We have with us, and apparently are doomed to always have with us, those who have spent their entire professional lives on the “Arab-Israeli dispute” — or, as it is now known so tendentiously, the “Israel/Palestine problem.” And none of them — not the aaron millers (with the “fourcoreissues” of “settlementssecurityJerusalemrefugees”), not the dennis-rosses (with the “fourcoreissues” of “settlementsJerusalemrefugeessecurity”), not the richard-haases (with the “fourcoreissues” of “Jerusalemrefugeessecuritysettlements”), not the martin-indyks (with the “fourcoreissues” of “Jerusalemsecuritysettlementsrefugees”) — have ever studied, have ever grasped the relevance of Islam. Because what Islam is in the minds of men is not so obviously visible to them as are the “fourcoreissuesofJerusalemsecurityrefugeessettlements,” it is so much easier for them to believe, in good American fashion, that there is a “problem” and that this “problem” can be solved.
They believe it is susceptible of “solution” — one-state, two-state, three-state-potato four. And they wish very much to believe this, because if, for some reason, it could be shown that this war on Israel is a Jihad, and that Jihad is a permanent part of Islam, then where would those hasses and millers and rosses ahnd indyks be? Where would they have been for the last several decades of their lives? Who would have received, instead of them, the money they get from naive rich Jewish endowers, believing themselves to be “helping Israel,” of this or that Washington think-tank that still keeps putting on the same damn performance of “Hamlet” without the Prince, putting out solemn papers and Op/Eds that assume the non-relevance of, or that wilfully ignore, Islam? Those think-tank endowers — “as for thinking, the recipients of our largesse will do that for us” — assume that the dennis-rosses and the aaron-millers and the martin-indyks and the richard-hasses must, simply must, know what they are talking about, and what’s more, must, simply must, be “pro-Israel” — whatever that is supposed to mean when it is applied to those who refuse to understand, who willfully will not understand, the real nature of the permanent war (a manageable war, but a permanent one) that is being waged against Israel. That war uses many instruments besides the most obvious ones of terrorism and qitaal. That war is not to be avoided or ended by any Israeli concessions. All such concessions — all of them — merely whet and do not sate Arab Muslim appetites. All such concessions — all of them — are occasions when Israel deliberately sits mum about its own considerable — overwhelming in fact — legal, moral, and historic claims, and the more Israel does that, “for the sake of peace,” the more the world, and even worse, Israelis themselves, forget those legal, moral and historic claims, forget that they are in the right.
The dopes must be shown up to be dopes. Their funders must be made to see this, and then to de-fund them. They must no longer serve as the full-of-fault default advisers to candidates. They must be held up for ridicule, mocked to scorn, with their “fourcoreissues” that never include the One Big Core Issue: Islam.
Arab Muslims do not, have not, and never will accept the existence of the Infidel nation-state. They can be forced to acquiesce in its existence, as they do now. They can, some of them, possibly decide that the game is not worth the candle, if the stakes, for them, and the damage that will be inflicted on them, in turn, simply becomes too obviously high. But Israel should no longer make a single concession in any of its many negotiations and treaties with Muslim Arab states. These concessions are always made in the coin of real, tangible, non-recoverable things — land, for which successive Israeli governments could not or would not firmly and resolutely state, and then maintain, their legal claims. These legal claims arise from both the precise provisions of the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine, and from the laws and customs that in modern times have always applied in post-bellum settlements. The victors — particularly those who have repeatedly been the victims of aggression — keep territory they have won. “Peace” is what the victor offers the vanquished. Certainly it is not the defeated who are in a position to expect that an offer of a false “Peace” will be taken seriously. Why false, one of those “experts” listed above tries to protest in a voice that is breaking? Well, all any of those fourcoreissue experts need do is look at the record of all those negotiations and those treaties. Then, for the reasons that explain that unbroken record of broken promises, they may consult Majid Khadduri’s War and Peace in the Law of Islam, or otherwise familiarize themselves with the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and its significance.
Memo to American Presidents, to American Secretaries of State and Defense, to American diplomats and all those who are involved, or want to be, in “solving” the “Israel/Palestine Question”:
When going to the Middle East in order to “find out what the people in the region think” (a condoleeza-riceish conceit) by hearing from the mouth of some “moderate” Arab leader “what must be done,” make sure you are prepared. (For this fact-finding any old Hussein or Abdullah of Jordan will do nicely. Once it was the plucky little king, as he used to be called, Hussein. Now it is his less plucky son Abdullah, squiring Obama about in a Mercedes 600 and telling him why the Americans really must put pressure on Israel in order to “calm” the Middle East down. One can just imagine his spiel: “I say this as a true friend of the United States! My days at Deerfield were my happiest, you know. And have you seen my wife?”) When you, diplomat or candidate or Cabinet member or President, are going to the Middle East, make sure you know all about Islam. Make sure you have set yourself to school, and not at a school where your smiling tutor is sly John Esposito or the army of apologists for Islam abroad in the land.
Need a reading list? That can be supplied. Want a private tutorial? That too.
Just make sure you fix on Islam: the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics of the Belief System, and the history of Islamic conquest over the past 1350 years, from the Iberian Peninsula to the East Indies.
Islam. Don’t leave home without it.