Sharon, God & Ugly England
Ariel Sharon has to be the most myopic and pig-headed Israeli prime minister ever. I am sad to say it, but his arrogance borders on insanity, and it will cost America, as well as Israel, dearly.
Let's face it. Without America Israel would not exist. It would never have survived 50 years of Arab aggression, and it is high time that Israelis and Jews the world over came to realize that Islamic fundamentalist fanatics hate America for its support of Israel. Continuing to play hardball to satisfy a small core of Israeli voters is craven and eventually self-defeating. Sharon and his clique do not seem to realize that more people were killed on Sept. 11 than in all of Israel's wars since independence in 1948. Equally ironically, both Sharon and bin Laden share the belief that the Israeli lobby in Washington controls American foreign policy.
Well, I got news for both. As Japan discovered back in 1941, Uncle Sam is slow to anger, but when he gets there, there's hell to pay. Israel may be America's loyal ally, but it has to be made to understand that neither Israeli security nor Western interests are served by needlessly provoking the Palestinians. Which Israel has done repeatedly with the establishment of illegal settlements in territory that even Israeli hard-liners concede should be under Palestinian self-rule. Urged on by Jewish fundamentalist groups who demand the right to settle the whole of ancient Israel, Sharon and his government seem to have lost their bearings and are becoming as much a threat to peace as their Islamic counterparts. Israeli security is not enhanced by these illegal settlements. To the contrary. In the past, other Israeli governments have made concessions and managed to establish peace with Egypt and Jordan. Today, parochial concerns such as the settlements in the West Bank put the settlers under fire and stir unnecessary trouble between America and the Arabs.
Israel has to honor its longstanding obligations to America in the latter's hour of need. For far too long Israeli extremists have been calling Palestinians animals and vermin, stealing their water, humiliating them at checkpoints, supporting the army's razing of their houses and digging up of their crops. Sharon has to be made to understand that America will no longer put up with Sabra and Shatila type of behavior. Yitzak Rabin, where are you now that the world truly needs you?
...And now for some good news. I hear from the mother of my children, who happened to be in the city during the outrage, that churches are packed. As The Wall Street Journal reported, "the most striking appearance on the national stage has been made by God..." This, as far as I'm concerned, is excellent news. Western culture was built on religion and will survive because people believe in themselves and in God. Atheist societies have never made it. Secularists may try to poison our youth all they want, but the proof is in the pudding. Atheist societies wither, their birth rates decline as they choose comfort over procreation. Art and literature turn decadent and pornographic, and the people turn to drugs and excessive alcohol consumption.
As no one can prove or disprove the existence of God, all sorts of charlatans and cringing apologists for Western imperialism take every opportunity to sow doubt and cynicism in our culture. What these clowns cannot do, however, is to disprove that all cultures need the spiritual and divine, and that without the spiritual all's lost. Faith in God moves hearts and souls, and offers consolation in suffering. Many a tyrant scorned religion, Stalin being the best example, but when his country was about to be overrun, he quickly realized how much Mother Russia needed the church. The only way we can defeat militant Islam is to have as much faith as they do. Otherwise they will win in the long run.
...The delight of certain lefty European journalists at America's "bloody nose" is sickening. Although I wrote about this two weeks ago, it is worth repeating, if only as a cautionary tale. The snidest remark this side of Kabul came from the New Statesman, a left-wing English weekly that once upon a time held some prestige. No longer. The rag claimed that American bond traders somehow deserve to be terrorized because they are responsible for globalization in the horrific form of Coca-Cola and so on.
If you think this is bizarre, try to understand that the warped minds in the New Statesman assume that the 6000 and plus dead were all replicas of Gordon Gekko. As Jonathan Foreman pointed out in the Daily Telegraph recently, the fact that most of the employees of Cantor Fitzgerald came from working-class backgrounds and from Korea, Colombia and Ireland does not seem to register with the NS scum.
Thank God no one in America reads that NS crap; very few do in the rainy and unpleasant land that England has become.