NP Bushspeak

The Secret Word for tonight is Settlement

"And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new
security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America
will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain
aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a
final settlement in the Middle East."
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/bush.mideast.speech/index.html

This is precisely the way it will *not* work because it's supposed to be
exactly the other way round to be succesful. There will only be a "final
settlement" when the last settlement has been closed and the last Israeli
settler has left Palestinian soil.

On one side this speech is very arrogant because it's not in the power of
the US-president to demand that another people may choose another
president/leader. If it were so Mr. Sharon would have to got too for the
same reasons as Mr. Arafat. Not to speak about the way Mr. Bush came into
power.

On the other hand the speech has some very promising parts addressing both
sides of the conflict, though the overall impression is still that
conservative America unconditionally prefers the Israeli side:

Suicide Bombing, by the Editors
"Of course Palestinians went and slaughtered Israelis."
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020701&s=editorial070102

Well, the truth of course is always the other way round. If you look at who
killed how many of each side during the Al Aksa Intifada it's clear that Mr.
Sharon and not Mr. Arafat is the main killer, that Israel's state terrorism
is most responsible for the violence in the actual conflict. While we have
seen the IDF at Jenin we still miss the clear and unmistakably evidences
that Arafat is behind the suicide bombings. The simple death toll, the fact
that Israel resists several UN-declarations for decades now by keeping
foreign land under occupation and threatening its neighbors with weapons of
mass destruction, this is not seen by the TNR-editors.

There are interesting points in the articles from the Jewish World Review
Kurt-Werner has just posted.
Dennis Prager asks: "Why does the Left support the "Palestinians"?" and
points to the fact that Israel indeed is the only real democracy in the
Middle East. So why is the Left in favour of those undemocratic pre-modern
rulers like Arafat? The answers Prager gives are very silly when you read
sentences like "Those of us not on the left believe that the purpose of a
college education is to discover what is true and what is good" or "At this
time in history nothing so illustrates the left's nihilism as does its
support of the Palestinians against Israel" - his final statement revealing
his political "home".

In fact the Left doesn't like the rulers but the people, and it expects no
change to a more civilian and democratic society in times of war when people
prefer strong leaders, even if democratic rights are left aside for a while.
Why should the Palestinians have another opinion on this as, I suppose, 80%
of the Americans have. It's like all those Cubans still supporting Castro
(and we can only shake our head)- but they take a look at Argentina and
weep. Or why did the Israelis choose Sharon? They remembered Sabra and
Shatila and expected that similar would happen to Palestinian cities if the
terror coming from those cities doesn't stop.

I have always been critical of the leftist criticism on the War on Terror
because it's a different thing. We must not allow neither Osama bin Laden
nor Ariel Sharon to justify their actions with the other problem. The War on
Terror has primarily nothing to do with the Middle East and the Middle East
conflict has nothing to do with the American retaliation for September 11.
But bin Laden has justified his terror with the Israeli occupation and
Sharon has tried to "sell" his policy as part of this War on Terror and both
is wrong.

Otto


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