All Together Now--Cry For The Poor Palestinians

Way back in the dark ages otherwise known as the Forties, there was a series of affrays in a small portion of the Mideast then called on all the maps as "Palestine" or the "Palestinian Mandated Territory."  The interlocking series of nasty little wars called either the "War of Independence" or "The Catastrophe" was occasioned by a combination of factors.  Some of these factors were indigenous to the region.  Others, far larger in impact on both the people of the region and the world generally, were the result of a specific ideology applied ruthlessly by a particular regime and its allies in other countries.

One result of the affray was the generation of a generation of refugees.  It is critical to understand that the refugees were not simply a mass of ever-so-innocent civilian victims caught between the millstones of events and forces far outside their control.  Nor was there any thought at the time of the affrays and their concomitant refugee streams that the displaced individuals and their descendants would be the pawns of governments and ideological devotees for years, decades, and finally generations.

On occasions, social and political forces have a power which transcends the capacity of any government or group of governments to control.  The months and years immediately following the end of World War II in Europe and the revelations regarding the magnitude of the Nazi campaign of racial extermination now called the "Holocaust" was such an occasion.

The movement to create (or, perhaps more accurately, to recreate) the ancient Jewish homeland in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire known as Palestine had been underway in a series of fits and starts since the late Nineteenth Century.  The confusingly ambiguous bit of British political expediency executed during the worst days of World War I known as the Balfour Declaration provided some seeming basis for the creation of a "Jewish National Homeland" in the Ottoman occupied territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  A brilliantly worded bit of diplomatic gibberish, the Balfour Declaration appeared to provide either (A) the foundation of a Jewish state or (B) a Jewish homeland inside an Arab state or (C) both.

The Arabs resident in the land more or less affected by the Declaration both cooperated with and bitterly opposed the transfer of land from Arab to Jewish ownership. Some Arabs, primarily absentee landowners, were quite willing to sell their land to Jews.  Other Arabs, primarily lesser landholders and ambitious Muslim clerics, frothed with opposition.  Several times the opposition turned violent particularly when the crowds were lashed by sermons preached by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a man who was so antisemitic as to make Adolph Hitler seem a Hebrewphile in comparison.

The British ran the place as they did the neighboring territory called back then "the Trans-Jordan."  The British government was at best given to vacillation regarding the settlement of Jews in the territory given to their mandate by the League of Nations.  Most of the time both the British Army and Foreign Ministry were dominated by Arabists given to a romantic view of the Arabs.  In practice this meant the relevant officials on the ground in the region as well as back in London tilted British policy to fit the desires, not to say demands, of the Arabs.  Even as the Nurenberg War Crimes Tribunal was hearing the evidence of the mass slaughter of the Jews of Europe as a state policy, the British government and its minions in Palestine consistently favored the Arab position of total opposition to the creation of even a minimalist form of Jewish National Homeland.

The revelations of the Nazi state policy of mass slaughter did have a profound impact on many people both in Europe and the US.  Americans were notably disturbed by the images and testimony of gas chambers and death transports.  While mild and "gentlemanly" antisemitism had been a common currency in the US prior to the end of the war, all such attitudes and behaviors were set aside with rapidity and vigor under the impact of the tales of savage, premeditated murder on a scale previously unthinkable.

The US became a supporter of the more expansive interpretation of the Balfour Declaration.  This support was not highly visible.  It was not one of loud voices in Congress or demonstrations in the street.  This was not the American way in those more innocent days.  Still, the mood of We the People was evident.  There was a sense of collective guilt within much of the American elite.  We had stood silent on the sidelines during the Thirties.  We had refused to believe the first horrifying stories of persecution as they oozed out of Germany and German occupied territory.  During the war, we had done nothing to impede the machinery of slaughter even as our government (like that of the UK) became increasingly aware of its existence.

Guilt required atonement.  The atonement took the form of supporting the creation of a Jewish state in the mandated territory of Palestine.  It can and has been argued that the American guilt feelings had the net result of transferring misery from the Jews of Europe to the Arabs of Palestine.  There may be a shred of truth to this.  But, if so, it is irrelevant.

The US did its dead level best to see the Jewish state brought into existence peacefully with the least possible ill-effects for the already resident Arab population.  We bent much diplomatic influence to this task.  The influence was backed with money.  We invoked the UN.  We tried negotiation.  We urged the Arab governments to step back, work with us in solving a problem which had an impact on the Jews of Europe, the Arab Muslims of the Mideast, and other people and religions far from both the Mideast and Europe.  To us, the problem of the Jewish state was an affair which had meaning and impact for humanity generally.

