January, 2011
Themselves and Their Allies Equal the No-State Solution
I think any reasonable person would conclude that the policies and attitudes of the Palestinian Arabs when it comes to their dream of a homeland to call their own has been an unremitting failure for more than 6 decades now.
Thus it must follow that those policies and attitudes on the part of the Palestinian Arabs that have resulted in failure must be abandoned. The problem is this: lawfully or unlawfully, moral or immoral, the Israelis are there, are real and are not going anywhere nor are their weapons systems, this last of which is a moot point since Israel has the atomic bomb. In other words, the Palestinian Arabs must start to move in a world that is the real one and not the one they want it to be since it has been emphatically shown that they cannot achieve this goal.
When it comes to the following issues, the Palestinian Arabs must start thinking along entirely different lines: hostility towards Jews and Israelis, violence towards Israel, supportive debating points and protests from the Western liberal Left and reliance on international law. All these 4 things have gotten the Palestinian Arabs is nothing and less than nothing alongside death, heartache and humiliation.
As a prequel to understanding the failure implicit in these 4 topics above, one thing that must be done to start the Palestinian Arabs on the road to their own state is to recognize the difference between a real leader and a failure. For this purpose let me contrast Yassir Arafat with Robert E. Lee. The only thing Yassir Arafat seemed to really care about is his own narcissism and not the Palestinian Arabs. Even if one totally rejects such a notion, Arafat was a demonstrable failure at leading the Palestinian Arabs to a state of their own. We in the West do not as a general rule worship failures but men who are a success.
Robert E. Lee is admired even by his political opposites because of his superb generalship and leadership but above all because in the one single instance where Lee was able to exert himself as a statesman he did himself and his cause proud, even while acknowledging its physical if not moral failure. After Lee's army was finally cornered Lee came to see that it was all over and that to resort to guerilla warfare would only lead to more death and suffering with no hope of any real success. Robert E. Lee is admired because he is perceived, even in defeat, to be a success.
Yassir Arafat was a failure. The main reason the Palestinian Arabs seem to admire Arafat's memory is because he championed their cause - but in so doing he brought them nothing but ruin. In life there are losers and losers and one need not qualify this semantic play with anything complicated in the case of Arafat - he was just a loser. To admire him in retrospect is then to mirror today the cause of the continuing failure of the Palestinian Arab cause.
As a matter of rectitude and evidence of an attitude adjustment somewhat in the nature of a thought experiment but in actuality in using one's perception to win a cause, the Palestinian Arabs must abandon any ideas about cherishing the memory of a man like Yassir Arafat and instead come to see him as a symbol of the failures of the Palestinian people; Palestinian Arabs must seek out a man of pragmatism and not overweening cultural pride. Only with this attitude adjustment firmly in place can the Palestinian Arabs move forward to nationhood.
On the matter of the first topic, that of hostility towards Jews in general and Israel in particular, one can say that such feelings are understandable but play right into Israeli hands in that such hatred and violence not only props up and even justifies Israel's own hostility and violence but wrecks the credibility of the Palestinian Arabs with too many people who are in a position to help them. Having Anti-Apartheid Week on college campuses in the West not only demonizes the Israelis who become keenly aware of such events but hardens a belief in Israel as an evil force in the minds of the Palestinian Arabs themselves when only by heading in the exact opposite direction can the Palestinian Arabs benefit; to claim to want peace while consistently portraying Jews as rats or Nazis lacks credibility. There is a perception in the West that however drastic Israeli responses to terrorism, that it is the Palestinian Arabs who represent savagery among civilization and Israel civilization among savagery.
Perception is the key word there but I think one can argue that Israel has actually shown a certain amount of restraint considering the destructive actions and even worse intent aimed towards them as Israel is perhaps not being given enough credit for not simply pushing Palestinian Arabs out of Gaza and the West Bank entirely or annexing Southern Lebanon which that government cannot exert sovereignty over and which has been a constant source of violence towards Israel. Were Israel as evil as is claimed, they could deport all Arabs in Israel proper, have held onto the Sinai, and also shelled or bombed Damascus, Cairo and Amman into ruin with relative ease during their past conflcts. Give credit where it is due instead of coming up with wild conspiracies which the actions of Israel in the past don't support.
