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July 8, 2006
THE SMARTEST ARAB ON THE PLANET; MAYBE THE UNIVERSE
Since Eye on the World copied on my posts recently, I figure we'll be even after this one. At least I'm giving him credit right away. But this is an article that needs to be out there. It needs to read by as many people as possible:
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
July 7, 2006 (The New York Sun)
Dear Brethren, the War With Israel Is Over
As Israel enters the third week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks.The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:
Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:
The war with Israel is over.
You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.
We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.
Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.
At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.
You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.
Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.
What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?
We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.
Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours,Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods — more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives — while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?
*****************************
Unfortunately the Palestinians will not listen.
As far as the kidnapped soldier goes, I believe he is gone. It doesn't fit in with the radical Islam we know for a deadline to go by and a head not to be chopped off.
I hope I'm wrong, but today's failure to come up with the soldier in order to stop the Gaza shellings pretty much speaks for itself.
Looks like Gaza will have a new nickname soon: THE PARKING LOT STATE.
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Pity Palestinians aren;t able to go beyond their anger and see the negotiated path to statehood and peaceful co-existence
ReplyDeleteRefreshing pragmatism... this piece should be translated into Arabic and dropped as leaflets all over Gaza.
ReplyDeleteFree Constantinople
Land isn't what Hamas is fighting for. It's fighting for the sake of fighting. They love killings and martidom and are no good for anything else.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, and right on the money! The Palestinians have been playing professional victims since 1948. The Palestinians need a reality check bigtime, and this man deserves to me commended for trying to deliver it!
ReplyDeleteThat was amazing.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I hope that you are wrong about Gilad (I know that you hope so too).
It's time those damn European countries slapped the Palestinians in the face with this kind of message allready.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree the letter is fantastic, I hope he doesn't get killed for it. Finally someone from that side talking sense.
ReplyDeleteMy issue is with the title. "THE SMARTEST ARAB ON THE PLANET; MAYBE THE UNIVERSE". It's like saying the smarts dumb guy. Not much of an honour. He should be honoured as perhaps One of the few smart Arab's known to man. Or maybe A Arab that isn’t full of Siht. Maybe if Arabs drank more booze and less of the Kool-Aid they would lighten up.
Great piece. Duly copied on our place, and thanks.
ReplyDeleteThis has to be the appropriate place for this comment.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment, about three Israeli soldiers are held as "bargaining chips", in the hope they can be exchanged for other "bargaining chips". I guess the way it works out. One Israeli bargaining chip is worth about 500, or so, bargaining chips of the other kind.
True enough, I was never lucky enough to bargain for, say, a burnoose in some "souk".
Nonetheless, I think I think I know enough to surmise that what's going on is the type of haggling that happens in such a place.
Well, somebody had better get the word, somehow, to whoever is holding the Israeli bargaining chips.
It's bound to happen. It's bound to happen.
The Israeli government will announce that about seventeen, or so, of the bargaining chips they're holding tried to escape.
. . . oh, yeah, whoever will be speaking for that government will express regrets that the bargaining chips in question died in their desperate attempt to escape.
In which case, whoever is holding the Israeli bargaining chips should consider lowering the price a little.
toodles
...../
.he who is known as sefton
. . . just t'leh'cha know . . .
ReplyDeleteI was hoping that somebody would pose the question, and I'm quoting,
"Ah, what's supposed to happen the next day?!"
Well, let's suppose that just one of the Israeli bargaining chips remains in the hands of those demanding the swap for bargaining chips in Israeli hands.
In that case, one shouldn't be surprized by the news that twenty-three, or so, of the latter bargaining chips attempted, very unsuccessfully, to escape.
Funny thing, when the Bader-Meinhoff gang in Germany tried to do something spectacular, those members held in German prisons committed "suicide".
toodles
..../
.he who is known as sefton
To tell the Palestinians to surrender would be to tell them to erase their undeniable culture which is their identity as a people, for the Israeli government will never allow for there to be a Palestine.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't about Hamas or Yasser Arafat. Those were Palestinian mistakes.
However the first and most important step in any successful peace process would be not for the Palestinians to recognize an Israel (this must come later), but for Israel to recognize Palestine, which is should have done in 1948.
The only correct idea in this article is that the more the Palestinians struggled (the way they did) the worse off they were. They must resist this occupation, and it most certainly is an occupation, by smarter means.
But to tell them to admit defeat, and allow for Israel to permanently erase the Palestinian identity disgusts me, and an Arab who says that is either brainwashed or paid.
ke1n, do you conveniently forget that in 1948, Israel accepted the Partition and therefore a Palestinian governed state? It was the Arabs who rejected it.
ReplyDeleteThere was no Israeli occupation from 1948-1967, yet the Arabs were still not recognizing Israel except for recognizing that they wanted to push it into the sea.
Israel would allow for a Palestinian state. To say they wouldn't is to be dishonest.
Arab intolerance and hypocrisy is the only thing responsible for the Palis plight. Israel is simply defending herself.