Posted on 12/05/2001 5:54:45 AM PST by veronica
The big story for the week's first two programs focused, not surprisingly, on Israeli retaliation for attacks by Palestinian terrorists. I played some clips of President Bush that showed a clear shift in our nation's past inclination to tell Israel to hold back and take it when their civilians were killed. I also took a couple of calls from people who thought they had the situation figured out, but that somewhat wanted to take a "no one's right or wrong" position.
I made some theoretical pronouncements about the situation on Monday that very few people are talking about, saying that you cannot have negotiated settlements that bring about peace unless you have defeat first. You negotiate with somebody after you defeat them. When Japan and Germany surrendered in World War II, we negotiated a peace deal with them. But that was after we defeated them. They wouldn't negotiate before that.
Throughout history, this is the way it is. Peace is brought about as a result of an undeniable truth of life: Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force. Look at the United States. Are we trying to negotiate a peace with Osama bin Laden? No! We're trying to wipe him and every one of his cohorts out. We're trying to eliminate them. We're trying to see to it that they don't breathe, that they never go to the bathroom again, that they don't eat, that they are dead, is what we are attempting to do. We are not trying to negotiate a peace deal with them.
This is true in the situation in the Middle East, as much as some of you are not going to want to hear this, as much as some of you are not going to want to contemplate this. There is not going to be peace in the Middle East unless and until one of the two combatants is defeated. It's the truth. This whole business of negotiating peace from 15,000 feet with our bombers as we did in Kosovo doesn't work. In Vietnam, we tried negotiating a peace all during that conflict, and it proved fruitless.
If you listen to Arafat's statements to his own press, they're totally at odds with what he tells the foreign press. He's still saying he wants death to Israelis, and that their nation will cease to exist. He can stop this terror, but chooses not to. Channel surfing around Monday night, I saw one Mideast expert saying that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have about one to two thousand members. Arafat has 50,000 armed, loyal police. And he can't control the terrorists? Give me a break! He doesn't want to control them.
Even defeated Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak now says Arafat cannot be trusted. He finally gets it! Well, you know, it's a damn good thing he didn't give Israel away before figuring this out! Barak worked with Bill Clinton and James Carville to give away so much of Israel, people couldn't believe it - and Arafat turned it down! Which proved to anybody who wanted to have an open mind about it that Arafat doesn't want a side-by-side coexistence. He doesn't want peaceful coexistence. He wants there to be no existence of Israel or Jews at all.
The implication is that peace-loving, innocent, happy-go-lucky Palestinians used to live happily on that land, and some mean, evil, nasty Israelis came and kicked them off one day and said, "It's ours!" Israel was set up by the UN, out of what had been British-controlled land.
They didn't just march in and take it. As for the so-called "occupied territories," Israel was attacked, and in defending herself, conquered those lands, just as we conquered Florida, Texas, and chunks of what was then Mexico. Those states are not occupied territories.
Now, in the wake of our own great terrorist atrocity, the Bush administration is showing solidarity with Israel - and this is unique. This administration has not been showing solidarity with Israel lately. But today that all changed. Because we know we have to freeze assets of terrorists, and that our security is meshed with this nation that is the region's only democracy.
I heard this on his show Monday and agree 100%.
Agreed. The question is how much longer will the Israeli government allow her citizens to be slaughtered. There is a time when enough is enough, regardless of "world" opinion.
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