For a long time
there was a time when I was sympathetic to the idea of a Palestinian
homeland as part of a two-state solution. But in light of what
can only be described as sustained, intransigent and transparent
Palestinian folly, I have decided that thoughtless and reckless
comportment should not be rewarded. As I write this, the Palestinians
are getting hammered hard as a consequence of a series of decisions
that reason and intelligence cannot account for.
Let us hypothesize
a small man, weighing 150 pounds, who is unarmed. Facing him
is an Arnold Schwarzenegger type, 250 pounds of sinew and muscle,
who also has a machine gun slung over his broad shoulders. Since
the two don’t like each other, you would expect the smaller
man, as an act of self-preservation, to act in such a way so
as not to rile the bigger man. But instead, throwing caution
and IQ to the wind, the little man begins throwing rocks --
some of which are sharp enough to lacerate -- at the bigger
man. He repeats the rock throwing the next day and then the
next, seemingly intent on making a rite of a wrong. A neutral
observer would conclude that only someone intellectually deficient
would expect his bigger and more heavily armed adversary, now
bleeding, to do nothing indefinitely, that at some point the
big man is going to say enough is enough and pick up the little
guy and hurt him bad, which is what he is doing now, in Gaza
– without apology.
This bizarre contest
of mindsets in the valley of Elah begs the question, what prompted
the little man to act so irrationally? What does he hope to
gain by irritating to the point of violence the self-evidently
more capable and stronger man? Based on the thus far unequivocal
results of the encounter, one must conclude that the little
guy was not in his right mind and/or someone else had already
got hold of his mind, like Iran et al, and bade him
do his dirty work.
There is no secret
to the greater anti-Israel Arab agenda. Short of calling for
the destruction of Israel, Iran and company want the political
entity of Israel out of sight and mind. To that end, they are
naturally attracted to the idea of achieving that outcome without
having to bloody their hands. So they decide to enlist the very
gullible -- by virtue of being homelandless -- and demonstratively
short-sighted Palestinians to do their bidding. They decide
on a two-pronged approach: funnel the Palestinians (1) propaganda
that will cajole them into believing they don’t want peace
and prosperity, and (2) weapons, the small arms equivalent of
sling shots, that will convince the ‘occupiers’
to lay down their superior weaponry and, en masse, leave that
part of the world forever.
Iran and its friends
must be laughing all the way to the Mosque – and why not?
They get to fight their sworn enemy without consequences. Which
makes the Palestinians the world’s easiest dupes ad
extremis since they alone are paying the ultimate price
for taking up a position that prior to the election of Hamas
they didn’t support. In opinion polls taken over a period
of many years before the election of Hamas, the majority of
Palestinians consistently favoured peaceful coexistence with
Israel in the context of a two-state solution.
Few would disagree
that Israel and Palestinians are, to all intents and purposes,
engaged in low grade war that is likely to continue into the
indefinite future, especially if the latter continues to allow
their best interests to be hi-jacked by the self-serving interests
of the anti-Israel Arab league, whose sole raison d’être
is to rewrite the map of the Middle East, and who, despite grandiloquent
declarations to the contrary, don’t give a micro-damn[1]
about their impoverished Palestinian pawns. Which predicts
that the hammering the Palestinians are sustaining today will
be repeated tomorrow, and the living hell the Arabs have made
of Gaza is only going to get worse.
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