Posted on 04/19/2002 7:01:18 AM PDT by iav2
It's time to snap out of Arab fantasy land
Mark Steyn - National Post
So what do you think of this Israeli "massacre" at the Jenin refugee camp?
In the British accounts of the alleged worst human-rights atrocity since, oh, the Dutch took charge at Srebrenica, you can't help noticing a curious sameness. All reports rely on the same couple of eyewitnesses -- "Kamal Anis, a labourer" (The Times), "A quiet, sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis" (The Independent), "Kamal Anis, 28" (The Daily Telegraph) -- and the same handful of victims -- "A man named only as Bashar once lived there" (The Telegraph), "the burned remains of a man, Bashar" (The Evening Standard), "Bashir died in agony" (The Times). You'd think with so many thousands massacred there'd be a bigger selection of victims and distraught loved ones, wouldn't you? But apparently not. I do hope Fleet Street's herd-like experts aren't falling for the old native spin machine yet again -- cf. "the mighty Pashtun warrior, humbler of empires"; "the brutal Afghan winter"; etc.
"All British officials tend to become pro-Arab, or, perhaps, more accurately anti-Jew," wrote Sir John Hope-Simpson in the 1920s wrapping up a stint in the British Mandate of Palestine. "Personally, I can quite well understand this trait. The helplessness of the fellah appeals to the British official. The offensive assertion of the Jewish immigrant is, on the other hand, repellent." Progressive humanitarianism, as much as old-school colonialism, prefers its clientele "helpless," and, despite Iranian weaponry and Iraqi money and the human sacrifice of its schoolchildren, the Palestinians have been masters at selling their "helplessness" to the West.
Odd, isn't it? The Americans are routinely accused of being (in Pat Buchanan's phrase) Israel's amen corner. But Washington is at least prepared to offer the odd, qualified criticism of Sharon. The rest of the world, by contrast, is happy to parrot Yasser's talking points without modifying a single semi-colon. In the last month, I've found as many Jew-haters on the Continent as in the Middle East, but the difference is that the Arabs are fierce in their hatred, no matter how contorted their arguments, while the Europeans are lazy, off-hand Jew-haters -- they don't need arguments, they're happy to let the Arabs supply the script. Thus, the extraordinary resolution this week by the UN Human Rights Commission which accuses Israel of many and varied human rights violations, makes no mention of suicide bombers, and endorses the movement for a Palestinian state by "all available means, including armed struggle" -- i.e., terrorism. The resolution could have been drafted by the Arab League or the PLO. Forty of the 53 nations on the Commission approved it, including six EU members: Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Only five countries could summon the will to vote against: Britain, Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic and Guatemala. (The U.S. is not a member of the HRC, having been kicked off by a coalition of Euro-Arab schemers.)
This is only the most extreme example of how the less sense the Arabs make the more the debate is framed in their terms. For all the tedious bleating of the Euroninnies, what Israel is doing is perfectly legal. Even if you sincerely believe that "Chairman" Arafat is entirely blameless when it comes to the suicide bombers, when a neighbouring jurisdiction is the base for hostile incursions, a sovereign state has the right of hot pursuit. Britain has certainly availed herself of this internationally recognized principle: In the 19th century, when the Fenians launched raids on Canada from upstate New York, the British thought nothing of infringing American sovereignty to hit back -- and Washington accepted they were entitled to do so. But the rights every other sovereign state takes for granted are denied to Israel. "The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews," wrote America's great longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer after the 1967 war. "Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem ... But everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab ... Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world." Thus, the massive population displacements in Europe at the end of the Second World War are forever, but those in Palestine a mere three years later must be corrected and reversed. On the Continent, losing wars comes with a territorial price: The Germans aren't going to be back in Danzig any time soon. But, in the Middle East, no matter how often the Arabs attack Israel and lose, their claims to their lost territory manage to be both inviolable but endlessly transferable.
So even the so-called "two-state solution" subscribes to an Arafatist view of the situation. Creating yet another fetid Arab dictatorship in the West Bank would be, technically, a "three-state solution" and, indeed, a second Palestinian state, Jordan, whose population has always been majority Palestinian. It was created in the original "two-state settlement" 80 years ago, when the British partitioned their new Mandate of Palestine, carving off the western three-quarters into a territory called "Transjordan" and keeping the surviving eastern quarter under the name "Palestine." They did this for two reasons: First, they needed to stop one of the Hashemite boys, Abdullah, from marching on Syria and the best they could come up with was to halt him in Amman and suggest he serve as interim governor; but secondly, Churchill, as Colonial Secretary, thought the fairest way to fulfill Britain's pledges to both Arabs and Jews during the Great War was by confining Zionists to a Jewish National Home west of the Jordan and creating a separate Arab entity in Palestine east of the Jordan. The only thing he got wrong was the names: If instead of inventing the designation "Transjordan," he'd just called the eastern territory "Palestine" and the west "Israel" (or "Judah"), the Arafatist claim would be a much tougher sell.
