Twenty-two months after Israel pulled out of Gaza, pundit John Podhoretz isn’t surprised by what's happening there now.
Excerpts from his most recent column:
Someone asked Benjamin Franklin what America got out of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. His reply: "A republic - if you can keep it."Podhoretz column is here.
So it was with Gaza in August 2005. The Palestinians got a "homeland, if you can keep it."
What they got instead was hell on earth.
What they got was two brutally murderous gangs, Fatah and Hamas, competing for power by throwing people off the roofs of buildings and slaughtering rivals in front of their wives and children.
What they got was Tony Soprano (Fatah) vs. Phil Leotardo (Hamas). Only this time, Tony got his head smashed in by the SUV.
This isn't a civil war - it's a gang war.
And thousands of Palestinian bystanders are going to get shot while these two gangs go to the mattresses.
Ah, the joys of self-rule.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister who conceived the disengagement plan, had a brilliant insight: Why not let them have it? They want it? It's theirs.
After all, over the course of Israel's 38 years of occupation, fewer than 10,000 Jews actually sought to live in Gaza - and their settlements required tens of thousands of other Israelis to risk their lives protecting them.
The Palestinians spent decades professing their detestation of Israeli occupation and demanding self-rule . . . so Israel gave them their heart's desire.
Gaza is Judenrein - emptied of all Jews, just as Hitler dreamed Germany would be. No Jews live in Gaza. No Jews patrol Gaza. It's Jew-Free-by-the-Sea, with a charming Mediterranean coast worth billions of dollars in tourism and trade.
So what's the problem?
The problem is that the Jews weren't the problem.
The problem is that the Palestinians are the problem: They are drenched in an ideology of blood and murder and suicide. (emphasis mine)
A new nation must be brought into being, nurtured and built. But Palestinian political culture is a culture of destruction.
And a culture of destruction is, inevitably, a culture of self-destruction.
I think he’s right on the money.
What about you?
Hat tip: Betsy’s Page
6 comments:
Then again, Yasser Arafat (Fatah) was a Nobel Peace prize winner,and nothing screams peace louder than the sound of a society crashing down.
Now, if we could just Commander Guy to pay attention ... oh the dreams of the delusional ...
what an essai - Sharon is one of my heros. This comes as no surprise to the people familiar with middle east history. They will figure out a way to blame the Israels for their behavior and shot coming. Peace to Israel.
Wasn't it Golda Mier who said "As long as the arab mother hates the jews more than she loves her own children, there won't be peace?"
Prescient indeed.
Apparently Abbas is going to share Intel with the IDF to take out Hamas assets in the West Bank. Or perhaps it is Fatah elements in Gaza. It's hard to tell.
I think Kissinger put it well: It's a pity they both can't lose.
But of course they both will, because there are misguided but innocent people in the way.
I wonder where all the surrounding Arab countries and the wanna-be superpower China are in all this?
Nowhere, as usual.
-AC
Those same Arab countries,for the past 45 years have done nothing to ease the suffering of Palestinian refugees, so for them to act in any way other than belligerent would be a surprise indeed.
We hear a lot about militant Islam making its insidious way into our nation, and yet, here is the glaring example of a place it is actually happening, and as with any other extremist ideology, it aint pretty.
Having lived in Jerusalem and seen first hand the
Jim Crow constructs of Israeli society and decades of bloody conflict,
I wonder if, instead of the British deciding the Palestinians should
pay for how beastly the Germans were during WWII, it would have been
better for all if they had given the Jews Miami Beach or Germany itself instead.
Ariel Sharon a hero? He was an IDF commander who squandered the lives of his men. He was found personally responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre by his own government. Sharon would have been tried for war crimes had the US not intervened.
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