The crux of the problem, the single reason a diplomatic question became a shooting war rests not with the Jews of Europe seeking a permanent sanctuary nor with the ideology of Zionism.  The responsibility for the wars does not reside with the US or with the European states.  Most assuredly, it does not rest with the pro-Arab men of the British government and military.  No.  None of these can have the tail of fault pinned on their behinds.

All the responsibility for the war and the refugees rests solely with the Arab governments of the day.  Well. to err on the side of accuracy, some of the blame must rest with the Muslim clerics who preached not only holy war against the hated Jews and their infidel supporters but also called upon Arab Muslims to leave their homes, to flee to the protection of the armies of the faithful so as to return in victory behind the conquering tanks of the believers.

Arab tanks were rolling.  Arab artillery was firing.  Arab infantry were shooting.  All even before the new state of Israel proclaimed its existence.  The war was on, declared not by words but by shooting, shelling, and bombing long before any state could recognize the existence of the new state.

The Arab armies moved long before the UN could urge peace.  The Arab armies sought to extinguish the nascent Jewish state before any UN resolution seeking a peaceful ending could be introduced let alone passed and put into effect.  The so-called "Catastrophe" was made by Arabs. Period.  End of discussion.

The same applies in the main to the production of the pitiful columns of refugees and the long, bitter aftermath in the camps.  The important phrase here is, "in the main."  For the Jews do not have clean hands in the matter of forced evacuations.

It is important to remember that to the shame and discredit of Israel then and now, some Jewish militia units, particularly those of the Palmach, engaged in atrocities intended to force Arabs from their ancestral homes, to ethnically cleanse land which would be incorporated in the Jewish state.  Unarmed civilians including old men, women, and children were massacred on a scale not different from that practiced by Serbians against their Muslim fellow citizens.  To the further discredit of the government of Israel, it did its best to cover up the evidence of the atrocities for decades.  It has been only recently that the relevant documents have come to light--due to the efforts of Israeli historians whose dedication to their craft overpowered feelings of patriotism.

However, the primary responsibility resides with Arab governments and Muslim clerics who used all manner of persuasion to convince Arabs to pack up and leave in the full (and false) expectation of a speedy and victorious return.  In the wars of independence, as in the Six Day War nearly twenty years later, the Arab states and Muslim clerics were co-conspirators in crimes against the Arabs of the disputed lands.

However, the Arab states and Muslim cleric were not alone in the commission of the offense.  They were aided and abetted by the UN.  The UN formed an office tasked with the resettlement, relief, and care of the refugees.

Admittedly, the UN sincerely if misguidedly conceived of the operation as short-lived, a temporary humanitarian expedient which would end with the coming of peace.  Unfortunately, the oft-seen process of the temporary becoming permanent worked once again with the UN effort at relief, resettlement, and reintegration of the Palestinian displaced persons.  The ever expanding network of refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, and elsewhere took on a life of its own.  A new, always growing bureaucracy of refugee relief workers became a permanent feature of the human terrain of the Mideast.

The reason for this resides not so much with the UN bureaucrats as it does with the Arab states.  To the various governments of the so-called "frontline" states, the refugees and their camps became welcome pawns and tools in the forever war being waged by these states against Israel.  There was no desire on the part of any of these governments to see the Palestinian refugees effectively integrated into their own populations.

At the same time, assorted ambitious political leaders within the refugee population saw their way to power, status, and (dare it be written) wealth rested with keeping the refugees in their degraded and alienated position.  And, in the shadow, there were more than a few clerics of the political Islam tendency who saw advantage in having the rootless refugees available as potential recruits in the overarching holy war against Jews and infidels alike.

An unintended combination of international aid workers, agenda driven clerics, and self-interested states assured the camps and their wretched inhabitants would stay as a major feature of the social and political landscape of the region.  And, so it is today.  And, so it will stay tomorrow absent a severe alteration of the stances of the frontline governments as well as the leadership of the new unity government of Hamas and the Fatah dominated Palestinian Authority.

Arguably, the UN office, now called UNRWA, is the single major player in altering the terrain of camps and refugees.  Considering the existence of the Palestinian Authority, it can be asserted fairly that the camps as well as the UN bureaucracy no longer needs to exist.  Further, it is not inaccurate to argue that the best thing that UNRWA can do on behalf of its wards is to go out of existence.

By ceasing to exist, UNRWA would compel the Palestinian Authority including its Hamas branch to take proper responsibility for the well being of its citizens.  The reality now is that Palestinians are not and should not be wards of a giant and hugely expensive but inefficient welfare bureaucracy.  Rather, they are citizens of a nascent state with a government which exists in all but name.

