Even the lesser irrationalities on the subject of Israel disturb. It is smaller in area than Sardinia or Wales, with only half the population of Mexico City, but its potency, like that of the allegedly world-conquering Jews themselves, is inflated to an inordinate degree. Conversely, the notion that Israel is presently engaged in ‘a fight for its very existence’ is an equally irrational assertion. With its formidable military arsenal, and armed forces which can easily outgun its local foes, it is not, or not yet, in such danger. But similarly irrational is Israel’s vow to ‘destroy Hezbollah’. The right arm of the advancing power of Iran, the so-called ‘Party of God’, cannot now be ‘destroyed’. ~David Selbourne, The Spectator

Parts of Mr. Selbourne’s article help recover some perspective on this conflict (other parts are less helpful), which is, from the perspective of geopolitical grand strategy, about very small potatoes.  Indeed, a great deal of grief and gnashing of teeth might be avoided if we all admitted just how practically irrelevant Israel’s wars are to most of the world.  Now, if they are your small potatoes you will take the conflict very seriously, so I can understand why the Israelis are prone to exaggerate the dangers to themselves and why they have every incentive to make their conflicts seem much more important to the rest of the world than they actually are.  What I don’t quite understand is why the rest of the world buys into it, whether one is “for” or “against” Israel.  There ought to be a very large camp all around the world that should be able to say about this conflict, and not only about this conflict, “Pity about the war you’re having, but it’s not really any of my business.” 

If you live in Haifa, talk of “existential threats” probably makes a lot more sense, but to most people outside of the war zone it comes off sounding like tawdry agitprop (which, in the mouths of more than a few commentators, is often all that it is), especially when the people whose existence seems imperilled are those civilians being bombed and driven from their homes in Lebanon.  I know, I know, I’m missing “the big picture” as seen with “moral clarity,” which makes displacing half a million people one of those unfortunate prices to be paid for somebody or other’s freedom.  Freedom isn’t free, after all, and “we” will make them pay for it–such seems to be the profound moral vision on display.   

Four times as many people died in Mumbai in one day at the hands of Lashkar-e-Taiba earlier this month as have perished in Israel since the beginning of Hizbullah’s attacks, and surely this was just as heinous an attack as those now being aimed at northern Israel, yet there is not an army of pundits running hither and yon declaring India’s “right to self-defense.”  Why?  Well, for starters, the Indian government has the good sense not to make a limited conflict into a general conflagration and has refrained from launching attacks against the bases they must know exist inside Pakistan, even though much the same justifications could be trotted out about “states within states” and Pakistan’s government being unable to enforce its sovereign authority over its own territory (Hamid Karzai would undoubtedly love to be able to use this rhetoric to strike at his government’s enemies in the Northwest of Pakistan).  It is also because New Delhi does not have a reliable corps of yes-men speaking on their behalf in the American press, constantly pumping the American people with slogans of civilisational solidarity and antiterrorist unity.  Because of these things, it is almost as if we recognise, when it comes to India, that there are some problems that cannot be solved with simple recourse to the use of force, and that unleashing the brunt of a war machine on the country from which these attacks are launched will accomplish next to nothing in the long term.  It is almost as if we recognise that a train bombing cannot be allowed to throw an entire region into chaos, from which radicals and warmongers are the most likely to benefit.     

What really mystifies me is why people who live on the other side of the planet believe they have some profound stake in what would normally be considered a minor border dispute that is nonetheless threatening to erupt into full-scale war.  (Don’t even get me started on people who say “we are all Israelis now,” which is mindless pablum–were we all Indians three weeks ago?)  I read this morning about a demonstration and counter-demonstration, one in favour of Israel, the other in favour of Lebanon and Palestine, taking place in Skokie, of all places, and my response was much the same as it was when I saw similar protests here at the University at the beginning of the second intifada: why are Americans so strongly taking sides in a conflict that has nothing to do with them?  This is a question that keeps coming up when I read things offered up by the buffoonish neo-Jacobin “Right” (yes, that is a legitimate and meaningful category!) and the lunatic FrontPageMag.  Of course, for those who think our nation has universal significance and a universal mission, everything has something to do with America and everything becomes our business–all the more reason to repudiate and reject shallow universalism and the cheap sentimentality that usually goes along with it.