From a modern historical perspective these are the phases of the Arab-Muslim aggression against the Jewish people as I have worked them out from the secondary sources.
The Phases of the Long War:Some would argue that it started with Muhammad in the seventh-century around the time that the Islamic head-chopping tradition really got fashionable on the Arabian peninsula.
Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres
Phase 2, November 1947 - April 1948: The Civil War in Palestine
Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare
Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War
Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort
Others would suggest that it was a modern racist response to the Jewish people daring to return to, and build upon, Jewish land despite the fact that it had already been conquered by the invading Muslims. In this view, the 1920s, with its Arab riots and politically grounded pogroms in places like Hebron and Jerusalem, would represent an initiation point of the contemporary conflict.
The significance of non-Jews and non-Israelis to the never-ending war is obviously important. It should not be determinative; that is, what non-Jews think about Jews in the Middle East should not determine Israeli policy, but it has a significant effect and this is particularly true of the United States.
In my opinion, as an American, the US has too much influence with Israel and I am happy to see Israel - particularly during the Age of Obama - expanding its relationships across the globe from Africa to China to Latin America so that hostile American presidents, like Barack Obama, have a diminished influence on the lives of Middle Eastern Jews.
This is particularly true given the fact that the next president of the United States, like the current one, is probably going to be a liberal Democrat and recent polling shows that, for the first time, liberal Democrats prefer the Palestinian-Arab aggressors against the Jews of the Middle East.
According to a Pew Research study, published on May 4 of this year, 40 percent of liberal Democrats favor the Arabs in their war against the Jews, while only 33 percent favor the Jews.
These statistics are fairly remarkable given that for a century the Democratic Party has had no more loyal constituency than American Jewry.
Depending upon the level of American Jewish masochism and instilled self-doubt, this may begin to change. It certainly did with me. I come out of the tradition of the Democratic Party as molded by Franklin Roosevelt and bequeathed to me, and my post-Vietnam Era friends, via the New Left and the hodge-podge of its interests.
These included, of course, the anti-war movement, feminism, environmentalism, Gay rights, ethnic rights, and so forth.
When I was coming up as a kid I was a liberal Democrat and most of my friends tended to be liberal Democrats. For most of us this was probably less out of a conscious decision then merely representing the political environment that we grew up in. Most American young people, in the 1970s and 1980s from my part of the country, New York and New England, tended toward the Left.
However, I did what little I could do in recent years to warn the Democratic Party that if they continue to hate on Israel and provide venues of support for anti-Semitic anti-Zionists they would erode the support of American Jews.
It does not require genius to untangle the obvious.
