Nadine,
Spectaculor, thanks for posting it here.
Here are the three paragraphs I thought were key:
Rome doesn't understand that, in the past two years, both America and Israel have glimpsed the Islamist apocalypse. Rome thinks of September 11 as a criminal attack by a marginal group, rather than as part of a widespread anti-Western assault nurtured by key Middle Eastern regimes.
Here is my cognitive dissonance thesis about half the world already being in World War III and half the world trying to avoid a serious situation from becoming World War III. The pro-war and anti-war factions don't simply disagree, the inhabit different worlds.
Rome doesn't understand that, after the first intifada, the centrist Israeli majority accepted the legitimacy of Palestinian national claims, while no reciprocal shift occurred on the Palestinian side in accepting the legitimacy of Jewish national claims. Rome wants to believe that Sharon is the cause rather than the consequence of the Oslo breakdown.
I think that it is harsher than this. The way Oslo ended and the start of the Intifada were designed to ensure that peace couldn't happen. When Barak offered something that might be shaped into a peace agreement, the forces in the Arab world that are not interested in peace decided to up the stakes. One of the reasons why the regime wake-up call is needed in the Middle East is to disuade those powers from sabotaging peace again in the future. For fairness, I think that the settlement program on the West Bank is designed to sabotage peace and any action that strengthens the settlements is anti-peace.
Ironically, the two cities have reversed historic roles. Jerusalem, city of messianic possibility, has become the bearer of grim reality, the front line against surrender to terrorist blackmail. Rome, city of empire, now imagines a world without war. World War II made that role reversal inevitable. Hitler's Italian allies emerged from the war convinced they must renounce conflict; while Jews emerged from the war committed to learning how to defend themselves.
We are through the looking glass - liberals are conservative and conservatives are world changing zealots.
Thanks again,
Paul |
