It’s looking more and more like a strong possibility. The odd support of the left around the world in support of an extreme right wing violent agenda may make this a reality:
This problem is not exactly new, though the trends have certainly worsened over the past few years. For years after Oslo, virtually everyone agreed on a two-state solution. This made sense, since Palestinians themselves were asking to remain separate from Jews.
But now, we hear lots of talk of a one-state solution, in which the Jewish remnant in a unified nation would very soon lose its unique character through simple demography. “It would have been beyond the pale years ago, but now they talk of an Apartheid state, even though Israel is a multicultural country where all citizens, Jew and Arab alike, have the very same civil rights — and next door in the Palestinian territories and the Arab lands, Jews were kicked out of their homes and would not be safe in those countries today. Yet none of this is even discussed.”
Can Palestinians truly develop a free marketplace of ideas without a political revolution? Will the Anti-Semitic media factories of incitement get put out of business anytime soon?
If there is a solution, it may have to come from Palestinians themselves, given how awesomely counter-productive international efforts from Canada, Israel and the rest of the international community have been. Palestinian Affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh is mournful on this topic. “You are funding Palestinian television, radio stations and newspapers with millions of dollars so that they can incite people to kill Jews. If anyone watches Palestinian television for just five minutes, they’ll want to go out and stab Jews immediately. Palestinians have been fed a steady stream of this hate for years and your taxpayer dollars are funding it.”
Palestinian Cleric “Explains” the “Jewish Nature” on Palestinian Authority TV
Having a well-publicized reputation as the most unpredictable and ultra-violent maniac in the neighborhood seems like a decent strategy for getting others to leave you alone. But for Israel, can this strategy translate into long-term security from a nuclear Iran or the threat of being singled out as a pariah state?
I’ll be touring around Israel all week and plan to provide regular dispatches on my experiences and some mostly sober thoughts inspired by what I see. A few essays I whipped up on the flight from Toronto to Tel Aviv:
I’m dead tired and a bit flustered at not being on my home turf for what will be a game-changing event when it comes to Canada’s role in Afghanistan. Must retire for a bit.
The Size Doesn’t Matter campaign is a brilliant counter to the Israel Apartheid Week. When debate is rendered meaningless, but turning the other cheek isn’t your bag, satire and counter-culture jamming makes a lot of sense.
Instead of images of Palestinians at checkpoints, we get a shot of a nearly-naked supermodel. Forget Gaza — look at this Mediterranean beach! What happened to the kids throwing stones at a Merkava tank? They must be hiding behind the stage at that rock concert. Forget for a moment the statistics on the number of Palestinians living below the poverty line. Let’s have a look at some facts about Israel’s achievements in the fields of science, medicine and the protection of civil rights (for both Israeli Jews and Arabs in equal measure, naturally).
Cynics will look at this social media campaign and its publicized events at campuses across Canada as an offensive distraction to the grim IAW movement. But that’s the point. It’s meant to be.
IAW is itself a distraction and a decisively unhelpful one when it comes to actually solving the horrendous challenge of Middle East peace. Putting out Size Doesn’t Matter as a distraction to the distraction is exactly the strategy to use.
We live in a culture where political correctness has dulled the ability of both students and their teachers to distinguish between a liberal democracy and a lawless tyranny. In that context, sowing confusion among the holier-than-thou fundamentalists and proto-fascists with a campaign of big boobs, bright lights and some reminders about the gay-friendly, women-friendly and eco-friendly nature of the Jewish state just plain works.
“It may be small, but it has brought the driest places to life!”
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