Putting Middle East Violence in Perspective
The current violence in the Middle East depicts Israel as an aggressor who has responded in a “disproportionate” manner to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers during an ambush which also killed 8 other Israeli soldiers.
Somehow, Israel is shown as the “Goliath” and the Arabs as the “David” in these stories.
Let’s look at the facts to evaluate this situation.
Here are the populations of Middle Eastern countries, courtesy of the CIA World Fact Book.
Israel: 6,352,117
Lebanon: 3,874,050
OK, so far it looks like Israel is the bully.
What about the rest of the Arab nations?
Qatar: 885,359
Kuwait: 2,418,393
UAE: 2,602,713
Oman: 3,102,229
Jordan: 5,906,760
Syria: 18,881,361
Yemen: 21,456,188
Iraq: 26,783,383
Saudi Arabia: 27,019,731
Iran: 68,688,433
Egypt: 78,887,007
So, let’s add it up:
Israelis: 6,352,117
Arabs who want the Israelis dead: 260,505,607
Hmm. Who’s the David and who’s the Goliath now?
posted by The Phantom Republican @ 5:40 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Well that's just a really stupid post, not serving to enhance anyone's understanding of this whole crisis.
Israel would be David here were the whole Arab world attacking it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, aside from killing scores of innocent Lebanese, Israel is doing a brilliant job of energizing that very Goliath to wage war against them in the future.
So why do illogical, rash comments always seem so appealing to writers?
While it's true that numbers alone don't tell the whole story (I'm always telling the PR about "lies, damn lies, and statistics") the bottom line is that there ARE a heck of a lot of arabs who want Israel wiped off the map.
True, you can't say that, for example, the rantings of the Iranian puppet President represent the views of *everyone* in his country, but they *are* fairly representative of the thinking (if you can call it that) that goes on in that region.
The thing to keep in mind here is that Israel is only fighting to defend herself against constant aggression. While the "world community" stands idly by and demands more "understanding" from the part of the Israelis.
I think Israel "understands" that Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. want them dead, and they are *finally* responding to the threat as they should have a long time ago. To quote Michael Ledeen, "Faster, please".
Post a Comment
<< Home