Posted on 07/23/2006 2:32:30 AM PDT by KarinG1
A few years back, when folks talked airily about "the Middle East peace process" and "a two-state solution," I used to say that the trouble was the Palestinians saw a two-state solution as an interim stage en route to a one-state solution. I underestimated Islamist depravity. As we now see in Gaza and southern Lebanon, any two-state solution would be an interim stage en route to a no-state solution.
In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Swell. But, suppose he got his way, what then? Suppose every last Jew in Israel were dead or fled, what would rise in place of the Zionist Entity? It would be something like the Hamas-Hezbollah terror squats in Gaza and Lebanon writ large. Hamas won a landslide in the Palestinian elections, and Hezbollah similarly won formal control of key Lebanese Cabinet ministries. But they're not Mussolini: They have no interest in making the trains run on time. And to be honest, who can blame them? If you're a big-time terrorist mastermind, it's frankly a bit of a bore to find yourself Deputy Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions, particularly when you're no good at it and no matter how lavishly the European Union throws money at you there never seems to be any in the kitty when it comes to making payroll. So, like a business that's over-diversified, both Hamas and Hezbollah retreated to their core activity: Jew-killing.
In Causeries du Lundi, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve recalls a Parisian dramatist watching the revolutionary mob rampaging through the street below and beaming: "See my pageant passing!" That's how opportunist Arabs and indulgent Europeans looked on the intifada and the terrorists and the schoolgirl suicide bombers: as a kind of uber-authentic piece of performance art with which to torment the Jews and the Americans. They never paused to ask themselves: Hey, what if it doesn't stop there?
Well, about 30 years too late, they're asking it now. For the first quarter-century of Israel's existence, the Arab states fought more or less conventional wars against the Zionists, and kept losing. So then they figured it was easier to anoint a terrorist movement and in 1974 declared Yasser Arafat's PLO to be the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," which is quite a claim for an organization then barely half-a-decade old. Amazingly, the Arab League persuaded the U.N. and the EU and Bill Clinton and everyone else to go along with it and to treat the old monster as a head of state who lacked only a state to head. It's true that many nationalist movements have found it convenient to adopt the guise of terrorists. But, as the Palestinian "nationalist" movement descended from airline hijackings to the intifada to self-detonating in pizza parlors, it never occurred to their glamorous patrons to wonder if maybe this was, in fact, a terrorist movement conveniently adopting the guise of nationalism.
In 1971, in the lobby of the Cairo Sheraton, Palestinian terrorists shot Wasfi al-Tal, the prime minister of Jordan at point-blank range. As he fell to the floor dying, one of his killers began drinking the blood gushing from his wounds. Doesn't that strike you as a little, um, overwrought? Three decades later, when bombs went off in Bali killing hundreds of tourists plus local waiters and barmen, Bruce Haigh, a former Aussie diplomat in Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, had no doubt where to put the blame. As he told Australia's Nine Network: "The root cause of this issue has been America's backing of Israel on Palestine."
Suppose this were true -- that terrorists blew up Oz honeymooners and Scandinavian stoners in Balinese nightclubs because of "the Palestinian question." Doesn't this suggest that these people are, at a certain level, nuts? After all, there are plenty of IRA sympathizers around the world (try making the Ulster Unionist case in a Boston bar) and yet they never thought to protest British rule in Northern Ireland by blowing up, say, German tourists in Thailand. Yet the more the thin skein of Palestinian grievance was stretched to justify atrocities halfway around the world, the more the Arab League big-shot emirs and European Union foreign ministers looked down from their windows and cooed, "See my parade passing!"
They've now belatedly realized they're at that stage in the creature feature where the monster has mutated into something bigger and crazier. Until the remarkably kinda-robust statement by the G-8 and the unprecedented denunciation of Hezbollah by the Arab League, the rule in any conflict in which Israel is involved -- Israel vs. PLO, Israel vs. Lebanon, Israel vs. [Your Team Here] is that the Jews are to blame.
But Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian opportunism on Palestine has caught up with them: It's finally dawned on them that a strategy of consciously avoiding resolution of the "Palestinian question" has helped deliver Gaza, and Lebanon and Syria, into the hands of a regime that's a far bigger threat to the Arab world than the Zionist Entity. Cairo and Co. grew so accustomed to whining about the Palestinian pseudo-crisis decade in decade out that it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella. The Zionists got out of Gaza and it's now Talibanistan redux. The Zionists got out of Lebanon and the most powerful force in the country (with an ever-growing demographic advantage) are Iran's Shia enforcers. There haven't been any Zionists anywhere near Damascus in 60 years and Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.
