Tag: peace

Another False Peace

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are soon to meet in Annapolis and there have been comments indicating that there’s hope for a settlement by the end of the year. Unfortunately, even if that does happen—and there’s good reason to be skeptical—that agreement will no more bring peace than the Oslo Accords or the Camp David Accords before that. The problems in the Middle East are far more complex than anything solvable by mere diplomatic agreement.

The problem boils down to this: so long as the reprehensible anti-Semitism that is endemic in the Palestinian Authority persists, there will be no peace. So long as Palestinian children are indoctrinated to hate Jews, there will be no peace. So long as the Palestinians support acts of barbarity and terrorism against Israel, there will be no peace. So long as the Palestinians think that their end goal is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, there simply can be no real settlement. The best that can be hoped for is a cold peace with both sides under constant tension. That may be possible, but it’s not going to be much different from the status quo.

Groups like Hamas don’t want peace: they seek the destruction of Israel. Their terrorist forces rain crude home-made missiles on Israeli border towns like Sderot. They continue to force-feed their population with crude propaganda. They continue to say one thing in English and then the opposite in Arabic.

Golda Mier had it right: there will be no peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis until the Palestinians love their children more than they hate Israel. Sadly, that is not the case. While Palestine continues to slide into anarchy and remains mired in poverty, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (such as it is) continue to misappropriate funds for terrorism and their personal enrichment. A wise set of rulers could have turned Gaza into a seaside paradise rather than the war zone it is.

The Palestinians may talk peace, but until they start living like they want peace with Israel, the best that Annapolis can bring is another stalemate.

The Image Of The New Iraq

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Independent journalist Michael Yon sends this amazing image with an even more amazing message behind it:

I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome. A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from ‘Chosen’ Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope. The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ the people were saying. One man said, ‘Thank you for peace.’ Another man, a Muslim, said ‘All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.’ The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)

Most of the images of Iraq that we see are images of death and destruction, of a nation that is fractured and divided. Those images fail to tell the whole story about Iraq, and it’s sad that so few are telling the stories of heroism and bravery coming from both Iraqi and American alike over there. Images like this are important because they show a side of Iraq that we rarely ever see. They tell a story that rarely gets told and is as important to this conflict as the usually stories about car bombings and murders.

We can’t know how Iraq will turn out when all of this is over—but images like this are a small but important sign of hope.