{"id":6783,"date":"2006-07-16T16:05:52","date_gmt":"2006-07-16T16:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-middle-east-an-overview.html"},"modified":"2006-07-16T16:05:52","modified_gmt":"2006-07-16T16:05:52","slug":"the-middle-east-an-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-middle-east-an-overview.html","title":{"rendered":"The Middle East: an overview"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Papist gets us started.<\/a><\/p>\n

Powerline discusses a David Horowitz column:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

David Horowitz explains<\/span><\/strong><\/a> why the current war in the Middle East is a "moment of truth."<\/span><\/strong><\/a> The truths Horowitz cites, which won’t surprise Power Line readers, are these: <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

(1) the impossibility of a Palestinian state and the necessity of a civilized occupying force in a region that is populated by a people who have been terminally brainwashed into an ideology of hate, which makes their self-government a crime waiting to happen; <\/p>\n

\n
\n

(2) the treachery of certain world leaders (e.g., Chirac and Putin) who are lining up on the side of the Islamic terrorists; and<\/p>\n

(3) the central role of Iran in the attack on Israel, which further demonstrates the sincerity of its stated intention to obliterate Israel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

Horowitz suggests that Israel’s best option is to strike Iran now. I agree. With Iran well on its way to becoming a nuclear power, Israel will never be stronger in relation to Iran than it is today. And, quite apart from the perfectly valid concept of a preemptive strike, Iran’s central role in the current war justifies direct retaliation. <\/p>\n

It may well be the case that Israel cannot substantially set back Iran’s nuclear program with one set of strikes (which is why the U.S. should join in, but that’s not going to happen). Nonetheless, any degree of set-back would send the right signal and would constitute a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Links are for discussion purposes. Different views and all that. Discussion will be cut off at some point, so be prepared. If it gets nasty, what I’ll do is not just close comments but click "no comments" so that all comments will disappear. So don’t waste your efforts by doing anything but discussing issues)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Papist gets us started. Powerline discusses a David Horowitz column: David Horowitz explains why the current war in the Middle East is a "moment of truth." The truths Horowitz cites, which won’t surprise Power Line readers, are these: (1) the impossibility of a Palestinian state and the necessity of a civilized occupying force…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Middle East: an overview - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-middle-east-an-overview.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Middle East: an overview - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The American Papist gets us started. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}