From The Australian, 30 July 2014, by Mark Steyn:
Illustration: Eric Lobbecke Source: TheAustralian
I’M often asked why I don’t write more
about the Palestinian situation, and the reason I don’t is because the central
fact of the dispute — the Palestinians’ Jew hatred — never changes. So I said
what I had to say about it many years ago, and there’s very little to add.
For
example, in The National Post on April 18, 2002 I quoted an
old Colonial Office hand:
“All British officials tend to become
pro-Arab, or, perhaps, more accurately anti-Jew,” wrote Sir John Hope-Simpson
in the 1920s, wrapping up a stint in the British Mandate of Palestine.
“Personally, I can quite well understand this trait. The helplessness of the
fellah appeals to the British official. The offensive assertion of the Jewish
immigrant is, on the other hand, repellent.” Progressive humanitarianism, as
much as old-school colonialism, prefers its clientele “helpless”, and, despite
Iranian weaponry and Iraqi money and the human sacrifice of its schoolchildren,
the Palestinians have been masters at selling their “helplessness” to the West.
In Europe, colonialism may be over, but
colonialist condescension endures as progressive activism, and the Palestinians
are the perfect cause. Everywhere else, from Nigeria to Nauru, at some point
the natives say to the paternalist Europeans, “Thanks very much, but we’ll take
it from here.”
But the Palestinians?
Can you think of any other “people” who’d
be content to live as UN “refugees” for four generations? They’re the only
“people” with their own dedicated UN agency, and its regime has lasted almost
three times as long as Britain’s Palestine mandate did.
To quote again from
that 2002 Post column:
This is only the most extreme example of
how the less sense the Arabs make the more the debate is framed in their terms.
For all the tedious bleating of the Euroninnies, what Israel is doing is
perfectly legal. Even if you sincerely believe that “Chairman” Arafat is
entirely blameless when it comes to the suicide bombers, when a neighbouring
jurisdiction is the base for hostile incursions, a sovereign state has the
right of hot pursuit. Britain has certainly availed herself of this
internationally recognised principle: In the 19th century, when the Fenians
launched raids on Canada from upstate New York, the British thought nothing of
infringing American sovereignty to hit back — and Washington accepted they were
entitled to do so.
But the rights every other sovereign state takes for granted
are denied to Israel. “The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to
other nations are forbidden to the Jews,” wrote America’s great longshoreman
philosopher Eric Hoffer after the 1967 war.
“Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem ... But everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab ... Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
Thus, the massive population displacements in Europe
at the end of the Second World War are forever, but those in Palestine a mere
three years later must be corrected and reversed. On the Continent, losing wars
comes with a territorial price: the Germans aren’t going to be back in Danzig
any time soon. But, in the Middle East, no matter how often the Arabs attack
Israel and lose, their claims to their lost territory manage to be both
inviolable but endlessly transferable.
And so land won in battle from Jordan
and Egypt somehow has to be ceded to Fatah and Hamas.
As I said, this is all the stuff that
never changes, and the likelihood that it will change lessens with every
passing half-decade. I wrote the above column at the time Jenin and the other
Palestinian “refugee camps” were celebrating their Golden Jubilee. That’s to
say, the “UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees” is older than most
African, Caribbean or Pacific states.
What sort of human capital do you wind up
with after four generations have been born as “refugees”? If you’ve ever met a
charming, urbane Palestinian doctor or lawyer in London or Paris, you’ll know
that anyone who isn’t a total idiot — ie, the kind of people you need to build
a nation — got out long ago.
The nominal control of the land has passed from
Jordan and Egypt to Israel to Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas to Hamas, but the
UNRWA is forever, running its Mister Magoo ground operation and, during the
periodic flare-ups, issuing its usual befuddled statements professing complete
shock at discovering that Hamas is operating rocket launchers from the local
kindergarten.
But, like I said, that’s all the stuff
that never changes, decade in, decade out. The problem this time round is that
everything else in the region is changing.
Jordan’s population has swollen by
25 per cent, refugees from the Syrian civil war. Does anyone seriously think
the UN has plans to set up a refugee agency to minister to them until the year
2090 and beyond?
ISIS (Islamic State) has destroyed the Christian churches in
Mosul and chased the entire Christian community out of town. Does anyone
seriously think the Europeans will be championing Iraqi Christians’ “right of
return” for the next three-quarters of a century?
ISIS is doing what winners do in war:
it’s shaping the facts on the ground. It wants no Christians in Iraq, and it’s
getting on with it.
General Fattah el-Sisi wants to kill the Muslim
Brotherhood: he’s getting on with it.
The wilier Brothers have slipped over
into a collapsing Libya to make common cause with various al-Qa’ida affiliates,
as the Libyan state implodes: Its would-be successors are getting on with it.
In the new Middle East, everyone and his uncle has an Obama-Clinton “reset”
button and they’ve pressed it.
But they’re not Jews. So nobody minds,
and no preening Botoxicated buffoon of an American emissary comes to lecture
them.
John Kerry, as Barack Obama’s
plenipotentiary, is a paradox — the physical presence of a geopolitical absence:
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
I wish, I wish he’d go away ...
Thus John Kerry, in Jerusalem and Cairo
and beyond.
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