Posted on 04/13/2002 5:59:12 PM PDT by dighton
'THE whole world is demanding that Israel withdraws," said Kofi Annan in Madrid last week, standing alongside various panjandrums from the EU, UN, US and Russia. "I don't think the whole world, including the friends of the Israeli people and government, can be wrong."
Oh, I don't know. The "whole world" has a pretty good track record of being wrong, especially where Jews are concerned. Fifty million Frenchmen can be wrong, and never more so than when they're teamed with Chris Patten, Mary Robinson, the European Parliament (which has demanded sanctions against Israel), the German government (which has announced an arms embargo against Israel), the brand-new International Criminal Court (which - in its very first 24 hours! - started mulling the question of "Israeli war crimes"), the Norwegian Parliament (which had a visitor thrown out of the building for wearing a provocative Star of David on his lapel), never mind the members of Calgary's "Palestinian community" who marched through the streets carrying placards emblazoned "Death To The Jews", a timeless slogan but not hitherto a burning issue on the prairies.
The only question now is whether the US is a member of the Kofi set in good standing or whether it's a member mainly in the sense that Saudi Arabia is a member of the coalition against terror. A week ago, asked to define what Washington meant by Israeli withdrawal "without delay", Colin Powell replied that the Administration "does expect something to happen soon with respect to bringing this operation to some culminating point where you can start to see a movement in the other direction". Somehow I don't think that's what Kofi and Chris had in mind.
On the other hand, by midweek, with nothing happening to bring to culmination the point for starting to move in the other direction, it was General Powell who was in reverse: both terrorism and a "response to terrorism" (his phrase) had to stop, he said, as neither was getting us anywhere.
On the other other hand, by week's end, after Yasser had laid on the traditional incendiary Palestinian welcome, General Powell postponed his meeting with "Chairman" Arafat and gave him yet another "last chance" to denounce terrorism.
It was unclear at the time of writing whether this was his last "last chance". By the time you read this, he may have been given another "last chance", or, amazingly, it may turn out that that last "last chance" was, indeed, the final one.
Either way, the Chairman cannot denounce terrorism, not when Saudi television has just had a hugely successful charity telethon raising £37 million for the families of Palestinian "martyrs". King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah both chipped in. One Saudi Princess donated both her Rolls and her ox, a double jackpot sure to inspire any West Bank suicide bomber hoping to transform his relicts into a two-car family. Maybe they'll make it a weekly show: Who Wants To Be A Million Air Particles?
So General Powell will be flying home, his mission a failure in its stated goals and thus (say the Beltway Machiavels) a grand success in its unstated ones - to buy time, to allow Sharon to clean out the terrorist enclaves while stalling Syria from using Lebanon to broaden the war.
From Washington's point of view, the peace mission was necessary because of a scheduling conflict over scheduling conflicts: they'd booked the Middle East for a war with Iraq only to discover the joint being used for some other guys' war. In an ideal world, the US would like to restore peace in the Middle East in order to launch a massive conflagration there.
Conversely, the Iraqis and Saudis need to keep this war going in order to postpone the next one - hence, their generous subvention of the extensive infrastructure required to keep Palestinian schoolgirls loaded up with Semtex. The Arabs, ever since King Hussein sacked Sir John Glubb (the only general who ever won anything for 'em), only lose conventional wars. They advance in unconventional ways, the suicide bomber being merely the latest method. Araby has effectively designated the entire West Bank as one big suicide bomb to take out the Jews, and it's going so swimmingly that the last thing they want to do is go back to primitive weaponry like tanks.
Meanwhile, what have we learned from this last extraordinary month? Not much about the Middle East, but quite a lot about Europe. What happens when Palestinian civilians strap on plastic explosives and head for Israeli pizza parlours? Europe says Israeli checkpoints for Palestinians are "humiliating". Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances permit themselves to be used as transportation for bombs and explosives - and Europe attacks Israel for refusing them free movement.
Documents are found authorising Palestinian Authority funding for a suicide bombing on a young girl's bar mitzvah, signed by Arafat himself - and members of the Nobel committee publicly call for taking back the 1994 Peace Prize, from Shimon Peres. Synagogues are firebombed in France, Belgium and Finland - and the EU deplores the wanton destruction of property, in Ramallah.
"Ah, those Jews," an attractive, intelligent, sophisticated Parisienne sighed over dinner with me the other night. "They cause problems everywhere they are."
Actually, they don't. Of the 30 ongoing conflicts in the world today, the Muslims are involved in 28 of them. There are no Jews in Kashmir or the Sudan, so the Muslims make do with Hindus and Christians. What the Europeans call "Muslim-Jewish tensions" on the Continent do not involve Jewish gangs attacking mosques or beating up women in hejabs, only Muslim gangs attacking synagogues and stoning a bus of Jewish schoolchildren.
"No matter what is happening in the Middle East," said Lionel Jospin, "anti-Semitic acts are totally unacceptable" - a formulation which, even as it condemns the assaults, somehow manages to validate their motivation. For, as Messieurs Jospin, Chirac and Vedrine have assured us, "what is happening in the Middle East" is the fault of the famously "shitty little country".
France's leaders and their excitable Arab youth are, to that extent, on the same song sheet. Perhaps that's why they don't feel the need to expend undue effort investigating these incidents. The reason why there has been no similar epidemic in the US is because the relevant jurisdictions don't appear, at least implicitly, to license it.
This is not virulently anti-Jew, just the familiar European urge to appease. France has nearly five million Muslims. If, from one million Palestinians, Hamas and co can recruit enough to blow up a couple of dozen Israelis every 48 hours, how many recruits could they find in France from an unassimilated population five times the size?
