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JOSEPH C. PHILLIPS: The Price of Peace In The Middle East
The purveyors of death and destruction are very often quite honest about their intentions. Hutu extremists talked of a final solution for their Tutsi brethren for years before the slaughter began. In the weeks leading up to the genocide, Colonel Theoneste Bagasora, one of the organizers of the Hutu death squads, promised to bring down the apocalypse. He kept his word.
What then is one to make of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the destruction of Israel? Or the Arab world’s continued promise to establish Palestine from the river to the sea? To raise the flag of Islam over Jeruselum and over the entire world? And what are we to make of the supposedly moderate Council For American Islamic Relations (CAIR) when they publish editorials proclaiming the root of the agony in the Middle East to be the creation of the state of Israel and the solution, therefore, to be the elimination of Israel?
A question for those in the international community that are demanding restraint from Israel: What would happen if Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Aqsa Brigade et al, were to lay down their arms? The answer is that Israel would withdraw to her borders and mind her own business. Conversely, what would happen if Israel laid down her weapons? The answer: A slaughter would ensue that would make Rwanda look like a stroll through the park. That is the cold hard reality of the situation in the Middle East.
Into this reality steps the international community begging Israeli moderation and a negotiated settlement that will bring peace. But what is meant by peace and what is its’ cost if in the end it avoids a real solution? Should Israel lay down her arms and count on the collective moral conscience of the “international community” to prevent the slaughter? Alas, the international community has a rather poor record when it comes to genocide. In 1994, then chief of UN peace keeping and current UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan, ignored warnings of the impending massacre, the United States government dickered about the exact meaning of the word “genocide” and that bastion of moral righteousness, France, sold weapons to the Rwandan government (i.e. Hutu extremists) allowing them to proceed with their work more efficiently. I fear our faith in the efficacy of the “global test” may be misplaced.
True peace between nations is reached when the cost of war becomes too high or when peace is mutually beneficial. For this reason, it is said that diplomacy often works best when conducted beneath the sword.
For Israel the price of peace at the risk of extermination seems outrageously high. But so too is the price of peace for the Arab world. The mythology of Arab oppression by the west and Israel in particular is too seductive.
Understand that the actions of Hezbollah and other extremists in the region are not motivated by a hatred of Israel and the west, but by faithfulness to the lucrative illusion of Arab victimhood. And the agony of innocents is a great marketing tool. Hezbollah fires rockets from densely packed suburban areas thus making targets of civilians and they are heroes. When Israel responds, they are war criminals. International sympathy grows; foreign investment in the myth increases and political influence expands. An independent state of Palestine is secondary. First, they must battle to rid themselves of the yoke of Western opression. What is the loss of a few women and children when there is so much more to gain through continued violence?
Oddly enough, Rwandan Hutus also soght to eradicate Tutsis not to create suffering among Tutsis, but to alleviate their own. Arab extremists have donned a similar raiment of victimhood and currently couch their genocidal aims in very similar terms.
So the international community is faced with a problem that can’t easily be negotiated away. The question on the table is quite literally whether one side will be allowed to eradicate the other from the face of the earth. The Arab world has been rather forthright in its aims. It is typical of the international community that many refuse to listen.
True peace -- as opposed to a temporary cease fire -- will only come to the Middle East when the residents grow tired of the smell of gun smoke or when the Arab community finally decides that there is more to gain in building a nation than there is in destroying one.
Joseph C. Phillips is an actor/writer based in Los Angeles. His column appears regularly in newspapers and and he is a regular commentator on News and Notes with Ed Gordon on NPR. Phillips is the author of "He Talk Like A White Boy" now available wherever books are sold; it can also be purchased online here: http://subnorks.notlong.com. Contact him at: Joseph@josephcphillips.com
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