It's time to snap out of Arab fantasy land {Steyn}

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.

But displacing millions more Palestinians does not accomplish a thing.

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.

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.

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

Fallaci: I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them “martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party.”

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.

"...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."

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.

I agree quite completely that the present troubles around the world cannot all be laid at the feet of European colonialism. If my statement implied as much, it's only because it was inartfully written. Most of them, as you say, are attributable to the failings of human condition in general and to the "tyrannical impulse" that seems to be so pronounced in the developing world.

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.

"The Brits, and others hanging out in the corridors of Versailles, played God. But they lacked His infallibility, I fear."

Well put. One wonders if they actually sought this role, as opposed to merely accepting it as among the responsibilities that came with empire. My guess is that some among them -- we would call them liberals today -- actually cherished the opportunity.

Which reminds me of a very incisive piece authored by a Northwestern student that appeared yesterday. Liberals Insult The Very People They Try To Help.

"And there are other examples, most notably, in my view, the herding of the Muslims of the sub-continent into Pakistan and Bangladesh."

Was this not a conscious decision on the part of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the so-called Father of Pakistan? My understanding is that Jinnah demanded a separate Muslim state, as opposed to the multi-cultural state that Gandhi and his followers preferred.

Once the partition was agreed to, a massive population transfer followed.

No problem, if the Arabs keep on, they'll get what they keep begging for, along with the Euroninnies:

Gen 15:18 At that time the LORD made a promise to Abram. He said, "I will give this land to your descendants. This is the land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.

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.

Its simple really. The Isrealis have obviously killed/kidknapped/incarcerated them all so they can't tell their heart-wrenching stories to the press. [/sarcasm].

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.

Expelling the muslims is the final solution. Israel will take out any government that poses a threat to its survival. Just ask Sadam Hussein what happened to his nuclear plants! I would expect the USA to do the same thing with any nation that attempted to destroy it. Perhaps Afghanistan is a good example for Israel of how to defeat an enemy. Israel should ignore Colin Powel and do as we do not as we say.

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