By Walid Shoebat
In Gaza in the 1980s, the Israel Defense Forces came up with what they thought was a brilliant idea and decided to groom Islamists as a counterweight to Fatah. All this experiment did was to cause the birth of what we know today as Hamas.
Hamas in turn demolished Fatah in a bloody military revolution and for years began to lob rockets on Israel to no end in sight.
This experiment busted the myth that the Jews are the smartest people on earth.
Today Israel backs the anti-Bashar Syrian rebels and the results are guaranteed to be like the results from the same experiment Israel did with Fatah, except this one would be a bigger catastrophe.
Why am I so sure that this will be the case?
It is because such experiments were carried out not just by Israel, but on a grand scale by the West. In every experiment from Iraq to Egypt to Libya, each and every result was catastrophic: Islamists end up trying to carve a government within a government and they argue that the Arab governments are not focusing on annihilating Israel.
The Americans and British ousted Saddam Hussein, and Iraq was turned into the battleground mess we see today. France pushed the UN Security Council to call for a military operation in Libya and we see the recent mess there as well.
As result, hundreds of thousands are dead and no one is being held accountable. All this while we watch a media frenzy these days picking on Donald Trump for making a comment about illegal Mexicans entering U.S. borders, instead of focusing on the wrecking of borders in the Middle East and allowing ISIS to enter our borders via Mexico.
Therefore, Israel must abandon whatever ties it develops with Syrian rebels and work with its Western allies to stabilize President Bashar al-Assad’s regime — instead of following the international herd mentality.
The herd mentality is what is driving everything these days from Trump-attacks to foreign policy making.
Therefore, what is best for Israel is to work with its Western allies to stabilize President Bashar al-Assad’s regime at any price, or Jerusalem will become the focus of a united Islamist front from Syria — instead of having a secular Syrian regime that tacitly recognizes Israel’s right to exist, does not crave death or aim to establish an Islamic caliphate.
It is not as if Israel is void of the frenzy of mobs with a Caliphate mentality. All one has to do is to visit the Temple Mount and listen to Friday sermons in the heart of Judea.
In reality, Israel has experienced years of a stable border with Syria and only until the war broke out there, not a single shot was ever fired from Syria. The aggression against Israel by Assad during the war was from the Lebanese border through Hezbollah, yet Israel was still always able to talk through mediators with Hezbollah, regardless that its fighters are bitter enemies.
So why should Israel get involved with the Syrian rebels when Hezbollah will remain busy killing Al-Qaeda and ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. Why would Israel, after it sees the unstable borders in Libya, Iraq and Syria, want a neighbor who is basically a border-wrecking ball as the goal of all Sunni Islamists is to wreck borders and remove all facades of secularism and Arab nationalism.
The situation today is much worse than previous years. While Israel is embroiled in its rivalry with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, the new enemy (ISIS) is rising and is much worse than the Syrian Baath regime.
They key for Israel in preventing threats against it is to prevent the fall of three small players that balance the two big players in the region, which are Turkey and Iran. Syria, one of the small players, and Egypt, a major player but still smaller than Turkey, are both obstacles to Turkey’s Islamist Ottoman dream. Then we have Saudi Arabia, the third small player, which has prevented Iran’s Islamist revolutionary expansion, as we see in Yemen. If Syria falls, Turkey will move in as a NATO force and will never move out, etching yet closer to the Golan Heights in Israel, right next door, and to the Jezreel Valley, aka, Megiddo, aka Armageddon. Must I say more? The Turkish government is already discussing having its military invade Syria!
The U.S. is also aiding the wrong sides. The wisdom from history at the time of Sykes-Picot, that when it comes to the war on the Islamic revolutionary mindset, has been to focus on aiding the tribal makeup of Arab nationalism, not Islamist revolutions like the US and Israel are currently doing, which is exactly the makeup of the Syrian rebel forces.
It can’t get any stupider than this.