Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
When a major Arab state would finally sign a peace treaty with Israel, it was long assumed, the Arab-Israeli conflict would end. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979, however, buried that expectation; it had the perverse effect of making other states and also the Egyptian populace more anti-Zionist. The 1980s gave birth to a hope that, instead, Palestinian recognition of Israel would close the conflict. The total failure of the 1993 Declaration of Principles (also known as the Oslo Accords) then buried that expectation.
What now? Starting about 2007, a new focus emerged: winning acceptance of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state. Israelās former prime minister Ehud Olmert set the terms: āI do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state. This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state.ā Olmert was Israelās worst prime minister, but he got this one right. Arab-Israeli diplomacy has dealt with a myriad of subsidiary issues while tiptoeing around the conflictās central issue: āShould there be a Jewish state?ā Disagreement over the answer to that question ā rather than over Israelās boundaries, its exercise of self defense, its control of the Temple Mount, its water consumption, its housing construction in West Bank towns, diplomatic relations with Egypt, or the existence of a Palestinian state ā is the key issue.
Palestinian leaders responded with howls of outrage, declaring that they āabsolutely refusedā to accept Israel as a Jewish state. They even pretended to be shocked at the notion of a state defined by religion, although their own āConstitution of the State of Palestine,ā third draft, states that āArabic and Islam are the official Palestinian language and religion.ā Olmertās efforts went nowhere. On taking over the prime ministry in early 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Olmertās point in his diplomacy. Regrettably, the Obama administration endorsed the Palestinian position, again sidelining the Israeli demand. (Instead, it focuses on housing for Jews in Jerusalem. Talk about the heart of the issue.)
If Palestinian politicians reject Israelās Jewish nature, what about the Palestinian and the broader Arab and Muslim publics? Polls and other evidence suggest a long-term average of 20 percent acceptance of Israel, whether in the Mandatory period or now, whether Muslims in Canada or Palestinians in Lebanon. To learn more about current Arab opinion, the Middle East Forum commissioned Pechter Middle East Polls to ask a simple question of a thousand adults in each of four countries: āIslam defines [your state]; under the right circumstances, would you accept a Jewish state of Israel?ā (In Lebanon, the question differed slightly: āIslam defines most states in the Middle East; under the right circumstances, would you accept a Jewish state of Israel?ā)
The results: 26 percent of Egyptians and 9 percent of urban Saudi subjects answered (in November 2009) in the affirmative, as did 9 percent of Jordanians and 5 percent of Lebanese (in April 2010). The polls reveal broad consensus across such differences as occupation, socioeconomic standing, and age. For no discernable reason, more Egyptian women and Saudi and Jordanian men accept a Jewish Israel than their gender counterparts, whereas among the Lebanese both sexes rank similarly. Some significant variations exist, however: As one would expect in Lebanon, 16 percent of (largely Christian) North Lebanon accepts a Jewish Israel, in contrast to just 1 percent in the (mostly Shiāite) Bekaa Valley.
More significantly, weighting these responses by the size of their populations (respectively, 79, 29, 6, and 4 million) translates into an overall average of 20 percent acceptance of Israelās Jewishness ā neatly confirming the existing percentage. Although 20 percent constitutes a small minority, its consistency over time and place offers encouragement. That one-fifth of Muslims, Arabs, and even Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state suggests that, despite a near-century of indoctrination and intimidation, a base for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict does exist.
Would-be peacemakers must direct their attention to increasing the size of this moderate cohort. Getting from 20 percent to, say, 60 percent would fundamentally shift the politics of the Middle East, displacing Israel from its exaggerated role and releasing the peoples of this blighted region to address their real challenges ā not Zionism but such, oh, minor problems as autocracy, brutality, cruelty, conspiracism, religious intolerance, apocalypticism, political extremism, misogyny, slavery, economic backwardness, brain drain, capital flight, corruption, and drought. Daniel Pipes in the NR
