It's Our existence, Stupid

May 21st 2003 –Let’s just cut to the chase. Forget about avoiding provocation. Stop agonizing over land-for-peace deals that’ll never work. Quit thinking that the other side, whether they be Islamic fundamentalists going after the US, or Palestinians blowing up kids in Israel, is interested in any final deal that leaves us with breath in our bodies. They aren’t.

We need to get it through our heads that it’s our existence that’s the problem here.

We have to start taking the Bin-Ladens and the Arafats at their word. With Arafat it’s not the false message he plies us with in his broken, stuttering English. It’s his words in Arabic, to his foaming-at-the-mouth followers, that broadcast his real intentions. In those speeches, he repeatedly refers to homicide bombers as “martyrs”; declares his dedication to the “liberation” of Al-Quds, Jerusalem to the rest of us; and makes clear his determination to follow the 1974 PLO plan for the “liberation of Palestine. That particular “roadmap” lays out a step-by-step framework for destroying Israel, including the establishment of an interim “Palestinian national authority” that will serve as a springboard for the final assault.

You want proof that he isn’t interested in peace? Look at the deal Israel’s Prime Minister Barak was willing to give in 2001: a Palestinian state with shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, control of the Temple Mount, 92% of the West Bank, 100% of the Gaza strip, and a piece of Israel’s territory to make up the difference. Arafat didn’t even counter the offer. He just walked out and started a bloody uprising.

It isn’t the land. It isn’t Palestinian sovereignty. It isn’t even Jerusalem. It’s Israel’s existence that offends the Palestinians. If Israel were to surrender unconditionally, then, following the massacre of as many Jews as possible, there’d be peace. In the meantime, for the Arabs, every compromise the US might come up with is only a stepping-stone to Israel’s demise.

When all this happened, the Israeli left, having become a one-issue movement, all but collapsed. I know. I was there. They were like wide-eyed guppies that had just had acid dumped into their aquarium. So deluded were they that many still insisted on pursuing the discredited Oslo accord, explaining their lunacy by saying “at least we have a plan”. That’s like having your wife shoot your dog, burn down the house, clear out the bank account and run off with your best friend while you insist she’ll come back because it’s the only alternative you can think of. Have fun waiting. How about the possibility that she’s not coming back, ever again, even in a thousand years?

The Palestinians aren’t following any Roadmap to peace unless they’re dragged along kicking and screaming, with a gun to their head.

So, cut to the global war on terror.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is symbolic of the more general one between the West and radical Islam. It’s not support for Israel. It’s not the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia. It’s not even our economic and military superiority that resides at the core of their enmity towards us. It’s our very existence that threatens them. And the friction between us can’t be avoided.

In a global economy, we have to interact with each other. We rely on them to meet our energy needs and they rely on us to provide the goods and services that keep their countries running. But they can’t handle the collateral effects. The freedom that we take for granted is an obscenity to fundamentalist Islam, and it’s a threat to their authority. Over 70% of Iranians want closer ties to the US, according to recent polls. They’re supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameni, has expressly forbidden such a move. From the time of Mohammed, he and his ilk have always applied a simple formula to their interaction with others: submit or die. There is no compromise.

So, again, it’s our existence, stupid. Our tolerance, our desire for compromise and coexistence, is just another sign of our impending collapse, a colossal weakness to be exploited.

There are only two ways to end our war on terrorism. We can destroy the terrorists, eliminate their sponsors and intimidate their sympathizers into inaction, or; we can submit to their authority and convert, or accept second-class citizenship, under an Islamic regime.

You only need to look at their public pronouncements and published writings to see the truth. They make no effort to hide their true intentions. When Mein Kampf was published in 1925, Hitler spelled out his plans in detail. The world ignored him and paid an awful price. Let’s hope our generation avoids the same mistake.

Open your eyes and open your ears.

This is a fight to the death. The sooner we accept that, the better off we’ll be. Just as the Israeli Labor Party nearly led their country to disaster, our own appeasers, including the Arabists in our State Department, will try to push us down the path of compromise. That’s a deal with the Devil that we dare not make.

For the sake of our country, our civilization and future generations, we can’t allow that to happen.

It’s us, or them.