Nicholas Sarkozy delivered a speech recently that, by contemporary standards, was not entirely deplorable. But not everything in Sarkozy’s speech was good. There were two deplorable parts:
“Evoquant les négociations actuelles entre Israéliens et Palestiniens, il a jugé qu’un accord “˜d’ici la fin de l’année est possible”, plaidant pour la création d’un “˜choc de confiance” à même de susciter une adhésion populaire au processus né de la conférence d’Annapolis, cet automne.”
This shows the limits of Sarkozy’s understanding of Islam, and therefore of the Lesser Jihad against Israel, and of how impossible, and also damaging, the mere holding of such negotiations, leading to one more version, of so many, of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyyah, in which Israel will exchange its solemn commitments, faithfully to be obseerved, for false promises by the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, not one of which will be honored.
Still worse was this:
“Nicolas Sarkozy a aussi souhaité le “˜gel complet” de la colonisation, qu’il considère comme “˜un obstacle à la paix”.”
This “gel complet de la colonisation (!)” means a complete halt, anglice a “complete freeze on [Israeli] settlements.” Which settlements? Oh, you know. The ones in what has formulaically come to be described, so viciously and inaccurately, as the “Israeli-occupied West Bank.” In fact, those Jewish towns and villages and outposts (the very word “settlement” is loaded), have been established over many decades in a place which is described far more accurately and in more juridically sound terms (unless you are prepared to ignore the precise terms, and clear intent of the Mandate for Palestine set up by the League of Nations, its mandates recognized and accepted by the United Nations in its charter) as “Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria.”
You find that way of putting it unsettling and strange, don’t you? You are thinking that’s a bit much, that’s a bit too aggressively and one-sidedly on the side of Israel, aren’t you? But the only reason you do so is because you are insufficiently familiar with the purpose, intent, and express wording of the Mandate for Palestine. And you have also chosen to ignore, or not to learn, the rules by which borders are revised after every war, almost since the beginning of time. The phrase I offered — “Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria” — offends you, perhaps, but that is only because it is so unfamiliar, and you have always lazily gone along with that BBC-sponsored phrase, the one about the “Israeli-occupied West Bank” which has become so familiar because it is repeated on every possible occasion in the press, on the radio, on television, in the corridors of E.U. or U.N. power, wherever people take seriously the notion of “an international community, and everyone thinks what everyone else thinks, or thinks it politic to think. ”
And so you have come to believe that the Arab-promoted phrase, now accepted everywhere, must have been accepted because it is true. But you are wrong to assume that. The Arab-favored and Arab-favoring phrase has been pushed, nonstop, for the past forty years, by powerful forces, intent on getting the world of Infidels not to recognize the implacable and immutable nature of the Arab Muslim refusal to accept the Infidel nation-state of Israel, no matter how tiny it is or how much tinier it may become.
Now it is time to undo the phrase, and the meaning it attempts to convey, just like that phrase “the Palestinian people.” Just phrase it differently, just see things more truthfully. It is, in fact the “Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria.” That, from now on, is the phrase to use. And use. And use. And that is exactly what I intend to do, and have already started to do.
And eventually it will sink in. It’s merely a question of how often it is repeated. By dint of repetition — “Israeli-occupied West Bank”– established itself in the minds of men. And by dint of repetition, and what’s more, appeals to history and morality and evidence and logic, “Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria” can establish itself in the minds of men. The verbal victories of those conducting Lesser Jihads here and there and everywhere need not be permanent. They can be found out, analyzed, held up for inspection and analysis and ridicule. They can be replaced by phrases that express the truth as fair-minded non-Muslims, those not subject to the well-known mental pathologies either of antisemitism or anti-Americanism, see it. And many others will come to see that truth, if the damage of the past forty years is undone.
And it can be undone.