UNRWA must go.  That is it must go if the UN is serious about being concerned about the best interests of the refugees and their descendants.  The wars which produced the refugees ended more than forty years ago. The youngest of the authentic refugees are in their mid-sixties.  It is long overdue to blow the whistle on UNRWA and tell the refugees and their third generation descendants that they are not going home--that where they live right now is home.

Of course UNRWA will not do the right thing.  The bureaucrats, the international aid workers, are not about to give up their phony jobs.  The chiefs and their chief assistants are not about to say give us no more money, our work here is done.

That is evident in the latest sob story out of UNRWA.  The violins are weeping in the background as the high minded, lofty thinking folks at the agency dry their tears over the very high unemployment in Gaza.  There is no end of gnashing of teeth, beating of breasts, and pulling of hair over the human costs of the unemployment which (stand by to be shocked) is caused solely by the Israeli "blockade" of Gaza.

Of course this interpretation is a mass of pooh-pooh.  The real deal is that Gaza under Hamas has no economic reason to exist.  Beyond that, it has been the policies and actions of Hamas which have made the Israeli "blockade" necessary.  As long as UNRWA exists to take up the slack, to feed, to house, to educate, to medicate, to apologize for, and generally tend to the so-called refugees, there will be no effective pressure on either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to act like a responsible government and create the conditions and context necessary to assure that Palestine has an economic reason to exist as well as the ability to attract investment capital and create employment.

Down in the religious and political mire of the Arab states, deep under the cover of the "Arab Spring," each and every government continues to cynically exploit the "refugees" as part of their forever war against the Jews and their infidel supporters.  Commensual with the cynics of mosque and chancery are the self-serving and self-preserving international bureaucrats and aid workers of UNRWA.  This unlikely but lethal troika keeps its collective boot firmly on the neck of the Palestinian "refugees."

Pity the poor Palestinians.  Not for their unemployment.  Not for their alleged poverty.  Not for their purported longing for long lost olive groves and stone huts.  Pity them for their delusions.  Pity them for having been manipulated, propagandized, used, and exploited by cynics in the mosque, cynics in the chanceries of all the Arab states, and cynics at Turtle Bay.  Pity the Palestinians most of all for having died in their spirit, for having thrown away their own autonomy in order to become an army of automatons ordered, directed, and controlled by people who have nothing but contempt for them.

Pity the Palestinians, hollow shells of one time humanity, sacrificed on the alters of ambition.  Look at them in their mobs, their multitudes of misery, and remind yourself that once they were human.

Comes Now The Fallout

All political turmoil has fallout.  The more dramatic and seemingly revolutionary the turmoil, the more intense, long lasting, and unpredictable the fallout.  So it is with the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" events of Tunisia and Egypt.

The first signs of the spreading wave of destabilizing aftershocks of the overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia have shown themselves most dramatically with waves of illegal immigrants hitting the rocky shores of the microscopic Italian island of Lampedusa.  The mass (more than five thousand and counting over the weekend) of economic refugees has panicked the Italian government.  With good reason.

Italy has already been the target of opportunity for refugees from much of Africa usually funneled through Libya and thence by small, overloaded boats to the outpost of Lampedusa.  The Italian government howled last year as the waves crested and beat down on the shores of the island.  Already facing high domestic unemployment, a yawning budget gap, threatened default on sovereign debt, the last thing the always rickety government needed was the burden of refugees in numbers almost beyond count.  Nor has it helped that most of the economic opportunity seekers are Muslim, which fact exacerbates the large and growing sense of alienation within their own country felt by Italians (and many other nationalities as well.)

The European Union has been generous in its initial offering of economic assistance to the transitional regime in Tunisia.  The organization has committed itself to a 347 million dollar gift between now and 2013 with an immediate tranche of 23 million underway.  Yet even this generous an offer to a country of eleven million is not sufficient to provide an instant economic boost sufficient to offset the unemployment and underemployment crisis which did so much to trigger the overthrow movement.  Even if the US comes through with an equivalent or greater amount, the aggregate will not be sufficient to meet the expectations of the successful practitioners of "people power."

The necessary inference is that more Tunisians will get on board more boats and hope to get to Europe.  Italy being the closest place, it is only expectable that the current flood (described by an Italian official as "Biblical") will continue and grow.  The Italian proposal to "assist" the Tunisian authorities in stemming the flow by stationing Italian police and other security forces in Tunisian territory was a rational albeit politically ill-considered response to the looming crisis.