The Zionists have been trading "land for peace" ever since the Great War, and the result is they've got hardly any land and less peace than ever before. As early as 1921, Chaim Weizmann wrote to Churchill protesting the ever shrinking borders of the potential Jewish homeland. To the north, Britain had surrendered traditionally Palestinian land to France in fixing the Mandate's border with Lebanon and Syria and, by giving the eastern three-quarters to Abdullah, had removed the rich fields of Gilead, Moab and Edom. The 1947 UN Partition took more land -- a partition of the previous partition -- but the Zionists accepted it. In 1993, Oslo was the biggest gamble yet, the creation of a mini-fiefdom for their bloodiest enemy. The "Palestinian Authority" was an unlikely bet for a state but, from Arafat's point of view, it would make an ideal launch-point from which to kill Jews in the very heart of their tiny sliver of territory.
Other than that, what's the point? I'm sure the Middle East can always use another squalid corrupt dictatorship, but at the very least it ought to be a viable squalid corrupt dictatorship. An Arafatist squat on the West Bank and Gaza would be insufficient. If Israel is, to the French, a "shitty little country," this would be littler and shittier. Therefore, Arafat would seek to augment it with territory from either west or east, Israel or Jordan. The likelihood is that he'd be able to destabilize Jordan far more quickly than he could destroy Israel. If it's a choice between an Arafat sewer straddling the Jordan River or the Hashemites, I know which I'd prefer.
Israel should take what it needs of the West Bank for a buffer, round up every terrorist it can, and announce that the Jordanians are welcome to what's left. If King Abdullah doesn't want it and chooses to call in the UN blue helmets in perpetuity, so be it. But the last eight years should have taught Israel that it cannot live within its 1967 borders next to a thug statelet whose sole purpose is to liquidate it. The Arabs have succeeded in luring the West into their bizarro alternative universe, where land lost by a foolish king is mysteriously transformed into the personal property of a terrorist organization, where the "armed struggle" of wired schoolgirls is UN-approved, and where the "right to exist" is something to be negotiated. Fantasy land is fun, but we've encouraged the Arabs in their peculiar dementias for too long. It's time to get real.
Heh, a bit more respectful than our "Euroweenies", but still good!
Another Steyn masterpiece.
I happened to catch Ashleigh Banfield on pmsNBC the other night. She actually talked about the Israeli 'occupation' of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank without EVER mentioning that the wars in which these two pieces of land were acquired by Israel were BOTH begun by the Arabs! Never mentioned it ONCE! I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Why lets the FACTS get in the way of a good story!
I'm convinced that the Arabs are pushing for sovreignty for the the Palestinians so that when the Palestinian STATE attacks Israel and Israel responds, all the other Arab countries who have signed 'treaties' with the Palestinian state will then have the 'right' to come in and fight with Israel on the side of the Palesinians.
"The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews," wrote America's great longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer after the 1967 war. "Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem ... But everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab ... Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world."
Highly unlikely. The Arabs have shown time and again their willingness to try to destroy Israel with no provocation nor any "international" law. When they felt like it, they have attacked.
In 1967 and 1973 wars, after nearly getting wiped off the face of Arabia by the IDF, their tactics changed. They switched to using Goebells (sp?) type of propaganda to twist the world opinion as to what they are doing. They also started to use their advantage of barbarism over Israel's civility. This is what brings us here.
At this time, if the Arab nations had the stomach for war with Israel, we would be in the middle of it already. They are waiting for the kangaroo court of the UN to complete it's destabilization and disarming of Israel before they will finally commit their military.
As despicable as I find this, I have to agree that it is their only viable strategy in achieving their goal - the destruction of Israel. I am waiting with baited breath to see when the world will admit that the UN, EU, pan-Arabs are emperors with no clothes.
