“Reality,” wrote noted author Robert Ringer, “isn’t the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are.” Reality is a powerful leveler. Even the strongest of imaginations fade in the face of reality.

Nations can too.

Witness Israel. For the past 15 years, the Jewish state has maintained a strict, disastrous policy of ignoring reality, preferring instead to pin its safety (and existence) on the ethereal: wishes, appearances and promises.

That policy is currently on full display.

Last Thursday, suspicions about Israel’s September 6 attack on a facility in northeastern Syria were confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials, who released details to Congress proving the target was a nuclear reactor—capable of producing plutonium—constructed with assistance from North Korea.

Buried amid the hoopla was an important and widely neglected consideration: To what extent was Iran involved in the Syrian nuclear project? We should all know by now that where there’s rogue nuclear activity, there’s Iran. The Telegraph’s Con Coughlin discussed this hard reality last Friday (emphasis mine throughout):

Syria’s experimentation with nuclear proliferation has more to do with its strategic alliance with Tehran than any pretensions the Assad regime might entertain about becoming a nuclear superpower. In response to the West’s increasing pressure on Iran over its uranium enrichment program, Tehran has stepped up its military cooperation with Damascus, and has signed a mutual defense pact. That has resulted in the Iranians promising to provide the Syrians with their Shahab-3 ballistic missile system.

Iran’s fingerprints were all over the Syrian nuclear project. According to Western security experts, many of the North Korean nuclear experts that were filmed working on the Syrian reactor were also frequent visitors to Iran’s top-secret atomic facilities.

Iran and Syria are the Siamese twins of the terrorist world. The fact that Syria was prepared to assume the tremendous risk of colluding with Iran on its nuclear program is a reality Israel ignores at its peril!

But ignore it appears to be just what the nation’s leaders are doing. Shockingly, as details about Syria’s illicit nuclear project emerged last week, the biggest news emanating from Israel was that the Olmert government is secretly negotiating a peace agreement with Syria that would include an Israeli withdrawal from the strategically crucial Golan Heights!

The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick noted the absurdity of Olmert’s conduct:

Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is often described as a weak fool who enjoys hanging out with murderers like Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to prove his manliness. Assad may be foolish, but he certainly knows his enemy well enough to play the Israeli elites like a virtuoso violinist.The day before cia Director Michael Hayden informed Congress of the details of Israel’s September 6 raid in Syria, Assad began deluging the Arab airwaves with declarations of his earnest efforts to convince Israel to give him the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace agreement. Olmert, for his part, didn’t deny Assad’s claims, and so seemed to accept them.

Last September, Israel was so alarmed by its neighbor’s nuclear ambitions that it sent fighter jets to bomb Syria’s reactor. Five months later, the same government is trying to formulate a peace plan with … Syria!

Seeking peace with Syria is a fantasy. Syria is a terrorist-sponsoring nation that lives in Iran’s pocket. It finances multiple terrorist groups, is home to Palestinian terrorist leaders, and funnels weapons to Hezbollah. Everything about Syria’s actions bespeaks a nation bent on eliminating Israel.

Do Israeli leaders even remotely believe Syria is genuinely seeking peace?

“The ongoing peace negotiations between Israel have reached a critical phase,” reported Stratfor. “Our first clue that these were not simply talks for the sake of talks came when the negotiations broke into the public sphere a little more than a week ago. The lack of denials followed by a public acknowledgment by both the Israeli and Syrian leaderships demonstrated that something serious was going on” (April 30). Although the talks may yet break down, the fact that Israel is entertaining them suggests a complete ignorance of reality.

This policy is developing quite a history.

It was formed in the Oslo Accords in 1993, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave up Israeli land for a promise from Yasser Arafat that the Palestinians would recognize Israel’s right to exist. This agreement, founded on Jewish hopes and Arab promises, defied reality. The reality was that beyond Yasser Arafat’s peaceful platitudes and sinister smile beat the unrepentant heart of a bona fide terrorist bent on annihilating Israel. Considered the “father of modern terrorism,” Arafat had a bloodstained résumé of direct and indirect involvement in literally hundreds of bombings, hijackings and assassinations. And, in spite of Israel’s great hopes and “believe the best” attitude, he only lengthened that résumé as leader of the plo, barely lifting a finger to fulfill his Oslo pledge. On the contrary, he bolstered Palestinian terrorism.

