The decline and fall of Islamic Regimes over the last 100 years.
War can be frightening and cloud one’s judgment and perspective. It is often difficult to know whether to feel optimistic or pessimistic. During the back and forth of battles and campaigns, and missiles and jets flying around, it is often difficult to have the objectively correct perspectives of what’s happening and what will happen, as the clouds of war sink down and thicken.
It is at times like this that historical perspective is important. As one looks back at the last hundred years, one thing becomes clear when it comes to the military and political fortunes of bellicose Islamic countries. Starting from World War One which ended in 1918, one of the greatest losers of that war was the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It lost its empire as a result of joining the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Islamic Ottoman Turks who fancied themselves and their Sultan as the heads of the Islamic Caliphate were defeated and lost control of the MIddle East to Britain and France in 1917.
The Ottoman Empire lasted for just over six hundred years before it was dissolved in 1922. For over four hundred years, from 1516 to 1917 the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the Jewish homeland of Eretz Yisrael until it was taken over by the British and then finally returned to the Jews in 1947. So much for Islamic imperialism and its purported dreams of a caliphate.
With the rise and establishment of the modern state of Israel starting in 1948, all the attempts by all the Arab Islamic nations to destroy the newborn Jewish state failed. The same happened in the wars of 1956, 1967, 1973 and all the ongoing conflicts since then. All just saw the clear domino effect of Arab Islamic regimes and terrorist organizations failings to dent and destroy the Jewish state of Israel. Islamic Egypt., Islamic Jordan, Islamic Syria, Islamic Lebanon, Islamic Iraq, all lost to Israel in all the rounds of warfare between them and Israel.
One would think that the Islamic world would learn something from this and perhaps it can be said that Islamic Egypt and Islamic Jordan did learn their lesson. Egypt signed the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Jordan followed suit with a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
Not just Israel but other nations have inflicted mortal wounds and defeats upon Islamic countries. The 1971 war between India and Islamic Pakistan resulted in the defeat of Pakistan, the independence of eastern Pakistan and it becoming the country of Bangladesh.
The United States of America repelled the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Islamic Iraq. Following the Islamic attacks against America on September 11, 2001 America attacked and invaded the Islamic countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, eventually resulting in the downfall and the 2006 execution of Iraq’s long-time dictator Saddam Hussein, who had ruled Iraq for over thirty years, and defanging Iraq’s militarily.
The United States was also involved in the 2011 overthrow and demise of Islamic Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi who had been a thorn in the side of the West and Israel for over forty years.
In 2025 Bashar Assad the Syrian dictator of Islamic Syria was overthrown marking the end of the tyrannical rule of Syria by the Assad family for over fifty five years!
Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Morocco, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, who know that they cannot win when it comes to fighting Israel and the West, signed onto the Abraham Accords in 2020 making peace with Israel.
Let’s just recap those Islamic countries and terrorist organizations of losers: Ottoman Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc ad nauseum.
All this chaos and instability in the Middle East resulted in destabilization and instability with resultant waves of millions of Islamic refugees streaming across borders and fleeing to Europe and America, They brought with them not gratitude but visceral antisemitism and the continuation of their delusions of an Islamic international caliphate launching jihads in America and Western Europe that have still not been quelled.
Now comes Islamic Iran that since its inception in 1979, more than forty five years ago, has waged endless war against the Jewish state of Israel both indirectly through its proxies in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Yemen and wherever else its malicious influence is allowed to penetrate, and now directly with the onset of the Israel-Iran War of 2025.
All the evidence is in, and does not need repetition that Iran plans to build atomic weapons and then launch them against the Jewish state of Israel. Israel is 1,000% justified in battling this mortal existential danger to its very life and has finally taken the right corrective military countermeasures by attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran’s massive nuclear, military-industrial and economic infrastructure. America, under Donald Trump, has come in on the right side of history and justice.
Given the failures of all Islamic regimes, governments and empires over more than one hundred years of recent history, from Ottoman Turkey to Pakistan, from Egypt to Lebanon, from Libya to Syria, the writing is on the wall for Iran and its crazed Islamic leaders as the next Islamic domino destined to fall. May it happen speedily!
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim’s Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. From 2017-2024 he was a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York.
He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at izakrudomin@gmail.com
