Kicking the Global Oil Habit

A friend asked me a difficult question last week: Why do Israelis appear not to realize that kicking the global oil habit is a Zionist issue? This blind spot seems particularly unfathomable after a month-long war in which the enemy, as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times aptly noted last week, was financed entirely by petrodollars: Not only did Iranian oil pay for Hezbollah's arms and training; it is also financing the $12,000 cash grants that Hezbollah is now giving Lebanese war victims - an enormous sum by Lebanese standards, which will do much to ensure that many Lebanese, far from repudiating Hezbollah for provoking the destruction, will instead laud it for underwriting the recovery.

But the problem goes far beyond Hezbollah. Oil revenues finance virtually every physical threat that Israel faces, from Palestinian suicide bombers (Teheran sends money to all the Palestinian terror groups) to Syrian missiles to Iran's nuclear program.