Can't rule Palestinians in 21st century the way the British ruled India in the 19th century

Submitted by Ian Mordant (United Kingdom), Jul 1, 2006 at 06:44

Dear Dr Pipes,

Your prescription for how Israel would best relate to the Palestinians - basically a divide and rule strategy backed up by the military, has little chance of working. The reason is due to globalised communications, and the growing globalised ability of the world's 1400 million believers in Islam to concentrate their hatred on Israel, if given enough incentive. In other words your prescription, which is broadly to rerun the British Empire in say India, in the West Bank and Gaza, simply isn't viable in our day and age.

I have no illusions that Israel can win many friends; the best it can hope for is for most people to be as neutral about Israel and the Palerstinians as I am towards the Greeks versus the Turks. I've no idea who is more in the right or in the wrong in that dispute, and have no particular wish to know. Were Israel to fuflill your prescriptions however, there would be a serious growth in sympathy for the Palestinans.

I do think we've 100 years of strife ahead of us; the Protocols of the Elders of Zion isn't in the Hamas Covenant for nothing, anymore than the refusal of the Muslim Council of Britain to attend memorial meetings of the Nazi death machine on 27th January attended by the Prime Minister, is either.

One thing we could do is point out the likely falsity of the belief that the Koran in Arabic is the direct word of the creator of the universe; on the contrary the book by Christoph Luxenberg showing that the Koran is very likely a translation from Syro-Aramaic, the written language of those days, could do with being translated from german into English, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, etc. ...

Ian Mordant

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