held down NATO’s southern flank and, through Ataturk’s modernism, were the model for what a Muslim state could be, is back to being what Muslim states usually are. It’s moved from a tactical alliance with Israel and knocking on the Gates of Brussels, to a strategic alliance with Iran and Russia, and calling up the battering rams to the gates of Jerusalem.
So much for moderate Islamism.
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Far from representing the failure of Zionism, as Peter Beinart’s column would have us believe, this weekend’s events should point out the failure of liberalism. The moral difference between Israel and its enemies has rarely been more clear. It’s been the left that has defined public education, college education, and most of the public debate in the west for 40 years. If liberals are turning against Israel, if the west is doing so, it’s because liberals have defined morality not as virtuous action, but as weakness.