I find it shameful that many Italians and many Europeans have chosen as their standard-bearer the gentleman (or so it is polite to say) Arafat. This nonentity who thanks to the money of the Saudi Royal Family plays the Mussolini ad perpetuum and in his megalomania believes he will pass into History as the George Washington of Palestine. This ungrammatical wretch who when I interviewed him was unable even to put together a complete sentence, to make articulate conversation. So that to put it all together, write it, publish it, cost me a tremendous effort and I concluded that compared to him even Ghaddafi sounds like Leonardo da Vinci. This false warrior who always goes around in uniform like Pinochet, never putting on civilian garb, and yet despite this has never participated in a battle. War is something he sends, has always sent, others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent who playing the part of Head of State caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton’s mediation. No-no-I-want-Jerusalem-all-to-myself. This eternal liar who has a flash of sincerity only when (in private) he denies Israel’s right to exist, and who as I say in my book contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is, so that you can never trust him. Never! With him you will always wind up systematically betrayed. This eternal terrorist who knows only how to be a terrorist (while keeping himself safe) and who during the Seventies, that is when I interviewed him, even trained the terrorists of Baader-Meinhof. With them, children ten years of age. Poor children. (Now he trains them to become suicide bombers. A hundred baby suicide bombers are in the works: a hundred!). This weathercock who keeps his wife at Paris, served and revered like a queen, and keeps his people down in the shit. He takes them out of the shit only to send them to die, to kill and to die, like the eighteen year old girls who in order to earn equality with men have to strap on explosives and disintegrate with their victims. And yet many Italians love him, yes. Just like they loved Mussolini. And many other Europeans do the same.
No, she didn't put in any paragraph breaks
Yes, she was, simply great. Here's a link to her column, in case anyone wants to read it.
Takes me so long to post!
Islam Vs. The World
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: December 2, 2001;
Author: Alan CarubaCivilization Envy
Source: National Review Online; Published: September 28, 2001;
Author: Jonah GoldbergTerror's Homebase, All Over The Map -- Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
Source: Wall Street Journal-- Book Review; Published: | March 29, 2002;
Author: Adrian KaratnyckyThey Live to Die (Islam Martyrdom)
Source: Wall Street Journal; Published: April 7, 2002;
Author: Reuel Marc Gerecht20 Suppressed Facts About Israel, Islam
Source: Koenig's International News; Published: April 9, 2002;
Author: Jim BramlettHOROWITZ: A MIDDLE EAST HISTORY PRIMER
Source: News and Opinion.com; Published; April 10, 2002;
Author:David HorowitzArafat Must Go!
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: April 10, 2002;
Author: Alan CarubaNetanyahu speaks before the US SENATE
Source: http://netanyahu.org/netspeacinse.html; Published: April 10, 2002;
Author: Netanyahu address US Senate
Jordan doesn't want it. Israel would take it, but it doesn't want the population there. Exterminating them is not an option. Neither is shipping them to another country. Nobody wants them, and I'm sure not going to volunteer making them US citizens and bringing them here.
The only long term solution is to confer nationhood on them, with some sort of security relationship with Jordan and Egypt, so that they are demilitarized.
Nothing else will work. Steyn's solution only guarantees more of the same, until such time as the Palestinians get their hands on a WMD.
The Palestinians are a Frankenstein's monster created by the Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Saudis, etc. as a weapon of destruction against Israel. The only fair solution is to turn them back on to the people who created them in the first place. Distribute them amongst the 22 Arab Muslim countries that expelled 850,000 Jews.
I cannot believe that Israel offered these clowns 95% of everything they'd ever asked for and the clowns refused it. I mean, if I were living in that Jenin shithole right about now, that 95 percent would have to be starting to sound pretty good...
Forget the buffer, take the whole West Bank and deport the muslims.
I am soooo happy to see more and more articles like this!
“Why don’t we admit that he can neither lead, nor plan, nor take a single step that makes any difference except to him and his Oslo cronies who have benefitted materially from their people’s misery” Professor Edward Said, New Left Review.
And here's a weird one sent to me. Pokey's fave ;), Robert Fisk gave an interview - in America - expressing his distaste for Arafat:
Beyond Disappointment -The Middle East, according to Robert Fisk . For example:
...Question - So does Arafat now, for his own cynical reasons, encourage or support the suicide bombings inside Israel as the Israelis insist he does?The article is worth reading. It has other trenchant statements about Sharon and Arafat. It has fewer of his fantasy as fact items, though he pushes the Jenin massacre bit. And he only mildly pushes the Europeans as more knowledgable line.Answer - Arafat is a very immoral person, or maybe very amoral. A very cynical man. I remember when the Tal-al-Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut had to surrender to Christian forces in the very brutal Lebanese civil war. They were given permission to surrender with a cease-fire. But at the last moment, Arafat told his men to open fire on the Christian forces who were coming to accept the surrender. I think Arafat wanted more Palestinian "martyrs" in order to publicize the Palestinian position in the war. That was in 1976. Believe me that Arafat is not a changed man.
