Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Victor Davis Hanson: A Modest Proposal for Middle East Peace
...let the international community begin its humanitarian work!
Greek Cypriots can advise Israel about concessions necessary to Muslims involving a divided Jerusalem. Russians and Syrians can advise the IDF on how to deal properly and humanely with Islamic terrorists. Poland, Russia, China, and Armenia might offer the proper blueprint for giving back land to the defeated that they once gained by force. A North Korea or Pakistan can offer Israel humanitarian lessons that might blunt criticisms that such a recently created country has no right to exist. Iraq and Egypt would lend insight about proper reparation and the rights of return, given its own successful solutions to the problems of their own fleeing Jewish communities.
But why limit the agenda to such a small array of issues? The world has much to teach Israel about humility and concessions, on issues ranging from how other countries in the past have dealt with missiles sent into their homeland, to cross-border incursions by bellicose neighbors.
No doubt, Middle East humanitarians such as Jimmy Carter, Arun Gandhi, and Tariq Ramadan could preside, drawing on and offering their collective past wisdom in solving such global problems to those of a lesser magnitude along the West Bank.
Has the UN really accomplished anything positive that wasn't more than outweighed by its empowering of the dictators and failed-states it's supposed to stand against? It certainly hasn't done very well when it comes to genocide.
On the statement: "Poland, Russia, China, and Armenia might offer the proper blueprint for giving back land to the defeated that they once gained by force."
How can we forget that "the victors" too were once evicted from this very place by a similar if not more violent force? Since the protestors (muslims) too believe in the Bible (Genesis and so on), then what is their difficulty in appreciating that Jews have the first right on the land?
If anything, Islam has much lesser right to exist in the middle east upto South East Asia (or anywhere in the world for that matter), than Israel has a right to exist in the middle east. Islam occupied all these territories only by use of force that was much more cruel, inhuman and wide spread than that currently being employed by the Jews from Israel.
Islam never did, never does, and never will understand reason. It only understands treason. That is the "reason" used by "terrorrists".
It is not that Islam is a good religion and some muslims are terrorists. It is that Islam, not merely sanctions, but rather enjoins upon its followers to use all means (fair or foul, in practice mostly foul) for spreading their faith, that most muslims support and sympathise with this ideology (including use of terrorism) for the spread of Islam, while only some might actually participate in the action explicitly. So in this sense Islam is a psycho-spiritual epidemic spreading with the goal of destroying the civilized world. And this epidemic with its psycho-viral meme of Koran, Jihad and so on has to be controlled very tightly at the very least, or preferably eradicated completely.
No resolution of any problem involving muslims as one of the parties (including the middle east problem) is possible without duly recognising this simple and irreducible fact.
What Israel and Jews do, or should do, or should not do, etc., may be important details to be investigated and worked out clearly at their own level; however all these details pale in importance comparison to the above mentioned important reality.
Exactly right, Indian.
Hooray for VDH.
Perhaps it's his long view of history that enables him to see so clearly.
By extension, how many modern Westerners can remember last week? Has our attention span been reduced to the important bits of 30 second TV commercials?