The Islamist Entanglement and Israel

Scott Powell's most recent Islamist Entanglement lecture, his ninth, focused on Israel. I have to admit that as far as the historical details Scott mentioned I didn't expect to be particularly surprised and I wasn't. This is no fault of Scott's but simply due to the fact that I happened to have a reasonably good knowledge of Israeli history, particularly early Zionist history before the founding of the state. I was, for example, already aware of the mixed role that Britain played in this history, first promising everyone everything, and second, and necessarily, reneging on the promises, particularly with regard to Jewish immigration to Palestine before and during World War II. Nevertheless, even I benefitted from this lecture since it now puts the Arab-Israeli conflict in the its proper context, namely, the several century old Islamist Entanglement of the West with the Islamic Middle East. As Scott points out at the beginning of the lecture, once one understands the full context and thus the basic reason for the conflict, the absurdity of the constant attempts at an isolated resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict via land-for-peace schemes becomes quite evident. With the next lecture, the tenth, Scott will conclude the Islamist Entanglement series and, I expect, tie everything together.