Howard Epstein – PEACE IS IN THE AIR – UNTIL IT CRASHES AND BURNS
Like London buses, there is no sign of a “peace” process for ages and then several come along together. Prepare yourself for déjà vu all over again.
First up, the French, who are seeking to warm over the moribund and utterly unacceptable Saudi/Beirut “peace” plan from 2002, that everyone knows we cannot possibly tolerate. We have moved on. Having annexed the Golan Heights, and preferring to look at the mayhem in what used to be Syria downhill, we have no Turkey-voting-for-Xmas desire to be looking uphill again. This time it would be into the barrels of the weapons of Da’esh, or some other of the other utterly unacceptable excuses for human beings who slaughter for their pleasure. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.” This lament, issued from the pen of Shakespeare, in King Lear, through the literary lips of the Duke of Gloucester after scenes of abject cruelty and senseless brutality, fit Da’esh & Co precisely. We do not want to be part of any tragedy, Shakespearean or otherwise. We have already had more than our fair share.
The other reason for rejecting out of hand the 2002 plan is that it seeks to present an open check to those who claim to be Palestinians and entitled to settle in what has been Israel for almost 70 years, whilst those others who choose to remain in, or move to, Judea and/or Samaria, the intended New Palestine, can be confident that the deal offers them a land that is and will remain Jüdenrein. Thank you very much for the offer, but it’s not for us. We prefer our “peace”, when it comes, to be less lop-sided.
As I wrote in an earlier piece, the French, with its most unpopular ever president, cannot even maintain peace on their streets, so why would we let them interfere in our business? Of course, we know the reason why the French seek to intrude into our affairs: they wish to curry favour with the Islamic and Arab murderers located there and in neighboring Belgium, hoping to win sufficient credits for the next aktion to be somewhere other than Paris next time – say Brussels again. But the French should know that we are not their tandoori or madras seasoning. Nor are we the poppadums or the mango chutney. We are just not on that menu. They may think that they can pay off the mafia not to burn down the restaurant but, however much they try to kick us around, deep down they know there is no guarantee that the Islamicist cosa nostra will keep their side of the bargain. If not Paris, it could be Bordeaux – or Strasbourg.
I had thought, and wrote in an earlier piece, that Kerry & Co had packed up their travelling “peace” circus and repaired to DC, where the president is either playing golf, attending dinner parties or considering on which murderous regime he can confer respectability following his triumphant visit to Cuba where he gave much and received absolutely nothing. Perhaps Venezuela? Their, and their president’s, credentials seem ideal: dysfunctional socialism, empty shelves, brutal repression and a total absence of any of the characteristics of democracy. What’s not to like, Barak?
We must, however, take note that, according to President Al Sissi of Egypt, the Yanks are still in the game. In a pithy, almost lazy televised review of what he saw as current peace processes last week, at the bidding of Tony Blair – he of the alleged illegal invasion of Iraq, at the instigation of that great savant, George W Bush – al Sissi, merely en passant, mentioned the Americans and the “Quartet”, too, as being players. Although, fortunately the Quartet have been conspicuous by their absence of late, a report about our business is due out soon. We await it with as much enthusiasm as Blair has for the Chilcott Report.
You understand the math of the Quartet I suppose. Here is a little reminder. It consists of the USA and Russia (that’s two), the EU (that’s 28) and the UN (that’s 193 – plus two “observer states”: the Vatican and Palestine) aggregating 225. Apparently, turning all that we know about arithmetic on its head, 225 into four does go. As Yossarian from Catch 22 might have said, that’s some group of four, that Quartet.
He would be right, and not only because of the numbers. Think about their qualities, also: not mere Holocaust deniers, many deny the existence of Judaism itself – if it had no connection to its epicentre at Temple Mount (pace UNESCO), it could not have existed at all – and further deny the “right of Israel to exist”. This last calumny ignores the fact that Israel was effectively voted into existence in 1947 by the UN itself. The USA, Russia and most of the current EU states were members at the time, but why would they allow inconvenient historical matters of record get in the way of the progress of the Palestinians at our expense?
Best of all, the Egyptian leader, getting back to the main story, offers his services, not to lead a push for “peace”, but as a facilitator of some “peace” process or other. One gets the feeling that he means well, though how he will find the time between planning a mega city as an alternative to Cairo, imprisoning thousands without trial and consoling the families of his soldiers who regularly die in the Da’esh insurgency in Sinai, is a matter of concern.
Nevertheless, the Egyptian leader must be buoyed by the enthusiasm for his initiative gushing from the lips of our Prime Minister, who, in his wisdom appears (forgive the mixed metaphor) to have bitten Al Sissi’s hand off. This makes all the more confusing Bibi’s appointment as Defence Minister, out of the blue the following day of the rather more-hawkish-than-dovish, Avgidor Lieberman, recalled from Nokdim les Deux Églises (in an echo of de Gaulle’s return from the political wilderness in 1959).