Meanwhile, Kofi Annan in a remarkable display of urgency (at least when compared with Sudan, Rwanda, Congo et al.) is proposing apropos Israel and Hezbollah that U.N. peacekeepers go in, not to keep the "peace" between two sovereign states but rather between a sovereign state and a usurper terrorist gang. Contemptible as he is, the secretary-general shows a shrewd understanding of the way the world is heading: Already "non-state actors" have more sophisticated rocketry than many EU nations; if Iran has its way, its proxies will be implied nuclear powers. Maybe we should put them on the U.N. Security Council.
So what is in reality Israel's first non-Arab war is a glimpse of the world the day after tomorrow: The EU and Arab League won't quite spell it out, but, to modify that Le Monde headline, they are all Jews now.
Here is another input. If everyone conquered by Arabs became arab, then they later became French when Napoleon conquered Egypt. After that they became British when they were part of the British empire. In between they were Turks when they were part of the Ottoman empire? These peoples have been part of one empire after another since the time of Alexander the Great in 4th century BC. Before that, however, each built a distinctive civilization. Their identity as nation states traces back to those ancient roots.
One thing is for damed sure. I'll not refer to any of them as 'palestinians'.
L
In fact, 19th nationalism was based on recovering a common identity for Germans and Italians in the past. In the case of Germany, the king of Prussia comissioned a German history and German music.
In this instance, however, you might be thinking that it would be best for everyone to bow to Mecca in more ways than one. Yet Saudi ambitious of Wahabism is often linked to fanatical terrorism. I am not at all sure that the Saudi monarchy should extend its tyranny. An EU federation that respects differences is probably better, though the strong common influence of Islam is sure to continue.
We do not have any right to impose stability and oppression on people out of our own indifference and desire to be done with their problems.
What does the New Testament call that area? Judea? I think the British called it Palestine when they had a protectorate there between the World wars.
They could have called it a Guernsey cow. That don't mean they could've milked it.
None of this has anything to do with my point which is that there is no such nationality or ethnic group of 'palestinian'. It's a fiction. In short it's a lie.
There are Egyptians in Gaza. There are Syrians in the Golan Heights and there are Jordanians in the West Bank. None of them are now or have ever been 'palestinians'.
L
Steyn hits a home run with this article.
Here's another great one by Victor Davis Hanson.http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson072106.html
I just think it is really amazing that this bunch of whiney trouble-makers has not been exterminated before now. You are right that they are a rump od discontents who didn't like the partition settlement and an ambitious criminal named Arafat exploited that to get rich and famous. It does raise the question I often have about using exile to foist your criminals on others. Not a good plan, imho. Aarafat and Bin Laden were both exiled when they should have been shot.
The Jordanian government did its best after a 1972 revolt and an attempt to murder the King of Jordan. He crushed the revolt and expelled every single one of them. To this day it's known as Black September. Perversely enough some group of thugs took that as a nomme de guerre when they murdered Israeli atheletes at the Munich Olympics.
Talk about bizarrre.
Aarafat and Bin Laden were both exiled when they should have been shot.
Interesting bit about Arafat and his claim to be a 'pali'. Did you know he was actually born in Egypt? As such there's no way in Hades that he could ever be one of what he called himself. But logic doesn't seem to be the long suit of many of the sons of mohamet (may rivers of pi** be upon him)
It is indeed fortunate for the folks living in those areas that the Israelis don't share the same disregard for human life they do or they would all have been either exterminated or driven out long ago. Not that doing that would be a bad thing IMO.
L
"You mention stabiity, but you sound like a racist."
I think I'll pass. Over to you, Lurker.
I particularly enjoyed this bit:
So after 9/11, the London bombings, the Madrid murders, the French riots, the Beslan atrocities, the killings in India, the Danish cartoon debacle, Theo Van Gogh, and the daily arrests of Islamic terrorists trying to blow up, behead, or shoot innocent people around the globe, the world is sick of the jihadist ilk
Let us hope so Mr. Hansen. Let us all hope so.
L
Bump for later savoring.
Thanks for the unexcerpted, unredeployed ping, Pokey!
So, who do you suppose is responsible for publishing the same Steyn article under multiple titles?
Ping
Various newspapers often use different titles for an article. I've suggested a "Search by Author" function to the FR authorities, but it's not here yet!
I disagree. I still don't think they get it.
LOL!
Mutual assured destruction doesn't work with people who are completely insane.
Which provides a truly unfortunate and unshakeable mental image of precisely how Bashir Assad got that long neck of his....
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