Fitzgerald: How could anyone in his right mind not be on the side of Israel?

The Israelis, or a majority of them, know their true situation. It is their government, from which so many Israelis are now so obviously disaffected, that refuses to know. But that government is wrong. Soberly recognizing the permanent meaning, and menace, of Islam, and acting and planning accordingly, and helping or insisting that other countries, including the United States, recognize the real nature of the threat that Israel faces, is not a counsel of despair. Nor is helping those other countries, including the United States, to understand that the Jihad against Israel is a Lesser Jihad, one of many whose sum is the worldwide Jihad, a "struggle" by Muslims, using various instruments that go beyond, and are more effective, than terrorism, to remove all obstacles to the spread and then to the dominance of Islam. Everywhere Islam must triumph. Everywhere, eventually, Muslims must rule. It may take a century, or two. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it never comes to be. What matters is the fact of the promptings, that will not go away unless the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira either disappear, or are modified, or interpreted away, or are received as texts from which one may pick and choose. Until then, the immutable and uncreated Qur'an remains, the literal Word of God, outside of history.

Israel is not its only, not even its main, target. But for decades it has been the most-publicized target of Jihad, for the existence of an Infidel nation-state, smack in the middle of Dar al-Islam, and run by the despised Jews, is simply something that sends many Muslims into a fury. Some conceal that fury for the benefit of Western donors and diplomats, but that fury will always remain.

The Israelis -- or most of them -- now understand this. It is Haim Ramon, and Ehud Olmert, and the Livni lady, and David Landau of Ha'aretz, and the permanently preening leftists who do not understand it, for they all learn what they need to know about Israel from their "Palestinian" friends -- the ones whom it is de rigueur for a certain kind of Israeli leftist to possess, and to prefer to those difficult Jewish fellow citizens who seem so...so...unwilling to compromise. Their rigidity is so unlike the flexibility and openness of those very nice "Palestinian friends," doing their own version of Edward Said courting, say, this or that Jewish professor at Columbia, or the musician Daniel Barenboim.

Yes, Israel appeared to be the sole victim (for those who never let their gaze wander over to the subcontinent, to India) until recently, when the OPEC trillions and Muslim millions in Europe made much larger goals, once scarcely conceivable, now entirely conceivable. Before that, the reconquest of Israel was the one goal that got all the attention. That the Arabs seemed exercised only by Israel (with its implied corollary that if Israel were to be thrown to the wolves, all manner of things would be well) was merely an optical illusion.

If it is any consolation to Israel, it now can share that attention with Infidel peoples and polities everywhere.

Indeed, how could anyone in his right mind not be on the side of Israel?

How can those diplomats at the U.N., the ones from the quasi-civilized countries, stand to vote as they are told to? Why does not one of them simply resign, on the spot, in a fit of moral fury?

How can those who presume to make policy in the capitols of the Western world, including Washington, London and, especially Berlin, and in all the rest of Europe, presume to preach to Israel as to what that tiny country, under permanent siege, has a "right" to do, as to what constitutes a "proportional" response, as to what Israel simply "must" give up, after it has already, for the past half century, again and again given up in every negotiation and every treaty, all of which have been, and all of which will be, breached by the Muslims who take as their model the Treaty of Hudaibiyya?

No one has the moral right to lecture or hector Israel about anything. No one has the moral right to pressure it about anything, to belabor it about anything, to dare to condemn it for anything, as it fights, and will have permanently to fight, for its life.