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.
This is sold gold, even by Stein's high standards.
They are mortally afraid of the hoards of unassimilated immigrants, many of them Muslim, who have flooded their countries.
US noncitizens should never be allowed to buy a firearm...That's what citizenship is all about!!! It should be earned and cherished...Once you are a Citizen, unless you commit a felony, the government has no reason to monitor your purchase behavior under the Constitution...
I think you may be mistaking happygrl for happygal....? And if you come to Ireland any day soon your in for a bit of surprise
I believe his column is sometimes carried by the Chicago paper now, so he may be becoming better known over here.
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