Michael Yon is a man who has spent most of the last few years in the middle east in general and in Iraq in particular. No other single reporter has seen what is going on closer. He called in when the strategy in Iraq was failing and he called it when the strategy was working. His reporting has proved to be the most accurate out there and it isn’t even close.
Today he tackles Israel and Iran and wonders why people don’t see what is there:
It is amazing to me, as an American who travels the world on a near-constant basis, that there is so much confusion over who the terrorists are. Hamas is a terrorist organization that condones and facilitates suicide bombings and will kill every Jew on the planet if they have the chance. Meanwhile, Israel is an energetic democracy with a vibrant press. I could sit right here in Jerusalem and write bad things about Israel and Jews, and nothing would happen. Maybe I wouldn’t get invited somewhere or would be called an anti-Semite, but that would be it. Neither the Jews nor the Israelis would harm me, though they likely would write bad things about me. I came to Israel with no press accreditation and at the airport they knew that I was a writer. Yet they let me in and have allowed me to freely roam the country. Today I was in very close proximity to Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu talked about how, in this very hotel, Rehavam Ze’evi had been murdered just a few floors above our heads. The security seemed incredibly lax by American standards. Bernard Lewis and other extremely smart people were there.
Israel is a free country that abides by the rule of law. By contrast, if a writer were to go to Gaza or Iran, for instance, and start writing bad words, he might wind up on the news, dead. Israel allows Christians and Arab Muslims to worship freely, while Hamas wants to see us all at the bottom of the sea. Hamas, supported by Iran, is clear about their goals: they want to wipe out Israel completely, utterly, with finality. But it’s not just Israel that Hamas wants to kill; they want to kill all Jews everywhere. Complete genocide.
Read the whole thing. Via Glenn who answers the title of the piece with “because they don’t care what happens to Israel.” Given what I’ve seen over the last several weeks I am forced to agree.
Updates continue at Israellycool.
UPDATE: The Captain comments:
Yes, Europe has come a long way since the Holocaust, but unfortunately, it’s in a circle
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