Let The Palestinians Show Their Stuff

A LOT OF PEOPLE are worried about Israel’s “retreat” from Gaza and now, presumably, from the West Bank. They think that it shows weakness and just encourages the Palestinians to be militant and put off making peace with Israel.

But that ignores the significant downside of the West Bank occupation. It allowed a disempowered Palestinian people to act like angry adolescents, blowing themselves up in militarily insignificant but publicity powerful acts of terrorism.

Israel would really benefit if it faces a united Palestinian people with an army. Sooner or later a Palestinian government would be forced into attacking Israel with actual army units, rather than terrorists embedded in the civilian population.

On that day Israel could inflict a decisive defeat on the Palestinians. And that would decisively change the situation on the ground.

It is in that sense that Richard Z. Chesnoff is right to recommend that Israel continues its retreat to defensible borders, “leaving the Palestinians to cut their own throats or make peace.”

But of course, they will not make peace, not until after the throat-cutting is finished and the winner has boldly taken the fight to the Zionist entity, as promised.

The most interesting fact to emerge in the last few months as Hamas has emerged as the chosen government of the Palestinians is the extent to which the Palestine Authority is financed by the West. We find that the EU, Canada, and the United States have been shoveling money by the truckload into the West Bank and Gaza. And during the cartoon crisis we were amazed when the Palestinians trashed the Danish agencies in the Territories. The Danes? They were in the West Bank and Gaza too?

Let the Palestinians form their government. Let it figure out how to built a political system that actually goes beyond mere welfare from the West. And then we shall see.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

mysql close 0