To my Arab brothers: The War with Israel Is Over — and they won. Now let's finally move forward

[DanXIII 8]

An Arab's take on the ME situation: Just let go of the suicide cult. And your children will live good lives.

 

http://jewishworldreview.com/0706/ibrahim.php3

 

By Youssef M. Ibrahim

 

With Israel entering its fourth week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks. The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:

 

 

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:

 

The war with Israel is over.

 

You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.

 

We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.

 

Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.

 

At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.

 

You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.

 

Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

 

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.

 

What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?

 

We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.

 

Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.

 

Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.

 

Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods — more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives — while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.

 

The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

 

 

 

Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former New York Times Middle East Correspondent and Wall Street Journal Energy Editor for 25 years, is a freelance writer based in New York City and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

[davebg 0]

Well said.

[cday 0]

nice. i've been saying something similar for a while.. 'there was a war, you lost, they get your land, get over it', though the article touches on better points like schools, economy, etc.

 

if only people would listen. :\

[Electric Mayhem 35]

Did anyone snopes this yet?

[Sho Nuff 719]

Did anyone snopes this yet?

 

Even if not...as if any radical will listen to a guy who has worked for the American companies like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or a guy who has been writing in New York.

[RLLD 3,455]

I do agree. The average regional inhabitant is unlikely to subscribe to this though. You see, they are mostly uneducated morons. The few intelligent individuals prey upon the stupidity of the populace in order to gain power and hold on to that power.

 

The jist being that they can pervert Islam to meet their desire for power and get people to do just about about anything.

[buffalobillsffl2003 0]

Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight

 

 

[DanXIII 8]

I do agree. The average regional inhabitant is unlikely to subscribe to this though. You see, they are mostly uneducated morons. The few intelligent individuals prey upon the stupidity of the populace in order to gain power and hold on to that power.

 

The jist being that they can pervert Islam to meet their desire for power and get people to do just about about anything.

 

I disagree with your apparent assertion that they are all "morons." They simply are uninformed. They see their situation from a single point-of-view, and they are rarely given access to alternative views. It is also difficult to convince people who are living in squalor that all they need to do to make peace and have a good life is to do what the Israelis want...particularly when they have been raised to believe that it is Israel and the West, and not their own leadership, who are responsible for their situation.

[RLLD 3,455]

I disagree with your apparent assertion that they are all "morons." They simply are uninformed. They see their situation from a single point-of-view, and they are rarely given access to alternative views. It is also difficult to convince people who are living in squalor that all they need to do to make peace and have a good life is to do what the Israelis want...particularly when they have been raised to believe that it is Israel and the West, and not their own leadership, who are responsible for their situation.

 

 

I tend to be harsh in my assessment with regard to these people. But it is founded in the observation of their willingness to blow themselves up, and the culture of support that exists for this. Coupled with the lack of understanding that their position is worsened with each violent action taken, my subjectivity casts them as either moronic or insane.

 

JMHO

[Gephardt69 0]

a tremendous article and if it could be distributed to people in the middle east that would be terrific... but how many arabs are regular readers of the frickin JEWISH WORLD REVIEW?