The current military engagement between Israel and Hezbollah is not just a war of two peoples, it is a war of two ideologies–Zionism and Islamic Fundamentalism.  Zionism is the ideology that originated from the desire to create a homeland for the Jews.  Zionism's founding is traditionally credited to Theodore Herzl toward the end of the 19th-century.  Zionism at its core, is the heart and soul of what it means to be Jewish and an Israeli.  Islamic Fundamentalism, however, is a radicalized perversion of mainstream Islam that seeks to reconstruct Islam's supreme government the Khalifa or Caliphate.  The Khalifa existed during the Golden Age of Islam during the Middle and High Middle Ages.  The Islamic Khalifa stretched from the Caucus Mountains in Central Asia across the Mahgreb of Northern Africa to the Pyrenee Mountains of Iberia and across the Hellespont into the Balkan Penninsula.  Today, the influence of Islam remains in much of these lands and even stretches into Southeast Asia including Indonesia.  Here is a map of the Islamic World:On the one hand, Zionism is struggling to maintain the tiny nation of Israel (a nation roughly the size of New Jersey), and Islamic Fundamentalism is trying to exert its influence throughout the Muslim World and beyond which already includes nearly 1.2 billion people and a third of the world's landmass.  The disproportionality of this conflict geographically illustrates the dire seriousness facing the world today if the Islamic Fundamentalists are not checked.  The world's oil supply and strategic waterways all will be controlled by radical Muslim elements if nothing is done to moderate the movement away from its rampant bellicosity.  To date, only the United States, Great Britain, and tiny Israel have any serious intentions of combatting the spread of this hate inspired contagion.    Radical Islamic Fundamentalism is fueled only by hate--hatred of non Muslims, moderate secular leadership, and Western capitalist culture.  For Islamic Fundamentalists, the postmodern Western world is anathema to their world view as it is an ideology that is not too different from what was practiced a millennia ago.  To them, what Osama bin Laden, Sheik Nasrallah, al-Zawahiri, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are preaching today is no different than what Amr ibn al-As, Abu Bakr,  Suleiman the Magnificiant, and Mehmet II espoused hundreds and hundreds of years ago.  Radical Islam has a long memory.  The arguments of the distant past still hold true today.  Unfortunately the lingering hatred does as well.  Herein lies the great downfall of Islam, that is it is stuck in the past and refuses to assimilate into a modern world.  While the rest of the world presses on into new uncharted territory, the Islamic World is left further and further behind and more alienated.  For example, while the Israelis hope to build a united Middle East similar to the European Union, its neighbors are still fighting ancient battles trying to recapture the glory of a distant memory.  The end result is the Muslims of the Middle East remain in abject poverty and slaves of authoritarian regimes.As the IDF pushes ever deeper into Lebanon, the hopes of pulling the Muslim World out of its sad plight is diminishing.  With every Israeli misplaced bomb that kills innocent civilians, the greater the intensity the Muslim hatred will become for the Israelis.  As tensions mount and the fighting escalates, America's dream of bringing democracy to nations like Iraq fades.  In fact, American officials are grumbling that Iraq may be on the verge of a civil war because of the fighting in Lebanon.  Hezbollah, once a marginalized terror proxy militia of Iran, is now quickly becoming the front line heroes in the great struggle against Israel and the United States.  Even though Israel is significantly degrading Hezbollah militarily, they are at the same time giving Hezbollah the political status in Lebanon that it otherwise would never have had.  So in this respect, Hezbollah may actually be winning as the Lebanese people are increasingly looking to Hezbollah as their defenders.  The consequences of this new political dynamic may come back to haunt Israel down the road.  If there wasn't a true Axis of Evil, there is now, and the links in the chain start in Beirut and end in Tehran.  What we may be witnessing is the opening shots of the Third World War.