An Israeli border police officer is burned by a firebomb thrown by a 'Palestinian' demonstrator in Jerusalem, March 18. The officer survived.
There is a tiny country surrounded by enemies. The official position of all Western governments is that this country is a nation no less legitimate than their own, having been established in accordance with international law. The country is a member of the UN in good standing. The country has contributed enormously to science and culture, particularly in the area of medical science. Prior to its establishment, its people were subject to persecution and racism wherever they were found, including the largest mass murder of a single ethnic group in human history.
Its enemies wish to destroy it because of religious and ethnic prejudice and because of a false historical narrative in which they portray themselves as dispossessed. They have rejected every attempt at compromise or coexistence. They are obsessed with hatred, and have brought about enormous misery for their own people in order to use them as weapons. They have created a culture — the ‘Palestinians’ — which, if it was a person, would be considered psychopathic in its obsession with death and revenge.
This ‘Palestinian’ culture has been attacking the people of the tiny country since before the country was officially founded. The attacks take the form of terrorism, in which random victims are murdered — with especial emphasis on children whenever possible — as brutally as possible, sometimes blown up, sometimes butchered like farm animals.
There is also continuous racist incitement to murder in ‘Palestinian’ media, mosques, schools, etc. The Terrorist murderers are national heroes and schools, streets, football fields, etc. are named after them. The ‘Palestinian’ government gives monetary rewards to the families of ‘martyred’ terrorists.
Now we come to the crazy part.
One would think that the enlightened, cultured, educated, abundant, successful Western nations, the dominant culture on the planet, which professes to favor the continued existence of the tiny nation and to admire its people, would also give it concrete support against its vicious enemies. That would be the rational thing to do.
But instead, this is what they do:
• They provide welfare assistance for ‘Palestinian refugees’ — most of whom are in no way refugees — according to a formula which encourages explosive (pun intended) population growth, while at the same time acquiescing in the ‘Palestinian’ obsession that they will not be settled anywhere else but in the besieged tiny country.
• They pay one ‘Palestinian’ faction — one which is committed to the destruction of the tiny country for revanchist and nationalistic reasons — large amounts of money, making it possible for them to continue terrorism and incitement to terrorism. Much of this money is transferred to another ‘Palestinian’ faction, this one motivated by religion and committed to jihad against the tiny country.
• While they verbally condemn the jihadists for their refusal to even pretend to renounce terrorism, they have prevented the tiny country from trying to force them from power either militarily or by nonviolent embargo.
• Their leaders and diplomats try to force the tiny country to make concessions to its enemies, in the unrealistic belief that this will damp down the conflict, when historically such concessions have always made it worse. While giving lip service to the tiny country’s right to exist, they push ‘solutions’ that are likely to result in its dissolution.
• Their media almost universally report the conflict in a distorted way, suggesting that the tiny country bears the primary responsible for the attacks against it.
• In some parts of West — the UK and Europe — incitement in the media against the tiny country almost reaches the level found in the media of its declared enemies.
• In Western academic society, where concepts of anti-racism, self-determination and human rights are given enormous importance, opinion leaders almost universally turn reality upside down and support the racist aggressors who want to destroy the tiny nation and kill or disperse its people.
Is this crazy or what?
This column in one sense tells it all. It is an exact description of the absurdity of Western attitudes and action in regard to Israel and the Arab Palestinians. But it omits the oil, the numbers of the Arabs , the number of Islamic nations, the resentment, envy and hatred of Jewish prominence and success in various areas , and a whole host of other reasons ( Including traditional Christian anti- Semitism) which ‘explain’ this.
Shalom Freedman,
You are so right. There seems not enough paper or room to write all that could be written. Very, very succinctly stated and I am sharing this posting. I agree wholeheartedly. My mind cannot understand this world and I am glad, really. Thank you for the post.