It is not surprising that the transitional government rejected the Italian offer as an insult to Tunisian sovereignty and national dignity.  The Tunisians may need the assistance desperately, but there is no way foreign security forces can be accepted without fatal political consequences.  Revolutions, even those of the leaderless sort, are not known for rationality.

It is a bit harder to understand the thundering denunciation by the German ForMin of Italy's plea for a unified European Union stance on the migration crisis.  Herr Westerwelle undoubtedly understands that the EU is already threatened by losing control of its collective external border as has been underscored by the massive influx of Turks across the border into Greece and thence throughout the Union.  The addition of economically motivated masses from Tunisia--and quite probably Egypt as well--will have severe internal political consequences for both the EU and many of its member states.  The anxiety felt by many Europeans over the growing Islamization of the region is not baseless and is not going to go away soon.

The possibility of Egyptians joining the exodus should not be discounted hastily.  The removal of Mubarak will not create any new jobs.  Even a robustly prosecuted campaign to retrieve the billions allegedly stolen by the  Mubarak family and cronies will do nothing in the short term to address the very real economic problems confronting the Egyptians.  Given that the tourism industry has been damaged by the events of the past three weeks and that the extent of the damage is not yet known, there is a high probability that unemployment and its evil twin underemployment will continue upward.

The bitter truth has not yet spread through the enthusiastic "revolutionaries" of Tahiri Square:  Removal of a dictator, no matter how odious, does not in and of itself do a damned thing to enhance the economic quality of life generally.  When the realization does sink in, the consequences are not predictable in detail, but it is fair to posit that one result will be a flow of Egyptians from the Land of the Nile to anywhere north where jobs might be found.  Being a lot larger in population than Tunisia, it is safe to assume that even if the percentage of economic refugees is small, the aggregate number will be large.

The EU had best take note of what is happening in that small and distant rock of Lampedusa and pull together a common stance on the question of economic refugees generally--or simply surrender to the latest outbreak of Volkwanderung.  Economic grants alone will not do the job of keeping Egyptians home.  Considering the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, the size and characteristics of the Egyptian population, there simply is not enough free money floating around to reconstitute the Egyptian economy fast enough or completely enough to seduce the folks into staying where they are.

Refugees are only one of the fallout aspects attendant upon the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.  There is another, potentially far more damaging bit of unintended consequence at work here.  That is the status of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.  The Supreme Military Council could not bring itself to mention that treaty specifically.  Instead the assembled generals confined their commitment to maintaining all currently extant "international agreements."

It is known that the generals are not of a single mind regarding the treaty.  Some, like the current Minister of Defense and de facto chief-of-state, are in favor of keeping it intact.  Others are in favor of either scrapping it or seriously restructuring it.  A leading moderate, secular political leader, Ayman Nour, has opined that the the treaty is finished.  He is in favor of a total renegotiation of the historic agreement signed by Anwar Sadat over thirty years ago.

The treaty is the single greatest reason the US tied itself so closely to both Sadat and Mubarak.  We were willing to ignore the many ways in which Egypt violated the spirit of both the Treaty and the Camp David Accords as long as the peace held.  The government of Israel was willing to do the same.  Keeping a peace, even a very, very cold one, was much preferred over allowing the resumption of war either direct or via proxy.

Arguably, the Mubarak regime became less and less willing to avoid war by proxy given the greater flow of weapons to Gaza in the past few years.  Certainly, there is no love lost for Israel either at governmental or popular levels within Egypt.  Nor is the Muslim Brotherhood solely responsible for the monolithic hatred of Israel or the burgeoning industry in antisemitic film, written materials, or television programs which exists in Egypt.  It is fair to conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood is not the only group in Egypt endlessly hostile to both Israel and Jews.

While there is very little probability of the Egyptian military undertaking another war with Israel in the event the treaty is nullified, there is every probability that Egyptian support for proxies such as Hamas would increase.  This is likely to occur even if the Treaty is allowed to soldier on in formal existence.  Mubarak had been trending in that direction as a sop to public opinion if for no other reason, and it is most probable that both the transitional government and whatever successor finally comes to power will do the same--just more openly.

Democracy will do nothing to assure the peace continues.  No blathering about elections, people's will, transparency, and other nice sounding warm, fuzzy words will do one iota to keep the peace.  Nor will these words create jobs, fix broken economies, feed the hungry, or do anything else real and material.

The American administration as well as its European equivalents will be well advised to keep this in mind as they pull out the stops on promoting democracy.  It ain't a magic wand.  It neither keeps peace, assures prosperity, or ends hatred.