Demonizing Israel is one thing but violence against Israel in the form of terrorism has simply been an utter failure. The barrier that exists in the West Bank which is so hated by the Palestinian Arabs and so much talked about as an Apartheid mechanism is in fact no more of an Apartheid barrier than the trenches of World War I are as the barrier came into existence as a direct result of stepped up terrorist attacks on the part of the Palestinian Arabs. In this sense, the Palestinian Arabs have no one but themselves and their failed policies to blame when it comes to the barrier as it is a perfect example of how terrorism has only resulted in the screws becoming ever tighter and tighter when it comes to restricting the movements of the Palestinian Arabs. At some point reality must intrude itself into the consciousness of the Palestinian Arabs in some manner that is favorable to them and controlled by them no matter how much it hurts because to do otherwise is to have reality intrude itself in any event and in a matter that is most unfavorable to the cause of the Palestinian Arabs. At least when Robert E. Lee surrendered his army he still exerted some measure of control over the failure of the Confederacy and its fate by the attitude he displayed rather than showing a front of unremitting hostility and defiance in recognition of a suicidal right to carry on as a freedom fighter. Suicidal is the only way to describe Palestinian Arab attitudes when it comes to their attitude as heroic freedom fighters as such attitudes and actions have been an utter failure.
Supportive arguments from individuals in the West have only served to mire the Palestinian Arabs ever deeper in quicksand as very clever and informed moral and legal arguments from people like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have failed to bring the Palestinian Arabs to an understanding that such personalities have only an interest in academics when it comes to the real world and neither Chomsky nor Finkelstein have to live with the results of their moral victories; winning arguments has not resulted in winning a nation for the Palestinian Arabs.
Clever arguments have only served to blind the Palestinian Arabs to the reality of their situation as these moral arguments though successful in a vacuum devoid of the reality of Israel, only help to retrench the Palestinian Arabs even further in its belief that they are in fact right and hold the moral and legal high ground which will, in some unexplained way and though a failure for 6 plus decades, result in a Palestinian Arab homeland.
Men like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have their own agendas that have more to do with ego and earning a living than it does for standing up for the Palestinian Arabs in any real way. Chomsky and Finkelstein are in a very real sense the exact opposites of Robert E. Lee when it comes to a willingness to bend to reality and the example Lee set and so in a sense, an argument can be made that Chomsky and Finkelstein are the Palestinian Arabs worst enemies, occupying a real and philosophical space more akin to Yassir Arafat than a real space that will result in a real solution; all or nothing is something that has not and will not work for the Palestinian Arabs as they have no real position to negotiate from though Chomsky and Finkelstein hammer it home that in fact the Palestinian Arab position is chaste and unassailable. All 6 decades of operating in an unreal world have gotten the Palestinian Arabs is the current situation where the site of their future nation, the West Bank, is slowly being eaten up while Palestinian Arabs spin the same failure because, as of the beginning of 2011, there are some half a million Jews living in settlements in the West Bank. Men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King knew how to manage a default position of failure and even exact concessions from it.
Men like Chomsky and Finkelstein operate in an academic world dedicated to earning money and so in a sense are every bit as much "professional againsters" as is the Fox News Channel or Rush Limbaugh they so love to hate or the MSNBC cable news channel that is their ally; Chomsky and Finkelstein do not live with bombs and death. Such men tend to exaggerate the evils of America and deflect the evils of anyone provisionally against America and so a man like Chomsky sees no difference between the Soviet Union's military occupation of Czechoslovakia and American meddling in the internal affairs of Guatemala in the 1950s. it should be noted that the Soviets were forced out of the former Czechoslovakia while American influence in Guatemala simply waned away as it was never material in the same sense and so needed no troop withdrawals, no physical bureaucracies to dismantle, no bases to shut down. Noam Chomsky is quite adroit at eloquently arguing Palestinian Arabs hopes right into the ground.
Noam Chomsky actually has the audacity to argue that there is an important difference between asking the Palestinian Arabs to recognize the State of Israel and the legitimacy of the State of Israel which is a fine point of pedantic lunacy in this instance since we are talking about real lives at stake as well as the idea of real and not imaginary or academic or legal success and failure; since Israel exists whether the Palestinian Arabs will it or no, such obvious and true distinctions in academia mean nothing in the real world since there is no choice between the two outside of a philosophical debate; winning such philosophical debates is killing Arabs and Jews. In the real world Israel simply exists and so cannot be contrasted with a second point of legitimacy as if they are interchangeable points and that Israel can really go away. In the real world, acknowledging Israel's legitimacy is the only movable point as its existence is too real to be argued as if this reality can be changed. It is not enough for Israel to ask the Palestinian Arabs to see Israel because that is only asking a person to not ignore an elephant in the room but asking the Palestinian Arabs to acknowledge a right to exist as a nation means there is then an indication that there can be peace in the future. Simply recognizing Israel in terms of both sides agreeing to physical borders and such is no guarantee that the right to have those borders will not be an issue in the future and so why should Israel agree to such a distinction when they hold all the cards; agreeing that Israel exists is like agreeing the sun is in the sky. Not recognizing the right of the state of Israel to exist only sets the stage for more conflict down the road and encourages the hope that Arab armies could one day supercede those of Israel. Once again the Palestinian Arabs have right and logic on their side and it keeps them from moving anywhere. Any idiot can see that no one wants to legitimize a country that is occupying land the Palestinian Arabs consider theirs but in so far as there are no other alternatives, it is better to cut ones loses and take what one can get. Native Americans in their hearts feel no legitimacy attached to the existence of the United States and yet this is scant consolation with no other square to move to.
