Daniel Greenfield
If you believe the newspapers, a kindergarten in a town built by Jewish refugees from Yemen is about to doom all hopes for peace in the Middle East. Forget the fact that there was never any peace long before a few dozen Jews who fled Yemen built themselves a small town where they could raise their families, without being murdered for their faith or driven into ghettos-- as is the fate of the last remaining Jews of Yemen. Forget a thousand years of Muslim bigotry, which time and time again have exploded into orgies of violence, pogroms of hate and terrorist atrocities. No, it is the kindergarten at Kiryat Netafim that is at fault here. The very same headline scribblers who chastised Americans as hopelessly racist, for not wanting a mosque to be built where thousands of people had been murdered in the name of Islam, are united in denouncing the terrible evil of this kindergarten. If it were not for this kindergarten, doves would be flying overhead with olive branches. And everyone would be dancing and singing "Kumbaya." If it weren't for that specter of that terrible kindergarten ruining it all.
There is of course no objection to Muslims building things anywhere they want. Oil money from the gulf states is pouring in to finance Muslim construction without a word from the White House. While Jewish homes, barns and kindergartens are denounced as "obstacles to peace", Muslim construction is not even a topic of discussion. The underlying bias behind this attitude is rather blatant. A Jewish home is illegitimate. A Muslim home is unquestionably legitimate. Just as a mosque near Ground Zero gets wrapped up in the flag, and a church gets tossed aside. The rights and wrongs always manage to come up star and crescent for Muslims, and snake eyes for everyone else.
Through that distorted lens, a kindergarten can become a threat to peace and a mosque at Ground Zero, an act of tolerance.
So the US State Department announced that it was "disappointed". The British Foreign Minister topped that by announcing that he was "very disappointed". Not just disappointed, very disappointed. Moscow is reportedly "concerned". Sarkozy stated that the construction must stop and invited everyone to a summit in Paris to talk about it, a proposal that seems to have more to do with helping promote tourism and his own popularity, than with peace. Ireland's extremist Foreign Minister, Micheál Martin, who had already pandered to Castro and Hamas, used his UN speech to berate Israel. Baroness Ashton of the EU, who often makes Martin look like a moderate, announced that she "strongly regrets" Israel's decision to allow people who happen to be Jewish to build kindergartens for their children.
But will there be peace if Jewish families in Kiryat Netafim are deprived of a kindergarten? A brief history of the last thousand years, or even the last seventeen years during which Israel has bent over backward to a coalition of terrorist groups run by Yasser Arafat, would suggest otherwise. The media assures us that the fate of peace hangs on negotiations with the illegitimate leader of a declining terrorist group who doesn't even control Gaza anymore. Negotiations which Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's successor, has already turned into a farce by refusing to even recognize Israel as the Jewish state.
While Israelis continue to be murdered by terrorists, the Obama Administration and its media lackeys insist that the real barrier to peace is at the kindergarten. But yet with no kindergartens under the settlement freeze, there was still no peace. There were hardly even any negotiations.
Israel's Druze-Arab Deputy Minister, Ayoob Kara, put it bluntly; "The game in the Middle East is strong. Kill or be killed." The Obama Administration and the European Union have been insisting that Israelis should allow themselves to be killed, rather than kill. To concede on everywhere in the hopes that if Israel humiliates itself enough, then its Muslim enemies will finally feel good enough about themselves to make a lasting peace. That was Kissinger's strategy in the 70's, which cost thousands of lives and nearly destroyed Israel. And it has been the theme of the latest stage of the "Peace Process."
That is why there can never be any serious talk of "Peace for Peace". It isn't a matter of meeting around a table, shaking hands and deciding to make war no more. No, the poor bruised Muslim ego must be soothed at the expense of the infidels.
For Muslims to be able to live in peace with non-Muslims, they must be able to assert their sense of superiority, to put their boot on the infidel's neck, claim the traditional privileges of a racist and bigoted majority, ruling over irritating minorities who must be taught their place. Otherwise they will pout and whine, and declare Fatwas and Jihads, give their support to terrorist groups promising them a brand new Caliphate and anything else that will nurture their sense of grievance at the loss of their former status.
So there must be a mosque erected at Ground Zero, and NASA's chief mission must be to make Muslims feel good about their scientific accomplishments. And Israel must stop building homes in a part of Jerusalem, from which invading Muslim armies ethnically cleansed Jews, only a few years after the Holocaust. Europeans must be forbidden from eating during Ramadan and 9/11 memorials must incorporate Muslim themes. We ban burning the Koran and censor cartoons that offend Muslims, the only religion to receive such privileges. And when all that groveling is said and done, will there be peace?
In a pig's eye.
Israel achieved its peace treaties through war. Had it not shown that it could defend itself, endure the worst that the Arab Socialist dictatorships could throw at it, and still survive-- then there would have never been any peace treaties to sign. That is why the Cold Peace with Egypt and Jordan holds, while the Peace Process with the PLO has failed badly. Israel almost defeated terrorism, but it gave into it in the end. And that was a fatal mistake.
It was not goodwill or a trickle of the milk of human kindness that brought Sadat to Jerusalem, but the recognition that further war was a doomed course. That understanding has never trickled down to the average Egyptian, which is why the peace remains only a Cold Peace. Regime change will send it tumbling down, in Egypt and in Jordan. Because until the average Arab Muslim matures enough to set aside his arrogant sense of superiority over the non-Arab and the non-Muslim, there can be no peace.
Pandering to people who want to kill you, only wins you a place at their feet. At best. The spot of the Dhimmi, the house slave and the serf. It does not bring peace, only the peace of submission that Mohammed offered to the Jews of his day, before exterminating and enslaving them anyway. That is the way business has been done in the desert long before Mohammed. It is likely the way business will be done there long after the sands have buried Mecca over, as they have buried over so many ancient cities amid the dunes.
Western diplomats know enough of the Muslim mind to pander to it. To soothe it with deep bows and kowtows. With flattery and praise. But rather than soothing it, such antics only feed the worst of it.
Whatever small hope for peace there ever was, went into the rubbish basket of history, once the pandering began, and it was clear that Muslim terrorists would never be held accountable for anything they did. Similarly once American troops stopped being the goliaths in the helicopters raining down death on Taliban and Republican Guard alike, and became smiling faces eager to help rebuild, the tables were turned. Muslims once again felt themselves to be superior to the vulnerable infidels. And the violence really took off.
When we measure offense not by the deed, but by the need to appease the violent tempers of murderers, then what we have is not the basis for peace, but the terms of surrender. Muslims who have grown too used to a history in which they were the rulers, the enslavers and the conquerors, must adapt to a history in which they are not the master race, but only another group in a large global tapestry of them. If they cannot do so, then the war and the violence that they habitually spawn will continue.
We can blame the cartoonists, the kindergartens and anything else that offends the Muslim ego-- but that will not bring peace. Only when we place the responsibility on Muslims to embrace change and abandon hate, can there ever be peace.
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