Israel’s success as a state has been made possible by Arab threats

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Israel’s success as a state has been made possible by Arab threats, Edward Luttwak says:

There are certain levels of violence that are so high that they’re damaging, and there are also levels that are so low they are damaging. There is an optimum level of the Arab threat. I would say for about nine days of the 1973 war, the level of violence was much too high. Even when Israelis were successful, the level of violence was destroying the tissue of the state. Most of the time, the violence is positive.

Lenin taught, “Power is mass multiplied by cohesion.” Arab violence generates Jewish cohesion. Cohesion turns mass into power. Israel has had very small mass, very high cohesion. If only the Palestinians understood that, they would have attacked the Jews with flowers.

Comments

  1. Jehu says:

    If I were an evil overlord of the Palestinians, here’s what I’d do.

    Shut down the violence almost entirely — at least the organized stuff. Instead just maintained an elevated unorganized level of criminality relative to the Jews. This allows low level ethnic cleansing of areas and disruption of affordable family formation for Jews. Work on maintaining and increasing your birthrates.

    Take power through demographic hegemony. Don’t give the Israeli Jews any obvious excuses to defend themselves against this threat. As your electoral power grows, demand more and more ‘affirmative action’ from the Jews and further disrupt their affordable family formation.

  2. Baduin says:

    Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. [I fear Greeks, even bearing gifts.]

  3. Isegoria says:

    The demographic destiny of Israel seems to be falling into Arab-Muslim hands, as the Jewish population is reproducing at a much lower rate than the Arab-Muslim population. The influx from the former Soviet republics pushed things back a few years, but things could get interesting as Israel’s democracy loses its clear Jewish majority.

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