Winning fine points of etiquette, semantics and even law once again consigns Palestinian Arab hopes to oblivion. With Chomsky and the Palestinian Arabs it's the old saying, "With Friends Like That You Don't Need Enemies". Over complicating the obvious is something intellectuals have a penchant for which is fun for word games and for those who like turning a phrase for its own sake but can be positively destructive in reality and there are no debating podiums in Gaza at which children shot between the eyes can stand. In this sense one can extend the adage in regard to the Palestinian Arabs, "With Friends Like Themselves They Don't Need Enemies" and they don't, not really - Islam in general in the 21st century has developed a disturbing tendency to define itself or fully exist only in the presence of a foe. At this point in time Israel occupies the same intellectual space as a mountain - it is simply there, like it or not, make an enemy or friend of it as you wish, it will not go away. In life, there are some arguments you simply can't afford to win and the more Chomsky and Finkelstein make a case against Israel, the more they consign the Palestinian Arabs to oblivion.
Palestinian Arabs must wake up to the reality of a larger world and see themselves as flawed human citizens of that world rather than Arab versus Jew because despite all their setbacks, there is still opportunity here for them, however imperfect, if they will but grasp it. When the Nazis came to round up Jews during World War II an individual Jew could hate all he wanted but he was still going to be sent away to some camp and perhaps death; there was no room for maneuver, nothing to plead to, plead guilty of. In the case of the Palestinian Arabs, although they and their supporters delight in comparing Israel to Nazis, there is in fact room for maneuver, a chance to salvage something like a Palestinian state from the wreckage of 60 years of failure. Unlike World War II, this conflict began as an optional violent conflict from a position of something like equality in 1947 and only became unequal when the Palestinian Arabs and their allies were defeated unlike the case of the Jews in Europe who never had a chance to avoid Nazi oppression. Palestinian Arabs and their supporters as I have stated, love to compare the Israelis to Nazis and to the worst of Apartheid in South Africa but in so doing only succeed in hardening the resolve of Israel who have never once in all these decades shown themselves to be vulnerable to such baiting tactics, demonization or characterizations. When it comes to such things, Israel, conversely perhaps to the Palestinian Arabs, loses debating points and arguments of legalistic nicety yet, like a rock, is simply there and in a commanding position that requires neither recognition or approval from outside itself; that is the whole point of the state of Israel in regard to the Holocaust which is the overarching theme surrounding the founding of the state of Israel, independence at the point of a gun and needing no approval from anyone. Israel is by no means a force of nature but the force required to negate its existence would almost have to amount to one and in any event, there is no such force of any size in terms of nations willing to do such a thing and combined Arab armies and decades of terrorism have accomplished nothing; the Palestinian Arabs when it comes to rights, justice, morals and laws can be 100% right and Israel will still be 100% there.
The last enemy of a Palestinian State is the notion of international law. One would think the Palestinian Arabs consider the World Court at the Hague a good ally but in fact, by allowing no permanent Israeli judge to ever occupy that bench, the International Court in the Hague is guaranteeing Israeli intransigence to any of its verdicts. Had the Palestinian Arabs any sense, they would perceive that this acts against their interests and therefore that they should petition the Hague to stop barring Israelis from serving as it is yet another in a long line of moral victories by the Palestinian Arabs which in reality result in defeat. Not wanting to walk around an obstacle that someone has put in your way is one thing, but to sit in front of that obstacle and cry for 60 years about the injustice of it rather than to find another way around no matter how painful is another. How painful would it be for the Palestinian Arabs to swallow their pride and sense of justice and take what they can get when arguably it has been much more painful and costly in terms of blood to essentially sit and get no where? Being right means nothing when it mean the right to commit suicide. The Palestinian Arabs have sacrificed buckets of Israeli blood and theirs just to make what has come to be an academic point about Israel's right or legitimacy to exist when Israel is there in any event. The sacrifice the Palestinian Arabs have made just to make this point is cutting ones nose off to spite ones face and resulted in not a one or two state solution but a no state solution.
What have all the U.N. resolutions in this conflict gotten the Palestinian Arabs? The answer is nothing, as is true of every single manner in which the Palestinian Arabs and their allies have tried to give Israel its comeuppance. This is not a Jane Austen novel where everyone's bruised feelings are combed over and the good people get their secret inheritance and the dastards get their just desserts. One must at some point simply acknowledge reality because reality is not going to sit up and acknowledge you. In light of this, although I know it is a very important thing, such issues as straightening out the 1967 borders and the right of return come to resemble mere pedantry if these issues forever consign the Palestinian Arabs to what is essentially a giant Prisoner of War camp.