In the Middle East, the Future Remains Unpredictable

Henry Srebrnik. [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Twenty years ago, who could have imagined that Israel would be in more danger today than at any time in its 64-year history?

By 1992, the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe had all imploded, and the USSR had itself dissolved into 15 countries. Israel’s ally, the United States, remained the world’s only superpower.

The Soviet Union had been an implacable enemy of the Jewish state, arming and supporting the Arab countries in their wars against Israel from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Now it had given way to a much weaker, and far less ideological, Russia, a country itself in deep trouble and less concerned with Middle Eastern issues.

Many of the new east European governments – Poland being a prime example – became friendly towards Israel.

Another former ideological enemy, China, had dropped its reflexive pro-Arab policies and also moved towards more amicable relations with Jerusalem.

Yet today, Israel faces ideological hostility in many quarters in the western world, accused of being an “apartheid state,”while its borders are under threat from rocket attacks by Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the southwest.

Most ominously, a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, whose Shi’ite theocracy replaced the benign government of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, makes no secret of its intentions to wipe Israel off the map.

What has happened?

With hindsight, we can now see what a pivotal time the late 1970s were. They changed the very “zeitgeist” in global affairs.

On Oct. 15, 1978, Karol Józef Cardinal Wojtyla, archbishop of Krakow, was elected the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. As Pope John Paul II, he was an inspiration to dissidents throughout the Communist bloc and he was instrumental in ending Communist rule in his native Poland and eventually in all of eastern Europe.

A year later, on Dec. 24, 1979, the Kremlin made the fatal mistake of invading Afghanistan, to prop up a pro-Communist regime. By the time the war ended in May of 1988, almost 15,000 Soviet troops had been killed. Dissatisfaction with the conflict on the part of ordinary Russians helped the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev come to power in 1985, and by 1991 the entire Soviet system had collapsed.

While the years 1978-79 were the beginning of the end for the decaying Communist regimes in Europe, they also ushered in the era of Islamist militancy.

In Iran the Shah, unable to withstand the tide of opposition to his rule, left the country on January 16, 1979. Two weeks later Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini returned from exile in France to Tehran, to an enthusiastic welcome.

In November 1979, a constitution for the new Islamic Republic was adopted and Khomeini became the Supreme Leader of the country. Iran would henceforth become arguably the fiercest opponent of Israel.

Inspired by the Iranian revolution, Hezbollah was formed in southern Lebanon in 1982 and has served as an Iranian proxy since then. Hamas was created in 1987 and has established itself as the undisputed ruler of Gaza since 2007.

While the two movements on Israel’s doorstep have inflicted significant damage over the past three decades, Iran remains the far greater danger, of course.

The threat of Communism is gone, but now extremist Islamist forces have placed Israel in great jeopardy. It turns out that, as far as Israel is concerned, Ayatollah Khomeini was a more dangerous figure in the 20th century than was Vladimir Lenin and his successors.