I think that if he ever actually sees a wounded child, he feels compassion like any other human being. But he's also a very cynical politician. And he knows that Sharon was elected to offer security to the Israelis. And Arafat knows that every suicide bombing, every killing, every death of a young Israeli, especially inside Israel, is proof that Sharon's promises are discredited.
On the one hand, he can condemn violence. He can be full of contrition. And in the basic human sense, he probably means it. But he also knows very well that every suicide bombing hits at the Sharon policy, and realizes how that helps him.
IMO it is clear that he knows his audience in America is less-sheeplike and more discerning about the Middle East than the sheep and apparatchiks in Europe whose bleats about superiority are self-delusions. It's funny, like the "what do they say in English, and what in Arabic" question, he plays a game like "what you say in Europe, and what you say in America".
If that would solve the problem, I'd be all for it.
In reality, all that would do is move the battle line a few miles east of where it is today, and create even more numbers of radical Palestinians than there are right now.
The only path to peace is a political settlement, one which Palestinian leaders endorse and embrace. There are unappeaseable Palestinians who will never give up their goal to eliminate Israel entirely. Those folks either have to be neutered or killed.
But displacing millions more Palestinians does not accomplish a thing.
But displacing millions more Palestinians does not accomplish a thing.
What if the "unappeasable Palestinians" themselves number in the "millions"? Do we have any idea how many Palestinians are willing to live peacefully in a two-state framework? It would be nice if the problem were the corrupt Arafat and his cronies plus a few thousand fanatical jihadists, but I'm not sure that's true.
Most Palestinians are not terrorists, even if they support them. Most are civilians who work to put food on the table. If their leaders told them that peace had been achieved, and the struggle was over, I'm sure most would be relieved.
Civilian populations can be swayed in their opinions by their leaders. The Germans weren't Nazis before Hitler, and after the war was over, they weren't Nazis, either. You can think of countless examples where a population quickly reversed its opinion on something like this.
Of course, this discussion is entirely moot until there is a Palestinian leader who will do something other than preach Jihad against Israel.
We need to see a coup in the Palestinian ranks that takes out Arafat. Israel and the US has to have plausible deniability in assisting it. It has to be clearly a Palestinian coup. I hope we're thinking along those lines.
Oh yeah! What about the Germans that were forced out of their Baltic territories? I don't see them packing bombs for Kaliningrad. Politics will not solve this problem . A total victory by Israel is what is needed. Elimination of the muslims from the West Bank will give Israel a border it can defend.
Agree!
It will be a glorious day when AraFat is dead! The world will be a much nicer place.
It is so amazing to consider the effect the Great British World Carvers had in the period ca 1918-1948. In Ireland, the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, the sub-continent --- all of those decisions on borders and new countries, some of them incredibly bone-headed, are still plaguing us today. We are still paying the penalty for European colonialism
No, it won't. Eventually, the Palestinians will get weapons that can be fired over any border Israel creates. That's a fact that cannot be ignored.
Fallaci has opened up a hornet's nest with this charge. She is undoubtedly referring to Greek Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem Hilarion Capucci. Even if he has lodgings in the Vatican (it would be strange if he did, but perhaps Rome has some accomodation with the Greek Catholic Church), the Roman Catholic Church can neither "permit" nor deny permission to him for whatever he would like to say or whatever he would like to do. He does not answer to the Roman Catholic Pontiff!
Fallaci must know this, otherwise she wouldn't have cloaked the charge by not naming Capucci. Meanwhile, her accusation has been picked up on Andrew Sullivan's website and other places, and as the tale gets told and retold, it is made to appear that a Roman Catholic Bishop is praising suicide bombers! This is unfair.
Rome has not handled the present crisis well. The statements out of the Vatican have been too credulous of the official Palestinian line. But that doesn't justify a treacherous attempt to make Rome responsible for the words of a clergyman who is not even Roman Catholic.
Yep.
Initially, that was my thought, too.
But, then, I got to thinking. Is the tragic post-colonial history of peoples in Africa and the Middle East simply a function of the way their borders were drawn?
With hindsight, how would one draw them today so that the tribal strife and tyrannical impulse would have been dampened?
I've since concluded that colonialism has precious little to do with the problem.
But some of the difficulties of the present time are directly traceable to the breakup of the British Empire, e.g., as Steyn notes, Churchill's lack of foresight in laying out the specifics of the Balfour Agreement. And there are other examples, most notably, in my view, the herding of the Muslims of the sub-continent into Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Brits, and others hanging out in the corridors of Versailles, played God. But they lacked His infallibility, I fear. We are still paying the cost of their miscalulations.
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