Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Mark Steyn: This war tells us more about Europe than the Middle East
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 04/14/2002 | Mark Steyn

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.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Israel
KEYWORDS: marksteynlist
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100101-113 next last
To: happygrl
Keep the Muslims out of Eire. I know there are few there compared to rest of Europe.
61 posted on 04/13/2002 8:20:14 PM PDT by dennisw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Another fantastic analysis from Steyn!
62 posted on 04/13/2002 8:28:39 PM PDT by Amelia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: AnnaZ
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 Islamofascists already do in Jews and Christians with great relish, and are working on taking out greater numbers. Why would they even think twice about taking out secular heathens? Which is I'm sure how the Euros are viewed by Peaceful, Friendly Muslims (TM).

Europe's last try at appeasement didn't turn out so well; I don't see this one doing so, either.

63 posted on 04/13/2002 8:31:35 PM PDT by FreedomPoster
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: Amelia
Don't mean to sound like a charter member of Densa, but who is Mark Steyn? This essay was absolutely on the mark.
64 posted on 04/13/2002 8:33:07 PM PDT by gabby hayes
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 62 | View Replies]

To: 68skylark

That's really funny -- did you write all that?

Oh, goodness no. I only can come up with one knee-slapper at a time, if I'm lucky.

I got them from a friend in the Great White North. I lived in Alberta for five years. And, yes, a few minor changes and the list could apply to a whole mess of Central/Southern states.

;^)


65 posted on 04/13/2002 8:33:49 PM PDT by AnnaZ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]

To: dighton
Absolutely brilliant. I wish it could be printed in every American newspaper and read on every cable news station.
66 posted on 04/13/2002 8:44:39 PM PDT by Selara
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dighton
This is great. I wish everyone would read this.
67 posted on 04/13/2002 8:48:11 PM PDT by Letitring
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dighton
The whole world is demanding Israel to withdraw

I don't think the whole world including the friends of the Israeli people and government can be wrong

Interesting. God mentions many times how the whole world will be united against Israel in the last days. Many times. And these quotes are coming from the head of the "United Nations" Here's what God has to say

Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah. And it will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it. Zechariah 12:3

68 posted on 04/13/2002 8:58:32 PM PDT by Davea
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: gabby hayes
Steyn is a Canadian columnist who now lives in New Hampshire...he has quite a fan club here on FR. I'm sure if you'd ask Pokey78, you could be added to the Steyn ping list!
69 posted on 04/13/2002 9:00:22 PM PDT by Amelia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 64 | View Replies]

To: dighton
Super Steyn. The man hits the nail dead on again. Pick on the Jews, pick on Israel that's the popular sport now with the designated third world screwballs called the "palestinians" and their Arab Islamic backers. Europe will appease and stick its collective head in the sand as the 21st century nazis organize and brutalize Jews right under their friggen noses - again.
70 posted on 04/13/2002 9:02:10 PM PDT by Lent
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dighton
If I could only have one source for politcal and social commentary, hands down, it would be Steyn.
71 posted on 04/13/2002 9:07:53 PM PDT by j.havenfarm
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: gcruse; dighton
You know, the Marshall Plan proved the US had learned the lessons of WWII, by resurrecting the economies of those we defeated in war. Europe is still in the nineteenth century, I think. The stunning gulf between the Super Power and the rest of the civilized nations is not limited to military prowess.

Thank you for a brilliant footnote to a brilliant Steyn piece.

Even the Britain of which Winston Churchill; already 65 years of age before he became prime minister; spoke so eloquently hadn't existed since long before Lloyd George's time -- and the rest of Europe [Especially the seventh-century's-false-fuerher-meets-nineteenth-century-Prussia, death-and-destruction-worshipping, false-prophet-following, pagan-heathen, Nazis] already trailed far far behind Britain.

Such perceived recovery as any of them has seen since 1945 is purely material and is owed to US -- and to the more than Seventeen and a Half Trillion Dollars of Our Nation's confiscated wealth that has been squandered on them since then.

Politically, morally, intellectually and spiritually, Europe and Europeans are struggling to emulate the Soviets of 1917 -- and are failing even at that puny task!


72 posted on 04/13/2002 9:09:48 PM PDT by Brian Allen
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: uncbob
"Saddam tried a similar thing during the GULF WAR by hittting Israel with SCUDS. Israel agreed not to retaliate in order to save Bush's arab coalition and was rewarded with Saddam staying in power"

Atta boy BUSH-LEAGUE
73 posted on 04/13/2002 9:12:57 PM PDT by conserve-it
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies]

To: AnnaZ
Maybe you can get Mark Steyn on your show with Merc.....unspun?

Tell him how FR are his biggest fans!!!

74 posted on 04/13/2002 9:16:42 PM PDT by dennisw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 65 | View Replies]

To: dighton; Big Ern; Publius; Billthedrill; Jeff Head
WOW! Mark Steyn writer extraordinaire BUMP This guy is on a roll.
75 posted on 04/13/2002 9:29:01 PM PDT by Libertina
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dighton
Of the 30 ongoing conflicts in the world today, the Muslims are involved in 28 of them.

Actually, I strongly suspect that if you investigate the other two carefully enough, then somewhere beneath the surface you will discover a connection to Muslim oil, or to Muslim oil money, or to Muslim desired to acquire weapons.

76 posted on 04/13/2002 9:31:13 PM PDT by Stefan Stackhouse
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Brian Allen
Politically, morally, intellectually and spiritually, Europe
and Europeans are struggling to emulate the Soviets of
1917 -- and are failing even at that puny task!

They do try, though.  The EU is already arresting
merchants who dare use avoirsdupois weight
systems rather than metric as they charge for
the fruit they sell.  The EU looks to be a large
exercise is Central Planning, which as you point out,
the Soviets showed to be unworkable.

77 posted on 04/13/2002 9:31:21 PM PDT by gcruse
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 72 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

An EXCELLENT suggestion. Thank you.

Hope all is well!

Shalom!


78 posted on 04/13/2002 9:36:37 PM PDT by AnnaZ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 74 | View Replies]

To: AnnaZ
I have someone even better and easier to get....

Israeli reporter vents at CNN ^

79 posted on 04/13/2002 9:42:49 PM PDT by dennisw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 78 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

Oh my, oh my, ohmygoodness HOW DID I MISS THAT ONE BEFORE?????!!!!

That was so fabulous, it almost hurt!

Ah... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

 

(I'll have to file it with this other classic: Priceless Video of a Man Telling Peter Jennings "Nobody Likes You" on Live TV )


80 posted on 04/13/2002 9:59:50 PM PDT by AnnaZ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100101-113 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson