My predictions for the Arab-Israel conflict in 2018

Today, we stand at the beginning of a new (secular) year, 2018. If you surf the internet, you might have already noticed how many pundits are making predictions for 2018. If such predictions catch your eye, you've come to right place. 

You should know just one thing. There are only two predictions here. But they're good ones. They'll actually come true during 2018.


My predictions begin with a fiction--an untrue, fictitious letter written fictitiously in the name of Israel's national intelligence agency, Mossad. 

The piece of fiction below comes from the satiric website, preoccuppiedterritory. It has no date. I retrieved it January 2, 2018. In any event, I believe it's less than 3 days old. 

I've edited the essay to fit my format. My 2018 predictions follow the essay:

"We Were Going To Undermine The Muslim World, But You’re Managing That By Yourselves"

By The Mossad

As part of our ongoing mission to keep Israel secure by clandestine means, we have long pursued strategies that might involve creating instability in enemy regimes, depending on the situation. But in recent decades our expertise has grown rusty, since we seldom need to lift a finger to undermine Muslim countries in our region. You do it so well on your own.

Once upon a time when the Jewish State’s existence was less secure and its enemies more confident, we had to develop strategies that called for much more drastic measures against neighbors who threatened to drive us into the Mediterranean. Sometimes that meant arming and training our enemies; sometimes that meant selling weapons to enemies of our enemy; sometimes it meant selling weapons to two warring enemies to keep them distracted with each other instead of shooting at us. But all that hasn’t been necessary since the 1990’s. 

It would be nice to take credit for fostering the long-term developments in the Arab-Muslim world that have led to the instability we see in our region, but let’s be honest: we’re good, but we’re not THAT good. We could never have engineered all the systemic failure, dysfunction, mistrust, ruthlessness, cynicism, fatalism, and despair found in today's Arab world. You did these things all by yourselves. Congratulations!

Our motto is, never underestimate an enemy. Our hostile neighbors have shown an immense capacity for certain accomplishments, and we must respect them for those achievements: dismal economic performance, rampant poverty and disease, civil unrest, a penchant for genocide, political repression, corruption, and devotion to an honor-shame culture that causes misery, not happiness. We had nothing to do with any of those "accomplishments". You fellas did that all on your own. 

Of course, nothing we can do will change your fundamental, existential need to blame someone else for your failings. Accepting that you have to fix your flaws would imply that you have flaws, and that would be a source of deep shame – and we know you couldn’t have that! It's far better to say your faults lie elsewhere, perhaps with the Jews--but definitely not with you. 

You just keep telling yourself that, and we’ll just keep sitting here, bored in our Tel Aviv headquarters, wondering if we’ll ever need to do anything to you that you’re not already doing to yourselves.

--

My first 2018 prediction: Israel's Arab Muslim enemies will remain chaotic, genocidal and dysfunctional. They will not change a thing. 

My second 2018 prediction: these Arab-Muslim Jew-haters will once again show the world how ruthless, murderous, corrupt and repressive they can be--towards their own people.