Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an obvious but oft-denied truth about the Middle East: It ain’t all Israel’s fault. During a visit from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Israel’s prime minister put it this way:
“I think today everybody understands that the root cause of the instability in the Middle East and beyond has to do with the convulsion that is historic and cultural in nature — of which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely one of many, many such manifestations.”
Talk about an understatement. Here’s what we see around the region:
* In Egypt, hundreds have been killed in the few weeks since President Mohammed Morsi was deposed in a fight over whether Egypt’s future will be secular or Islamist.
* In Syria, tens of thousands have died in a civil war between dictator Bashar al-Assad and an opposition that includes everyone from democrats to Islamists.
* In Iraq, with America now gone, Sunni-Shiite violence — sparked by a resurgent Al Qaeda in Iraq — has flared anew. More than 1,000 were killed in July alone — the highest one-month total since 2008.
* And in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is out, succeeded by “elected” Hassan Rouhani. But the nation remains on the path to becoming a nuclear power, and still sows terrorism through proxies such as Hezbollah.
So with Prime Minister Netanyahu, we’d just say it’s a long time the world retired the myth that Israel is the root cause of all the misery and fighting in the Middle East.