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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (65756)	1/13/2003 2:59:56 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Sullivan comments on Friedman's column. (My we are getting inbred, aren't we?) THE ARAB-ISRAELI SIDESHOW: It's Tony Blair's fixation; and Tom Friedman's as well. At least Friedman, in an excellent and honest column, grapples with the paradox here. What if the Israeli-Palestinian crisis isn't really the main problem in the Middle East, but since that's what everyone there and elsewhere believes, we'd be crazy not to take it into account? Clearly, for the Arab world, this is the psychological issue of the first order. Humiliated by their backward economies and societies, ashamed in some inchoate way that their biggest exports in recent years have been Western-produced oil and mass murdering religious fanatics, they now have to watch as yet another despised Arab despot gets his comeuppance. How can we expect them to deal with that if we don't throw them a bone over the West Bank? I take the point. It extends beyond the Middle East to Europe, where we need allies, and where Israel is regarded as the source of almost all the problems in international affairs. But the real question is: do we continue to enable or even promote this delusion or do we confront it? I know it's a high stakes gamble, but it seems to me that by not entertaining this fantasy we might actually do more good than if we do. In war, clarity matters. In that war, our enemy is Islamist terrorism and its state sponsors. When we've dealt with them - and we've barely started - we can return to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. In fact, it's only after we have dealt with Saddam and the Iranian Mullahs that we will get Palestinian interlocutors who know they have nowhere else to turn. Then we can talk, and get tough on Israel with regard to its destabilizing settlements as well. Meantime, set up a diplomatic diversion. Let Blair have his conference. Say all the conciliatory things. And depose Saddam - soon.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (65756)	1/13/2003 11:28:38 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I wasn't trying to exonerate Mrs. Duisenberg. I am trying to imagine the mind set of someone who would say the things she said. It must derive from a profound ignorance; someone who thinks she knows what she is talking about, but doesn't. I don't fault her for objecting to the Palestinian situation, but for comparing it to the Holocaust in the Netherlands. Here in the US we all read The Diary of Anne Frank, or saw a movie about it, or a TV show. For many of us, it's the most insight we'll ever have into the Holocaust. And it took place in Amsterdam, Mrs. Duisenberg's home, perhaps not too far from the house where Mrs. Duisenberg flies the Palestinian flag.