Only Israel, Not the West, Grants Civilization Hope of Survival

St. Elian was a young doctor originally from Homs, in Syria, who was killed in 284 C.E. by his father, a Roman legionnaire, for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. His bones were preserved in a monastery in Qaryatayn. The Islamist bulldozers of IS razed it to the ground and scattered the bones of the Christian saint.

The image is reminiscent of another digger who in 1931, under the orders of Stalin, razed the Church of the Saviour. On the ruins of this beautiful church the largest pool of the Soviet Union was then built.

"All forms of collective violence have a religious dimension" Roger Scruton, the most influential English philosopher, professor at St. Andrews University, a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature tells me in our conversation. "Christians are vulnerable and ISIS will go on with their decimation and will not stop until the West militarily attacks the Islamic State. The West is in retreat from the world, has lost all the spiritual and cultural values on which Europe was founded. Otherwise, facing these reports of Christians killed and churches destroyed, the West would immediately intervene against ISIS. But it will be punished, even by its own European multiculturalism".

Feminists and those who have defended the 'minorities' are silent on the return of the sexual slavery for Yazidi girls.
A few hours after this conversation, a Muslim tried to kill a good many Westerners on a train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris.

According with Scruton, the fault lies in the culture of repudiation. "The Christians of the East are the scapegoat of our weakness in this existential moment. There is a deep sense of guilt, but also the elimination of war from our public and political imagination. Muslims, instead, want to fight for something and are eliminating in their passage entire cities, cultures, innocent people. Feminists and those who have defended the 'minorities' are silent on the return of the sexual slavery for Yazidi girls. The fate of Christians in the Middle East is important for us Westerners. We must not turn our backs on these communities since their fate, in the long run, it will also be our destiny".

But the West is letting Islamic forces destroy people and civilizations. Who in the West would be capable of the sacrifice of Khaled Asaad, the archaeologist of Unesco's jewel, Palmyra, beheaded by ISIS for refusing to tell them where he had hidden its treasures?

Barack Obama only cares about LGBT causes and is closing his eyes and big mouth on the killing of Christians and other minorities (he has already abandoned the Israeli Jews under the Iranian atomic umbrella). Europe is living as if it is the last generation there ever will be, inspired only by hedonism, science and a horrible cult of the present. A few days ago, Le Figaro, a French newspaper, published an interview between Alain Finkielkraut and Michel Houellebecq, the most important philosopher and writer in France. It is an amazing piece, shedding light on our tragic times.

Finkielkraut says: "God is gone, and getting Him back is beyond our control. 'Where there was God, is today's melancholy' said Gershom Sholem."

Answers Houellebecq: "On that, Alain, I totally disagree with you. Only those who believe in eternal life survive. Religion always wins in the end - if only for demographic reasons".

They are both right, Finkielkraut and Houellebecq, and they both explain why only Israel and its people, not the West, are the ultimate hope of civilization. Only Israel still uses war and military force for good reasons, and only in Israel you have that mix of vibrant modernity and ancient spirit which give reasons for survival.

Ask not only the ordinary Jews who live and fight for Eretz Israel. Ask the Lebanese Marronite "collaborator" with Israel who until the withdrawal in 2000 fought Islamists and now lives in Israel. Ask the Druze serving in the military. Ask the Arab Christians who fight for recruitment in the IDF and don't want to be called "Arab". Ask the loyal Bedouins, the Circassians, the Bahais ... For all of them, Israel is really a light unto the nations. As it should be for all of us.