Tuesday, December 01, 2015

When Israeli experts pontificate

It is rather amusing (but not really) how US media and even universities clamor to hear the opinions of Israeli experts on matters Middle Eastern and terrorism (assuming rather comically that Israel has handled the matters rather well).  But notice that when Israelis vomit basic conventional wisdom which everyone else in DC is saying, even in the same words, it is treated as original pearl of wisdom: "Third, can ISIS be defeated without the successful waging of a “war of ideas”? ISIS has had remarkable success in inspiring young men and women from the Middle East and North Africa, Russia, Europe and the U.S. to join its ranks, whether as fighters or as functionaries in their Caliphate. This success cannot be reversed without engaging ISIS’s extremist ideology, debunking the efficacy of its Armageddon-type ethos, and demonstrating that it violates the letter and spirit of Islam."  Wow. I never read that on the opinion pages of NYT and WP.