The Reason for the Mistaken 1993 (and following) Policies

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Jun 2, 2007 at 15:16

While I agree with Dr Pipes that the 1993 policy, and its later chapters, was mistaken, I don't blame the Israeli leadership for this mistake (or rather I only hold it in small part responsible - see below).

The real reason the policy of trying to accommodate or cajole the Palestinians into accepting a State compatible with Israel's immediate security (and the West's ultimate security) has been such a disastrous mistake is the assumption by everybody in the West that such a goal is achievable.

Put conversely, this policy has been a disaster just because the Western thinking about it has never included, and does not now include, the question, "What if this is impossible because the Palestinian leaders and other Arab leaders just don't want a Palestinian State if the premise of that State is a genuine acceptance of Israel?"

I hold that the refusal of the leaders of the West - the moral, religious, and intellectual as well as political leaders - to ask this question created just too much pressure on Israel to follow a doomed course of action. The Israeli leaders did cave, but I do not hold them as responsible as I do the aforementioned "leaders' of the West. Indeed, I regard 9/11 and subsequent attacks as continued results of the ongoing failure to confront the inherent (and lunatic) supremacist ideology and theology of Islam.

If I attach any responsibility to the Israeli leaders of 1993 and the following years, it is for their failure to keep trying to tell the various "leaders", and Public Opinion, of the West that what everybody claims to want - 'Two States living side by side in peace' - may simply be unachievabble until the West has achieved a decisive moral victory over Islamic world supremacism.

I attach the same small but definite degree of responsibility to Daniel Pipes for his continued allegiance to something called "moderate" Islam. And I would ask him what firm evidence is there that "moderate" (presuambly non-terrorist) Islam is anti-suprermacist?

Ron Thompson

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