An excellent post, Vic, but in one of your postings a while back, you explained this “craziness” very well. As I recall, you listed three reasons:
– A liberal left academia-based ethos that portrays Israel as the agent/result of “rich white guy imperialism”, and thus must be constrained and sanctioned accordingly in the face of the “righteous anger” of the “noble oppressed dark-skinned people” who oppose them. Today, for the first time, we have an American president who comes from precisely this ideological neighborhood – with a little “Farrakhan” influence for “spice” – so it should surprise no one that Obama behaves the way he does.
– Greed. As Shalom Freedman alludes to above, there is the copious amount of oil money that is spread around media and academia in order to reward and encourage those who espouse the viewpoint described in the paragraph above.
– Cowardice. Even if people aren’t being bribed, they are being intimidated. Israel doesn’t issue “fatwas” against her enemies. Israel doesn’t kidnap unfriendly journalists and force them to convert to Judaism at the point of a gun, or behead people and make videos of the same to be spread around the world. If someone makes a nasty offensive cartoon about Jews or Israel, we might complain, but we hardly riot over it or threaten the authors with death. Israel is an “easy” target for self-righteous “do gooders” who seize on her as an example of “speaking truth to power”, because if they really did try to take on the REAL bad guys, they’d risk getting hurt or killed.
If, on the other hand, academia or media figures try to speak out in favor or Israel – i.e., call this “craziness” out for what it is – they risk losing their reputations or their jobs, in the current “lynch mob” environment.
You didn’t say it in the words I used above, but something along those lines, as I recall.
Yes, we live in a particularly “low and dishonest” time, as one historian described the behavior of Western leaders in the face of the rise of Hitler and Mussolini during the 1930s.
I maintain a guarded optimism that we are going to prevail, however, if at great cost.
There is almost no way Obama gets re-elected. You can just about take that to the bank.
The only scenarios where I see we lose anyway, are the following:
– Iran gets nukes, and has the time to field an arsenel of maybe 30 or so on their medium range ballistic missiles, with their current regime in power. Then there is going to be a nuclear war in SW Asia/NE Africa. Israel will be destroyed, but they’ll take everyone in the neighborhood – and a few points beyond – with them.
Iran MUST be stopped from getting nukes, period. Ideally, the regime there should be overthrown.
– Ron Paul gets the Republican nomination for the 2012 election. It doesn’t matter if he goes on to win the election. If we are left with the choices of a second Obama term or a first Ron Paul term, we are screwed either way.
Barring those two scenarios I list above, there is going to be more strife and war, but as of January 2013, we should have sanity restored to U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. will likely be treating Israel in a manner resembling an ally again, and we should be able to push back effectively against this madness.
I expect things to come to a head in a dangerous way this fall, however. The PA will probably apply for and get membership in the UN as a fully-fledged “state”, with pre- ’67 borders, and Obama will do nothing to stop this, and may even vote for this himself.
This will mark the beginning of “Intifada 3”, as the PA then takes this as the “green light” to force Jews out of all areas east of the 1949 armistice lines. The IDF will have to fight them, and this is the “tripwire” for sanctions a la Rhodesia during the 1970s.
Once Obama is out of office – and if he is not replaced by Ron Paul – these sanctions and UN actions will be repudiated by his replacement, in all probability. This particular crisis, in an immediate sense, will then end for Israel. She’ll have to tough it out until then, however.
If it comes to a shootout with the PA/Hamas, however, I fervently hope that this time, Israel “goes all the way”. No escape to Tunisia. No holding back. The PA in total – Fatah and Hamas – is to be completely destroyed this time. Don’t leave Abbas or any any member of his cabinet or staff alive, literally, period. The world community – to the extent that they are represented by the UN and the media, which is questionable in real terms – will hate Israel no matter what she does. So, she might as well do the bastards in, so that when the dust settles, there is NO MORE PA with whom others have compelled her to “negotiate” with.
That is what I would do if I were BB. Hope he does exactly that when the time comes.