What does Bibi really want: disloyal Israeli Arabs to be beheaded, as Liebermann recommends, or to make nice to the bifurcated Abbas? Ah, Abbas, nom de guerre: Abu Mazen, he of the PhD in Holocaust denial studies. One fears for his well-being, too. It can be confusing to perform a volte face on successive days, especially when you are 81 years of age, and ten years into your four year term. He is in danger of saying to Israel’s Channel 2 that he wants the Pals’ kids to murder Jews and to the Ramallah TV station that he knows he is protected by Israel. What with his duplicity and Obama’s “tough love” for us, it is easy to conclude that the quality of modern leadership is not what it was.
Bibi may have offered confirmation of this with his Lieberman appointment. Israelis who criticized the Premier for never making a decision must wish he had stayed in that mode. (For balance, one might ignore the party-political windfall that Liebermann would bring to Bibi’s government – I am sure the thought never crossed the prime ministerial mind – and recognise that Liebermann might just be the heavy-hitter counter-weight in any “peace” process that is coming that Buji, poor lamb, would not have become in another three thousand years in Jerusalem.)
I am sorry. Whilst off on the tangent (so many calumnies, so may tangents) about the quality of leadership, I almost forgot the Belgians – so blessed with the quality of their political leadership that in March 2011 they set a new world record for the length of time without an official government, a record previously held by war-torn Iraq.
Well, as perhaps with Bibi, we certainly wish the Belgians had never left their moribund state. What appears to have moved them is the French “peace” process. The French inducement to the savages is to corral Israel into “peace”, for they say that they will recognise Palestine if the “peace” talks they suggest were to fail – thereby ensuring that they will. The Belgians fear that that initiative may be enough to move mujahedeen activity north of Lille for a display of “Bruxelles Redux”.
Perhaps panicked, this has led the Belgians to the latest manifestation of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which I have so often been constrained to invoke. Belgian parliamentarians made their move this week. (I recommend that at this point you are sitting down.) They have, and I assure you that I have this in writing, proposed that convicted terrorist, Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for his role in murderous terror attacks during the Second Intifada, be given the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now I know that the word “fantastic” is over-used but if this is not an iron-clad, gold-plated, fantasy, I don’t know what is. Well, I lie, of course. I do, and so do you, because the Belgian suggestion is no more the stuff of fantasy than an organ of the UN (UNESCO) pontificating away any Jewish connection to Temple Mount.
Let me know when it’s safe to come out.
Hi again! I just got released from my self-imposed detention and I really want to share my exit visa with you. It seems that, as the disillusioned dyslexic atheist said, there is a dog after all.
Great news about the debasement of the Nobel Peace Prize – and the evidence does not emanate from Brussels but from Oslo. Geir Lundestad, secretary until 2014 of the Nobel Committee, has written, in his “kiss and tell” book about the once-illustrious prize, that the Committee had hoped that the Nobel honour in 2009 to then newly-elected President Obama “would strengthen” him. Many argued, Geir now reflects, that Obama had not had any impact worthy of the award. Oh really? No impact worthy of the prize conferred on Yasser Arafat? How worthy do you have to be to reach his elevated heights?
One answer to that question came in 2012 with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. That’s more off the wall than giving the gong to Obama, since it is Europe that has been funding Palestinian terror these past forty years. Well, as I have pointed out before, that policy has come home to Europe to haunt them.
I suppose that the Belgians with their offer of clemency to Barghouti have earned a few quiet weeks, especially now that terror appears to have hit a Paris-originating flight to Cairo. The Egyptair flight MS 804 that appears to have crashed and burned on Thursday last – which will likely happen with “peace” the 225 members of the Quartet have lined up for us – was far from full, with “only” 66 passengers and crew on board, and now swimming with the fishes. Is the beast’s blood-lust so easily sated? We shall have to wait and see.
Finally, may I indulge myself with my weekly mantra? (It’s my way of saying Shabbat shalom to you.) We should not sign up to any “peace” until there has been (and I am generally against book-burning, but there is an exception to every rule) a bonfire of “Jack and Jill stab a Jew in the Neck” and “Dorothy and the Tin Man Bludgeon an Old Jew to Death” or whatever the titles of that nature are in the Palestinians’ school libraries, they express a genuine desire to live in PEACE with us, and there has been nothing to disturb that new paradigm for fifteen years. Each year, after the first three, that PEACE becomes more tangible, they should be rewarded with more and more technology transfers, increasing amounts of sweet water and an evolving successor to the Marshall Plan funded 50/50 by us and the Americans to build a modern state and democratic social institutions, so that they have something to lose – the opposite of the Arab template in effect until now.
It all sounds so wonderful, I almost forgot to say that Hamas are guaranteed to gate-crash, and spoil, the party.
Oh, and the Europeans can keep their money. They will need it to control their greatly-augmented numbers of immigrants, many of whom prefer sharia to the Code Napoléon. (As I have written before, if you want the true experience of a European boulevard in five years’ time, Shderot Rothschild may be your only destination.)
© Howard Epstein – May 2016
