It's not just about land

"For about the last half-century, globalization has bypassed most of the recalcitrant Middle East -- economically, socially and politically. So there are now few inventions and little science emanating from the Islamic world -- but a great deal of poverty, tyranny and violence. And rather than make the necessary structural changes that might end cultural impediments to progress and modernity -- such as tribalism, patriarchy, gender apartheid, polygamy, autocracy, statism and fundamentalism -- too many Middle Easterners have preferred to embrace the reactionary past and the cult of victimization.

Victimization turns out to be the real creed of the Middle East, uniting disparate Shi'ites, Sunnis, dictators, theocrats and terrorists. "They did it to us" offers an easy explanation of why Islamic states are now weak and offer little hope to millions of their poor, who, ironically, emigrate to the much pilloried West by the millions. U.S. aid, Israeli concessions, windfall petrol profits and, most of all, appeasement of radical Islamists can do nothing to alleviate these perceived grievances.

Instead, there will be no peace in the general Middle East until Iranians and Arabs have true constitutional government, free institutions, open markets and the rule of law. Without these reforms, they will continue to fail, seeking easy refuge in the shreds of mythical ancestral honor -- and this pathetic neurosis of blaming nearby Israel for the loss of it." Full commentary.

--- Victor Davis Hanson