A perfect storm is brewing for Israel.
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. – Winston Churchill, in first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, May 13, 1940
A military defeat of Israel would mean the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state… Nor does this reflect a historical trauma…To lose a single war is to lose everything…
– Yigal Allon, then foreign minister, in Foreign Affairs, October 1976
This is not an article for those of weak stomach. It is not for those who wish to be reassured that, in the end, things will be “okay.” It offers no glimmer of optimism, nor any comforting prospect of some happy ending.
Indeed, if the Jews are to preserve their political sovereignty, all it bodes for the foreseeable future is one of Churchillian “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
A perfect storm brewing
A perfect storm is brewing for Israel. On virtually every front, ominous clouds are gathering, and should the menacing maelstroms they portend hit together, it is far from certain that the Jewish state will survive the destructiveness of their combined impact.
Since I began writing this Into the Fray series in mid- 2011, I have warned repeatedly of the perils of the government’s policy of counterproductive compromises and concessions. I cautioned that this “cavalcade of capitulation” will elicit nothing from our adversaries other than demands for more – and more far-reaching – concessions, as indeed it has.