Arab Nationalism came up against what should have been an easy target in several wars and lost. Its leaders never entirely recovered from those defeats. Their dreams of uniting the region died when they were unable to defeat a single small country with an army that lacked the training and officers of the Jordanian or Egyptian forces. When the Arab Nationalists reconciled themselves to Israel, they lost the only thing that they had to offer their people besides economic failure.
The Islamists know all this and intend to succeed where the Arab Nationalist dictators failed. As with Rome, the pesky Jews have gone from being a nuisance to a humiliating obstacle to their bigger plans for the region.
Islamist imperialism has come to revolve around the old problem of destroying Israel. The ideology of Islamism says that only Islamic unity can allow the peoples of the Muslim world to tackle great challenges. To establish the Caliphate and build a regional empire, the Islamists must do what the Arab Nationalists could not do. They must destroy Israel. And if they cannot do that, their reign will end in humiliation and failure.
The Gates of Jerusalem are the new Gates of Vienna.
Originally published at Sultan Knish.
