The New Three No's

Michael L.

{Cross-Posted at Jews Down Under.}

In 1967, meeting shortly after the 6 Day War in Khartoum, Sudan, the Arab League issued its famous "Three No's."  When it came to the Jews of the Middle East there would be no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations.  This is hardly surprising given the fact that for thirteen hundred years, from the time of Muhammad until the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Jews were a second and third class non-citizenry living under the submission of Islam.  Naturally the Arab League refused peace, recognition, and negotiations, because to do otherwise would be to recognize that Jews have rights to autonomy within their own homeland, a notion that directly contradicts al-Sharia.

Nothing much has changed in recent decades.  As we read in the Times of Israel:

Abbas rejected Netanyahu’s demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He also refused to abandon the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinians and their descendants — a demand that, if implemented, would drastically alter Israel’s demographic balance and which no conceivable Israeli government would accept. And finally, he refused to commit to an “end of conflict,” under which a peace deal would represent the termination of any further Palestinian demands of Israel.

How exciting!

These are the New Three No's! 

Notice, of course, that two of three of Abbas's "No's" are identical to the "No's" issued by the Arab League in Khartoum in 1967.  No peace and no recognition.

The third "no" is a little different.  Abbas is willing to sit across a table from Jews if it means the release of murderers and if he can blame his own intransigence on the Israelis for the purpose of undermining support for both the Jewish people and the Jewish State.  So, he is willing to negotiate in the sense that some of his people show up some of the time to speak mainly with Americans and others, rather than the hideous Jews.

Abbas's third "No" is his insistence on a Palestinian-Arab "right of return" for the purpose of undermining Israel's very reason to be.

But it's not as if we did not see this coming:

The Non-Peace Process 

1) The US and the EU demand negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. 

2) The parties agree to talk and then the PA, the US, and the EU demand various concessions from Israel for the great privilege of sitting down with the PA's foremost undertaker.

3) Israel fails to meet all the concessions, thus causing the PA to flee negotiations, which they never had any intention of concluding to begin with.

4) The PA and the EU and the Obama administration place the blame for failure at Jewish feet.

5) The EU and various European countries announce additional sanctions, thereby essentially joining the anti-Semitic anti-Zionist BDS movement.

6) Arabs seek to murder Jews.

So far everything looks right on schedule.

As Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary:

Having already released scores of Arab murderers, who have been subsequently honored and embraced by Abbas, there is little incentive for Netanyahu to keep letting them out if the Palestinians are not going to commit to peace talks whose purpose is an end to the conflict. If he is going to be blamed for the collapse of Kerry’s initiative no matter what he does, it would be a mistake to start making further concessions that will come back to haunt him later. The problem with injecting Pollard into peace talks is that it is the sort of American concession for which Israel will pay a disproportionate price with little prospect of receiving what it wants. That’s what happened the last time he offered to make territorial concessions in exchange for Pollard’s freedom. In the end, the Palestinians got the land, and Israel got neither Pollard nor peace.

That Israel releases the murderers of Jews is a betrayal of its mission and a betrayal of every single Jew on the planet.  We all understand why Netanyahu, under pressure from a hostile American administration, did so.  I am opposed to the releasing the murderers of Jews under virtually any conditions, but if there was some chance that it might help lead to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities then it is within the realm of reason.

The problem, of course, is that none of this is going to lead to the end of Arab government implemented hostility toward the Jews of the Middle East and therefore it is not within the realm of reason.  None of this is going to lead to peace and this is emphatically not the fault of the Jewish minority.  The theocratically-based hatred of the Arab-Muslim majority toward the Jewish minority is no more rational or decent than was white-Anglo contempt for Black people after the Civil War in the United States and in both cases the violence was preceded by the relative liberation of the targeted minority group.

When we see these racists in Hamas or Islamic Jihad wearing their head-masks and holding aloft their rifles, think of Klansmen in white hoods on horseback, because what we are facing is a racist and violent political movement, just as the Klan was a racist and violent political movement.  One significant difference, obviously, is that the Klan was primarily domestic American, whereas political Islam is international in scope and contains far and away more membership and alliances than the Klan ever had.

The sympathy of American liberals and progressives turned away from the Ku Klux Klan long ago, but it has not turned away from political Islam, despite the fact that political Islam is a far larger and more deadly movement.  Furthermore, I see nothing on the cultural or intellectual landscape to suggest that it will do so anytime soon.

The opposite, in fact, seems more the case, as the American president inclines in their favor.

The irony is rich, exceedingly sad, and more than a little dangerous.