Oslo failed because it ignored the very real character of Yasser Arafat and his Arab sympathizers.

Nevertheless, after Rabin was assassinated in 1996, successive Israeli leaders maintained the policy of ignoring reality in pursuit of peace.

In January 1997, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, although he had won the election on an anti-Oslo platform, gave up 80 percent of Hebron. In October 1998, he signed his death warrant as prime minister by agreeing to withdraw from the West Bank. Enter Ehud Barak.

Barak was a full-fledged adherent to the policy of ignoring reality. In 2000, despite seven years of failed negotiations during which Palestinian terrorism multiplied and intensified, Barak and U.S. President Bill Clinton came together at Camp David to present Arafat with a plan that would see Israel give up most Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, much of the Old City, and allow Arab “custodianship” of the Temple Mount. Even before Camp David, Barak had pulled Israeli troops out of Israel’s “security zone” in southern Lebanon.

What was the Palestinians’ response to the litany of withdrawal offers? They declared a second intifada. And in summer 2006, Hezbollah expressed its gratitude by waging war from southern Lebanon.

In December 2000, Barak was replaced by Israeli military hero Ariel Sharon, the most right-wing leader yet—a realist who, cognizant of the abysmal failure of previous withdrawals, would refuse to concede further territory. Sharon lived up to expectations for a while. But when Arafat died in November 2004 and was replaced by Mahmoud Abbas, perceived by many as a “moderate” capable of resuscitating the peace process, Israeli imagination trumped reality again. Sharon unilaterally withdrew Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank in return for peace.

Once again, the Palestinians expressed their gratitude by lobbing Kassam rockets on Israeli towns from their newly acquired land in Gaza—a very real problem that is still blasting Israelis today, literally.

Then came Ehud Olmert, a man prepared to go to extreme lengths—dividing Jerusalem, ceding the West Bank and apparently even withdrawing from the Golan—to satisfy dreams of peace with the Palestinians and his Islamist neighbors. Sadly but not surprisingly, Olmert’s vivid imagination is about to be smashed on the rocks of reality!

Notice what Dr. Samir Taqi, Syria’s envoy in the current peace talks, said on Tuesday: “It is naive to think Syria would behave foolishly and abandon its strategic alliances with Iran and Hezbollah, which are not limited solely to the Israeli-Arab conflict but also touch on topical geopolitical issues. These strategic associations are for the long term.” That’s reality. We have forecast the possibility of a fracturing in the Syria-Iran alliance, but the notion that Syria would break ties with Iran in order to make peace with Israel is simply unhinged from reality.

The reality is the Jewish state is encompassed by hate-filled enemies whose ultimate goal is to drown Israelis in the Mediterranean and establish an Islamic outpost in Jerusalem.

Perhaps it’s understandable why so many Jews prefer fantasies to reality. First, reality for the Jews is overwhelmingly depressing. They are hated and despised, and have few friends. Even America, their staunchest ally, is beginning to distance itself. The Jewish state increasingly looks like a bleeding, stumbling deer surrounded by wolves. Thus many Jews concoct dreams of peace in an effort to create a much-needed sense of hope. What a terribly sad state to be in!

But it needn’t be this way. Behind the current reality of Israel’s existence is a much larger, incredibly more hope-filled, exciting and positive reality. That reality puts everything in perspective, and gives the Jewish state—even as it suffers today—terrific meaning and purpose. You can learn more about the larger reality by reading Jerusalem in Prophecy.

Second, broadly speaking, rejecting reality is a pitfall of human nature practiced by all people. Each one of us finds it difficult to confront our problems, our sins, our weaknesses and, yes, enemies seeking our destruction. We find it easier to ignore reality—oftentimes by burying ourselves in material things—than to confront it. But the fact remains: Anyone who practices a policy of ignoring reality will find his sins and trials, those things that impinge on his happiness, stability, joy and quality of life, only get worse.

If you’re prepared to confront the realities in your life, you should read Repentance Toward God and Mystery of the Ages. These books will help you to see how ultimately hope-filled reality truly is!