The years 1948 and 1979 remain fateful years in modern Middle East history. The creation of Israel in 1948 and the birth of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979 introduced a new, unbalanced equation in the troubled region.
Arab monarchs and secular regimes were sidelined, and made largely irrelevant overnight. Cults, and terrorist groups, the Zionists and the Shia sect being chief among them, became the new dominant, historical forces.
The Zionists have wanted to conquer all the lands around them, while the Mullahs in Tehran have sought to export their Islamic revolution to the four corners of the region.
Both have seized opportunities such as the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to insert their will in regional countries and expand their influence. The consequences are playing out today in catastrophic ways.
Lost in all this is the Sunni voice. The Sunnis have not mustered the will or strength to present a collective and powerful response to Israel's belligerence. Their leaders are indifferent and do not have the appetite for war with a crazy nuclear state.
The British, Israelis, and Americans, who created the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and ISIS to mobilize Sunni anger in the region for their own geopolitical ends, know that the Sunni populations of the region can have a powerful influence. They have tried to coalesce and direct that influence, sometimes to great effect.
The Taliban, which is a creation of Pakistan, is the only Sunni terrorist group with national resources, but they are distant from Arab lands and too busy monopolizing power to fight a holy war.
Hamas itself can't be taken seriously in political and military terms since Israel itself was responsible for its founding. What are we to believe, that a slave can kill its master? Impossible.
So the Shia are the only opposition force in the region, and they are a minority sect whose grip on power in Iran remains tenuous at best. It is ruling by force alone. It does not have the popular legitimacy that's necessary to wage a long, bloody, and costly war.
Israel's leaders are also dealing with internal legitimacy questions. Netanyahu's political fate is dependent on endless war and easy victories. Israel as a nation is also losing international legitimacy unlike in the past because of Netanyahu's reckless behaviour.
Legitimacy can be quickly lost. It must be remembered that the big lie of the Holocaust serves as the foundational political bedrock of Israel's legitimacy and justifies the West's continued backing of its wars of aggression against its weaker neighbours.
Countless Israeli leaders have masterfully drawn from the myth of Jewish eternal victimhood while perpetuating a culture of endless guilt amongst Christian nations to secure any amount of arms, money, and political support at will.
That sense of victimhood, mixed with state terrorism, is a deadly combo. Israel's way of conducting warfare is by nature terroristic and cowardly because of its small size, its closed group mentality, and its vulnerability.
Terrorism and deception are powerful tools in the hands of religious cults, secret societies, gangs, and smaller nations. Such actors can't afford to fight with honour because they would lose. Israel is the best modern example of this age old truth.
Britain during WWII is another historical example, as it was clear early on in that war that fighting the militarily superior Germany in a straight up contest of arms would see the quick defeat of the small island nation.
In both cases, Britain and Israel had to draw in the most powerful nation of our age, the United States, whose population is by nature peaceful and has to be coerced to throw their support behind major wars.
All throughout the 1930s the British powerbrokers worked clandestinely in the U.S. mainstream press to denigrate and defame anti-war voices. Then, the Pearl Harbor attack, which was allowed to happen after many provocations against the Japanese by the FDR administration, cemented public opinion on the side of war.
Overnight the British were saved. An arrogant, warmongering, deceitful nation who had no business waging war against a much more powerful and honourable state in Germany was saved by the United States.
Ditto for Israel. It has no business waging all the illegal wars it does. Based on its natural limits, and size, Israel has punched well above its weight.
It should be commended for its resourcefulness, brutality, and trickery. It is Israel's enemies who should be shamed. Israel is only doing what it believes it can get away with, which is a lot at the moment. The erasure of Palestine, and the depopulation of Lebanon are on Israel's immediate agenda.
In their minds this is about national survival. In their minds they are saints, not killers.
No one goes to bed a monster. Netanyahu sees himself as a hero. And in his country how can he not be? He decapitated and humiliated the Shia, and turned Palestine to ashes. He might be the most honest politician in the world today because he promised war and blood to his people, and he's delivering.
His enemies have not.
If you embark on a moral and religious crusade, the ultimate aim of which is the political and military destruction of a foe, then fight it and be done with it, whatever fate may come. Dragging such a war on for decades only empowers the one who is more desperate, cunning, and ruthless. Crying about injustice, oppression, and genocide is pointless.
History records who won, not who cried the loudest.
