How about George Jonas' column in the National Post a few days ago:
"Next item. As the anarchy continued in Gaza City this weekend, with gunmen from rival Palestinian factions burning down Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority offices yesterday, it illustrated again that turmoil in the Muslim world has little to do with Israel's policies, or even with Israel's existence. It would be in a state of upheaval if the Jewish state had never come into being.
Take a list of events: Egypt's use of poison gas against Yemen in the 1960s; the killing of tens of thousands of Syrian citizens by Assad the Elder; the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens by Saddam Hussein; the hundreds of thousands of Muslim casualties on both sides of the Iran-Iraqi war between 1980 and 1988; Saddam's invasion of neighbouring Kuwait; the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan; the global terrorism of al-Qaeda; the Indian-Pakistani nuclear standoff over Kashmir; the kidnappings and killings by Muslim guerrillas in the Philippines; the fratricidal murders in Algeria; the recent Muslim massacres in Indonesia; the current slaughter of black Christians by Arab Muslims in the Sudan -- all these and similar events over the last half century had nothing, nothing whatever, to do with Israel. There wasn't even an indirect connection. Presumably, these events would have occurred if no Jewish state had ever existed or even envisaged.
As several commentators pointed out over the years -- most recently the theoretical physicist Haim Harari -- it's the profound backwardness and dysfunctionality of the Arab/Muslim world, not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that causes such wars, invasions and massacres.
"The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 million," said Professor Harari in a speech in April, "larger than the U.S. and almost as large as the EU before its expansion. They have a land area larger than either the United States or all of Europe. These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium."
Backwardness on this scale spells disaster. There's no doubt that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict needs a just resolution, but there's equally no doubt that even the most equitable resolution won't calm the upheavals of the region. Contrary to the impression created by the media, it's not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but the problems inherent in Professor Harari's numbers that give rise to turmoil in Muslim regions.
There was a time when Arab/Muslim contributions to culture in science, medicine, architecture and even statecraft were second to none. Those days have vanished in the mists of history. When the Benelux region's population of fewer than 30 million people, with almost no natural resources, generates more wealth than the Arab League's 300 million people with ample natural resources, there's a systemic problem, or indeed a civilizational problem, that needs to be addressed. Until the civilization involved addresses it -- for no one else can -- Arab/Muslim regions in the 21st century won't contribute much to the world except suicide bombers."
