Beware: A Palestinian State

This explanatory parable was written over a decade ago. I would have used “pirates” rather than “bandits”, but good enough. 

Surely, if he was wrong we would know by now.  There are too many examples to support his proposition.  Don

By Moshe Feiglin Aug-28-2002 (Re-posted today)

Nothing scares Arafat more than the establishment of a Palestinian state. It scares him so much that when he was offered everything – including Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and including Israeli sovereign territory in the Negev – he started a war. It sounds strange and illogical. He has been fighting all his life for these territories! But a rational analysis of his behavior leads inevitably to this conclusion. Just as the Oslo Accords are not a peace agreement at all, so the “Palestinian struggle” is not a struggle for liberation at all.

A state is a tool for production. It produces security, infrastructure for education, economy, health, etc. More than anything else, a state is a tool for the production of values. It expresses the cultural fingerprints and values that its citizens have contributed to the rectification of the world.

A state is like a factory. Everybody works for himself, but the total product far exceeds the needs of the factory owner and his workers. Every state – every such factory – has its own expertise, both material and spiritual. Each state exports its part of the large puzzle of worldwide production through commerce and cultural influence.

And what happens if a gang of bandits that never produced anything and never wanted to produce anything – a gang of bandits that for over one thousand years (since Islam was born) has lived on robbery and terror – shows up in the industrial zone? The productive factories have two choices: They can fight the bandits or they can surrender and pay them whatever they want – until the next attack.

But it gets more complicated. For the first time in history, the bandits demand something else. They defiantly demand that one of the factories vacate the premises because they want to take over the factory and manufacture on their own.

What will happen now?

The neighboring factories will breathe a sigh of relief because they do not have to pay anything. They assume that the bandits will become productive and will stop bothering all the factories in the industrial zone. Clearly, all the other factories will support the idea and will find creative excuses to explain why the idea is just and moral (the bandits were there first…).

The factory that is marked to vacate its premises will react with threats of war. But after it discovers that it is up against the bandits and all the other factories and that everyone chooses to blame it for the fact that the bandits are threatening the entire industrial zone, it will start to look for solutions. It will offer the bandits half the factory and various partnerships. When the terror continues, it will surrender and give the bandits the entire factory.

But the important question for our purposes is what will happen at this stage to the bandits.

After all, they do not know how to manufacture anything and they do not want to do so. The Torah says of Ishmael, Islam’s progenitor, “And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against all…” This is the bandits’ entire culture and source of sustenance. They don’t want the factory at all. What do they need it for? Why should they invest, take risks, compete, become more efficient, contribute to society, make commitments, educate or take responsibility for health and security? To them, this is fresh water being sprayed on a scorpion’s lair. They will flee the water as if it were fire…

They don’t want the factory: they don’t want to own it and they don’t want to use it. All they want is to cut more and more pieces out of the factory’s arteries so that they can feed off its blood without taking any part in the production.

As soon as they see that their demands are being met and that they are about to receive the factory, they will find an excuse to increase the price so that they can continue with their terror. By the way – they will never take the final result into account. As far as they are concerned, there is no danger that the factory will collapse and that the blood will stop flowing from its veins. Ahmad Tibi has no problem with the fact that he is hastening the end of the state that sustains him. A culture of bandits doesn’t think of those things.

On the surface, if you accept this explanation, you can breathe a sigh of relief. If this is so, there is no danger that a Palestinian state will be established. But that is not true. The danger is alive and well because {all the other – DAS} the factory owners have gone crazy and they just may force the poor bandits to take over the factory.

There are precedents. The bandit Palestinian state will not be the first bandit state to have been established against its will. The horrors of the colonialist empires of the previous century created an exaggerated counter-reaction. After World War I, the most equitable solution seemed to be the establishment of nation-states. This solution was presented to the productive societies on the one hand, but it was also presented to the bandit Moslem societies on the other.

Since their establishment, the Arab states have produced nothing but poverty, suffering, wars – and fantastic wealth for their leaders. The Arab states were not established of their own will or as a result of a true national liberation movement that desired to express its positive values through a sovereign state. They were forced on the Arab nation by the European allies with no consultation. The Europeans simply bribed the thin layer of local rulers with personal gain.

The Europeans had a clear interest in establishing these states. Take a Saudi sheikh, give him control over all the oil, make him unbelievably wealthy and dependent upon you for his continued control – and secure all the energy sources and control of the region for yourself. If this bandit doesn’t care that millions of his brothers are dying of hunger, why should I, the European, care? That is the typical, cynical Christian morality that replaced the evil of colonialism with a new – and much worse – evil.

Arafat {and Abbas and… - DAS} does not want a state. As opposed to the Arab states, he enjoys all the advantages of a head of state – including fabulous wealth – with no responsibility, not even the minimal responsibility required of Assad or Mubarak.

But Israel, because of the ancient Jewish mental illness – the desire to be accepted by the family of nations and to that end to make peace at any price – is liable to force him to accept Israel’s Biblical heartland and the foundation of a bandit state on its back.

In the current situation, in which Israel makes no essential claim on territory, in which the Prime Minister speaks of “the just desire of the Palestinians to live in their land,” in which Israel attempts to present the problem as an issue of Palestinian regime and not of Palestinian justice or lack thereof, it is clear that when the regime falls, Israel – like the Allies – will choose to establish the bandit Palestinian State with its very own hands.

So we have what to fear. A Palestinian state may be born, G-d forbid. The Jews will establish it.