There are times when large wars produces miniscule results, waged only to re-arrange pieces on a chessboard (War of the Spanish Succession) -- and times when small scuffles will make or break a civilization (The battle of Thermopylae).

This is what we are seeing now.

Recognizing such instances is no mean feat.

At the battle of Thermopylae, were the Spartans really morally preferable to the Persians? Both had Indo-European leadership, so this was not about race. The Persians were an autocratic tyranny with a semi-divine king, yet the Spartans were a totalitarian monstrosity.

So which side was right?

The key lay in the underlying Greek culture. While Sparta was a nightmare, the rest of Greece was not. Other Greek city-states had a concept of the worth of the individual, and a nascent sense of democracy. And even Sparta had a concept of rights for women.

By today’s false standards, Persia was a multicultural wonderland which included autonomously semi-empowered ethnicities of color, while Sparta was elitistly white. (Early 20th century racists thought the Spartans were close to the Nordic ideal. Argh!).

The Spartan character, if that be any test of race ... would indicate northern rather than Mediterranean antecedents. -- The Passing of the Great Race

Yet, it would be multicultural Persia which would descend into historical despotism while ancient Greece (hopelessly white) would invent Western civilization (and Orthodox civilization as well). Had one been a neutral observer in 480 B.C., it would have taken some discernment to comprehend that. Yet, even though Sparta was a flawed representative of Greece, overall the battle was a struggle between light and dark, good and evil, freedom and tyranny.

It is around this time that Western history becomes clear and starts to emerge from the mists of myth, thanks in no small part to those Greeks.

A century and a half after the battle of Thermopylae, Greek (Western) civilization would collide with the Jews, when Alexander the Great would capture Jerusalem. It was from this collision that world civilization (not merely Greek or Jewish) would begin.

Unlike the prior Assyrians who looted and carried away the ten northern tribes of Israel, and unlike the Babylonians who looted Jerusalem, the Greeks (Westerners) had an appreciation for high civilization. Indeed, they saw their mission as one of civilizing the barbarian, which sounds suspiciously colonialist.

Alexander was persuaded to spare the temple and supposedly made a token offering to the God of Israel.

Alexander is next taken into Jerusalem where he offers a sacrifice to God at the Temple, “according to the high-priest’s direction." -- When Alexander the Great came to Jerusalem

It is not clear if the story is apocryphal; but if true, it has to be remembered that Alexander was starting to see himself as a god also, and may only have been acting out of professional courtesy. He was starting to pick up the bad habits of the Eastern world.

What is also clear is that the Greeks were not like Israel’s other enemies (at least, not at first). The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians were genuinely deranged. The Egyptians worshiped frogs. The Assyrians and Babylonians were mindlessly violent.

The Hebrews were blindsided by a Greek culture that could compete with their own. The Greeks had higher math, music theory, impressive architecture, wonderful literature, great art, and the Olympics. It was easy to look down on the Egyptians, but one could not do that with the Greeks (Westerners).

The rabbis went nuts as Jewish youth started embracing Greek culture. They called this the crisis of Hellenization. [James Mitchener also described this phenomena in "The Source." -ed.]

Had the rabbis not panicked, they would have noticed that the influence ran both ways. Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, and were read by the Greeks.

The only real blot on this process was the madness of Antiochus IV (around 168 B.C.) who tried to wipe out Jewish culture, thus inspiring the Maccabean revolt. But the process of Hellenization (of the Jews) and Judaization (of the Greeks) was only temporarily halted.

Even the Maccabees, who had fought the Greeks, would go on to adopt Greek names and practices.

Many Greeks eventually adopted Judaism, or at least its morality. By the first century, a significant portion of the Greeks had become Jewish or Judeophilic. In the book of Acts, Paul the Apostle would bring the Gospel to both Jews and Greeks in the synagogues.

Act 18:4 And he [Paul] reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.

And it is no accident that the New Testament is written in Greek.

This meeting of European and Hebrew is the real beginning of world civilization.

I am going to state it bluntly, true world civilization begins when the West meets the Jews.

Other civilizations leave their imprint. Certainly the Chinese did, the Indians did. Technologies went back and forth. But none of these had major effects outside of their adjacent realms. Confucianism is primarily Chinese. Hinduism is almost limited to the Indian subcontinent.

Even Buddism (which is a sort of Reformed Hinduism) was dying out, until British archaeologists gave Buddism a second wind by restoring the Bodhi Tree.

Believed to be a descendant of the original Bodhi tree, the ficus religiosa currently on this spot was planted in 1881, by British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham, and then later restored and cared for by monks. -- The Bodhi Tree the Buddha Sat Under is Dead

And Islam was dying out, until the last Kaiser of what is now Germany, Wilhelm II, reinvigorated it.

The Kaiser’s embrace of Islam began with an 1889 visit to Turkey, ... A later visit to Jerusalem, … left the impressionable Kaiser declaring that, had he arrived agnostic, “I certainly would have turned Mahometan!” Soon the Kaiser was styling himself “Hajji Wilhelm”, the Protector of Muslims. -- Daily Express

Wilhelm just loved Islam.

So the British resurrected Buddism and the Germans resurrected Islam, both of which would have died out naturally, had they not been subsidized by the misapplication of Western tolerance.

What is clear is that Christianity (the religion of the West) did not need such subsidy. Christianity impelled Western civilization, indeed defined it. And with Christian civilization came liberty and representative government, etc. Science sprang from the idea that God was a God of order, not capricious as Islam and the pagans believed. Progress could be made, unlike the hopeless Karmic cycle that Hindus and Buddists believed in.

For God is not the author of confusion … 1 Cor 14:33

Without the West, Judaism would have been confined to the Holy Land. Without Christianity (an outgrowth of Judaism), the West would have remained barbaric, and civilization would not have moved much beyond that of early Rome. The Jews and the West needed each other.

Of course this could have been gleaned from the blessings given to Japheth and Shem in Genesis 9, where Japheth is given as the progenitor of the European whites, and Shem is the progenitor of the Semites, ultimately the Jews.

I am Christian. So I do not agree with everything in Judaism or Zionism. I do not subscribe to antisemitism, but neither do I believe that antisemitism is always and everywhere totally the fault of the Gentiles either. (The early church was persecuted by some Jews and this did not help). The West has produced its share of villains, and so have the Jews.

[W]e demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them.  -- Ze’ev Jabotinsky

But when the West and the Jews get in sync, the results are amazing. World civilization (not local) is chiefly the product of Europeans and Jews. This is politically incorrect but absolutely true. The vast majority of what is good and worth living for comes from either the West or the Jews -– or the admixture of both. This does not make Africans or Asians inferior, but it does mean that there is something in either the West or Israel that produces world-shaking truth: Truth that radiates globally not locally.

Contrary-wise, Islam is the product of a pedophilic, violent thug named Mohammed. It has nothing good to offer, but is actually destructive of whatever civilization it captures. V.S. Naipaul called it worse than colonialism and "the greatest calamity that befell [India]."

What is going on in the Mideast is much deeper than an ethnic, colonial, or national struggle. Should Israel fail, world civilization will fall accordingly.

This is why I support Israel, and why the West should continue to do so.

Let Hamas be destroyed.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License