# 91 – Palestine etc.

January 21, 2008

You know, if the two of them/us didn’t know or cared, they/we’d say: “Let’s just shake hands, be friends, have a game of football and get on with life”. 

But there’s no such ‘if’ here, is there?

[Here’s a couple who do all that, except for the game of football. The narcissi are in bloom.]

Where’s that Letter from Israel, the public has been screaming. Well, there has been so much written, surely the last thing you want from me is more waffle about the Middle East.

Well, here it is in a nutshell:

Bush – He’s making the same mistake as Clinton, except that Bill started his attempts to solve the problem at the beginning of his tenure. His last-ditch attempts ended in years of violence. Bush is starting his attempts while the rest of USA gets on with (strange-to-the-foreigners) electioneering. There are two Palestinian peoples now, yet he and we only talk with one. Let’s invite them to the party, so that THEY can be blamed for not coming.

One of our Russian oligarchs, with clean hands, like his ‘laundered money’, was very visible during the Lebanon War, providing temporary room and board for the northern refugees, should have been put in charge of the Bush accommodation.

A few marquis for the 500 or so entourage, situated in Sderot. Would have allowed thousands of soldiers and police to spend some time with their families, Jerusalem could have functioned normally, and just one Kassam rocket would have brought the 6th Fleet and the marines down on Gaza in a manner only allowed to them (and to Egyptians dealing with the Moslem Brotherhood, the Syrians with Moslem fundamentalists and the Jordanians with, ooh we forgot, the Palestinians).

Hamas – While they keep on the way they do, Moshe Dayan’s words will continue to run true: “There cannot be peace until the Palestinians learn to love their children more than they hate us”.

Our departure from Gaza may have been unilateral, but it did give the Palestinians a choice: A). Say thanks, make Gaza work, and move towards the next agreement or B) Cause a civil war to get the political opponents out, support a daily barrage of rockets into Israel and go crying to UNRWA, an organisation more dedicated to the Palestinian cause than old Charley Mayfield is to Accrington Stanley football club, having celebrated his 76 years as an official supporter.

You really think we’re going to let the same thing happen to the West Bank? Without the IDF there, plus the 250,000 Jewish inhabitants, dear Mr. Abbas would not be in his current elevated political position. We have no partner for peace.

Power will be switched off. It’s still better than the alternative/s. Like the security fence and the checkpoints, which have saved 100s of Israeli lives (Jews, Moslems and Christians alike), if this is what it takes to stop the bombs raining down on Israel, then, sad to say, so be it.

And if the bombs continue raining down on us? We have to decide whether we are pure pacifists or a people that are willing to fight for our lives. We are not yet pacifists – not in the JW sense. So we have to recognise that we are at war, and the IDF has to do the job. Sad to say that this is one of the modern aspects of the Jew’s reputation: a great fighting nation.

We didn’t plan for this, nor did we study for it. But it was that or another genocide. I won’t ask again what would you do if your country were constantly being bombed. And not by a country like France. Let’s try France being bombed by Liechtenstein. Hundreds of them. No, I won’t ask. Can’t ask someone else to put themselves in the same position, can we?

We won’t invade – that’ll result in too many casualties on our side. The pinpoint bombing attacks and sudden incursions will be increased. And we should warn them – up front. It is so lovely, so easy, to tell us to stop this vicious cycle. But these are the words of the dreamers.

Gaza claims to be a democracy. If they have the power to vote Hamas in, they should have the power to deal with the consequences. If democracy has voted for the extermination of Israel, and that was in Hamas’ manifesto, then theirs is the hand that can stop the cycle. No Kassams and sitting down with Israel would stop the IDF attacks. The opposite has already been tried.

Wake up, World!

Palestine – (I’m fed up with the term ‘Occupied Territories’ – hypocrisy) – Turkey, Japan and Germany are among the countries lining up to invest millions when peace is signed. A great incentive? Let’s see..

Bobby Fischer – A 1901 article in New was entitled ‘Jews and Chess’: ‘No player has yet made a fortune out of chess, and many of the masters find it difficult to make even a mere living from the game. That makes it all the more remarkable that such a large percentage of the most famous players are Jewish’. The article was anti-Semitic, as was Bobby Fischer.

Anti-Semitism – A few years back, a good friend of mine, Emil Kaspar from Switzerland, twisted his smaller body 180 degrees and attacked me in the most vitriolic manner as only an anti-Semite can. My first fully-fledged experience of such a thing. (3 years later, during my attempt to question his action, he claimed not to be anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist. (The sad man also called me a Nazi. Make that 181 degrees).

My main reaction was to investigate anti-Semitism, and I started with the book on the subject by Bernard Lewis. By chance, Lewis is here, and tomorrow evening I am attending a lecture of his. I shall hold this open for my views.

[It’s ‘after tomorrow evening’. Good lecture, especially considering this great man is over 91 – perhaps the Western World’s expert on Islam and the Middle East . I learnt some things, but he did not try to come up with any solutions for today’s problems. He DID remind us that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East where Arabs have a substantial population. That is a fact that is so often overlooked by outsiders – and incredible that, so far, despite all that is going on around, there have not been more problems with them. But it is only ‘so far’, and we do expect that powder keg to explode.]

Talking of views, these are the 3 towers at the Azrieli Centre: round, square and triangular. We even suggested Shira have her wedding at the top of the round one. (April 8). But she has her mind already set on ‘a place in the country’.

Oh, you don’t know how much we understand peace, wish for it, work for it. But we also know the opposite, and we shall not be suckers.

Stephen

PS – Gazans are currently breaking through into Egypt. May Egypt welcome them with their usual open arms (the country that really occupied Gaza).