However they want to address the issue, most people are horrified at the refugee crisis now besetting Europe, with its scenes of chaos, conflict, and desperation. Yet in Israel, at least one high official sees in it not horror, but hope. As Rania Khalek has reported :

“Dore Gold, director general of the Israeli foreign ministry, expressed optimism that the refugee influx will shift Europe to the right, making it more sympathetic to Israel’s ‘security’ justification for its ongoing colonization of Palestine.

‘Israel always faced the problem in the past that its national security perspective was completely out of sync with how Europeans were viewing the emergence of the European community and the borderless world that was emerging,’ the American-born hardliner told The Jerusalem Post.

‘In the European models that existed 25 or 30 years ago, it is kind of difficult to hear an Israeli argument. But now things may be beginning to change a little,’ posited Gold.

‘The European perspective is beginning to sound a little bit more like Israel’s perspective on security issues, compared to what it was in the past.’”

This is hardly the first time a top Israeli politician reveled in the great misfortune of an “ally,” hoping it will engender tighter identification with Israel. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, The New York Times reported the following :

“Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ‘It’s very good.’ Then he edited himself: ‘Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.’ He predicted that the attack would ‘strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.’”

Sharing Israel’s perspective seems to have a self-reinforcing quality. The US response to the 9/11 attacks that Netanyahu welcomed — 14 years of widespread, non-stop war and intervention in the Muslim world — is what caused the European refugee crisis that Dore Gold welcomes today.

(Note that throughout this essay, by “Israel” I mean the government and not its Jewish subjects. Any anti-Semites reading this looking for support for their bigotry can go jump in a lake.)

Like Israel (and often through Israel), the US has long projected colonialism and militarism upon countless Muslims, whether through direct force, proxy wars, clandestine subversion, or puppet dictators.

Like Israel, the US suffered terroristic blowback as a consequence.

Like Israel, the US responded with massive, indiscriminate violence and conquest, compounding the original problem of colonialist militarism, and leading to further blowback.

European governments have participated in that violence, and now they are also partaking in the blowback as waves of war refugees wash up on their shores.

As a result, scenes are now playing out in Europe very similar to everyday life in “Greater Israel” (Israel proper plus the Occupied Territories in Palestine): crowds of unarmed Muslim men, women, and children being chased, beaten, rounded up, herded, penned, and cage-fed like animals.

It is a vicious cycle and a cycle of viciousness. The more we adopt Israel’s perspective, the more we adopt its policies. The more we adopt its policies, the more we adopt its problems. The more we adopt its problems, the more we adopt its perspective. And around we go.