The Europeans are scared of their Muslim populations, scared of what perceived slight might turn them from shooting up kosher butchers to shooting up targets of more, shall we say, concern to the general population. When the war with Iraq starts, we'll find out. No wonder Paris and Brussels are as keen to postpone it as Baghdad and Riyadh. The "whole world" is agreed that if anybody has to be blown up it might as well be the Israelis. Ah, those Jew troublemakers: why won't they just lie there and take it?
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.
Too bad the Eurotrash seem to pay his thinking no heed.
Well, that would require, uh, thinking, I guess. (But that's a knee-jerk response.)
What I cannot believe is how quickly anti-Jew/Israel thinking has gone so public. Scary. And the coalition between the "Palestinians" and the Left... scary.
And the rest? Scared.
The Canucks and the Euros have been invaded by the enemy, as we have. They think that their quickly hoisted white flags won't ever share the flames currently engulfing the Star of David and the Stars and Stripes at various venues around the globe. I do not think they're right.
The whole world is demanding that Israel just cease to exist and boy are they pissed that the Israelis just refuse to roll over and die.
[Ed Note: As the violence in Israel continues to escalate, it is hard to put things in perspective. The plans that are now being proposed by Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdullah are almost identical to the offer put on the table by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel, and yet no one has cared to remember this. The following article from the Jerusalem Post1 is an excellent summary of the current situation in the Middle East.]
* * *
An internationally recognized war is being fought against terrorism everywhere on earth, except in one place. Here, one rationale after another is found for "evenhandedness" while Israelis are murdered in a deliberately terrorist, unprovoked and totally unnecessary war. Once upon a time, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a good basis for a peace deal; it has been pushed down the memory hole. Now Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah needs merely to mutter a few nonbinding words to an American columnist and he becomes the prince of peace.
Here's how the BBC, which considers itself to be the world's most accurate news source, explains the offer: If Israel returns to the 1967 borders, the BBC says, all Arab states will offer it full diplomatic relations, the recognition of Israel's right to exist, and secure borders. But that's not all: The plan would also give Israel sovereignty over the Western Wall, a land swap between Israel and a Palestinian state, and the dropping of the demand for a Palestinian right of return. In short, we are inaccurately told that the entire Arab world, including Arafat, is now ready to accept the Barak plan (though the fact that Israel proposed something along these lines almost two years ago is not mentioned in this report or in other coverage).
Why, then, doesn't Israel grab this wonderful "opportunity"? The BBC gives three reasons: Because it rejects "giving up all the Golan Heights; a Palestinian political and administrative presence in Jerusalem, and dismantling of all Israeli settlements in Golan, West Bank and Gaza." It also suggests this is because Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is such an extremist.
In other words, all Israel's hesitations come from its greed to retain territory that doesn't belong to it. There's no mention of such concerns as a well-grounded disbelief in the actual generosity of the Saudi proposal; the suspicion that it is a public relations gesture to make Israel look like the bad guy and get Arafat out of his current corner; and, the fact that the proposal has no provision for a cease-fire. Once the upcoming Arab League meeting ends - after an Arafat speech accusing Israel of genocide and probably without endorsing the proposal in any but the most limited way - Arafat's forces will still be staging terrorist attacks while the whole world congratulates him on his new moderation. (Imagine Prince Abdullah offering to have the Arab League get the Palestinians to impose an immediate cease-fire: Sharon would be pushing Arafat onto the plane to attend the summit.) But even that isn't all.
The main Israeli concern after 18 months of terrorism and hatred against it is: After Israel makes concessions, will Arafat or the Arabs actually implement the Saudi plan and live in peace? Arafat himself tells us he cannot control the violence, so if he won't or can't take responsibility now, why should we believe that would change? The BBC is not worried about this, or about the possibility that some regimes might oppose the Saudi plan. "Iraq, Iran and Syria might be expected to be the main dissenters," it says, "but it is possible that these states might see the plan as a serious opportunity for a comprehensive and just regional agreement."
So now we know: Saddam Hussein is the moderate who wants a comprehensive agreement if he could only find it; Iran, contrary to daily statements by its leaders, seeks a just compromise and not Israel's extinction. According to this view, Sharon is the extremist, and Barak with his peace plan never existed at all. Reality has been recast with Abdullah playing the part of Barak and Sharon playing the part of Arafat. Given such distortions, it's hardly surprising that a moderate Palestinian reader recently wrote me a polite letter explaining the real problem: that Israelis are totally uninterested in Palestinian rights and aspirations.
This view is unfortunately typical of Palestinians, Arabs in general, and many people in the West - when the clear truth is that 80% of Israelis have been ready for a Palestinian state and a large majority would have accepted the Camp David or Clinton plans of 2000. Palestinian rights and complaints are presented and discussed every day in Israel's media, as well as in classrooms and conversations. You won't find an equivalent in the Arab media. Israel's real problems remain:
So why, in the face of this evidence, are so many in the West convinced that unilateral Israeli concessions will persuade the Arabs that Israel is sincere? Maybe, after eight years of Israeli effort and almost two years of Arab terrorism and incitement, Israelis first need convincing that the Arab side is sincere.
I doubt it was a surprise to Team Bush. They must have sat down on 9-11 and asked themselves, what is Saddam's game plan here? I don't think it was hard to figure out.
The Europeans are scared of their Muslim populations, scared of what perceived slight might turn them from shooting up kosher butchers to shooting up targets of more, shall we say, concern to the general population. When the war with Iraq starts, we'll find out.
That's really funny -- did you write all that?
I'm from Indiana, and it sounds we have a lot in common with Alberta!
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