This year, summer eerily, languorously, lingered on. We enjoyed balmy days in New York City clear through November. Even now, the trees outside my window remain in full, green leaf. But winter is also here and the days are becoming bitterly cold and windy.
This is the first time in seven years that I have remained silent about so-called “peace” initiatives in the Middle East. What can I possibly add to what has already been said about the meeting in Annapolis? Or, for that matter, about the witch-hunt against AIPAC and the continued, ghastly imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard?
What more can I say about Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood? Or about Jew-hatred, Israel-bashing, anti-Semitism, the United Nations, or the Islamification of America which is now fully underway? Why should I write yet another piece about the French Intifada which seems to have turned into an annual uprising? Must I really keep repeating myself about how western intellectuals have betrayed the Jews, the truth, and democracy by their glamorization of terrorists, tyrants, and totalitarianism? What more can I say about Islamic Gender Apartheid? The reality outpaces my human indignation and nothing that anyone writes seems to stop it–at least, not immediately.
Well, I may not have to keep repeating myself. Others have gradually taken up many of these cries. Luckily, some people do not mind repeating themselves even when it seems to make little difference–or until it makes all the difference.
But also, the information is in. Everyone’s mind is made up. No one will budge. The polarization in America is written in stone. People either read The Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal–or the Nation and the New York Times. Few read all four publications. What’s worse: Since writers can only publish regularly if they, too, have implacably “chosen sides,” writers self-censor in order to remain published. We are all the poorer for it.
Even when the New York Times publishes articles which document that the “surge” seems to have worked in Iraq, that Iraqis are actually returning home, they do not connect the dots. They do not say that their earlier “yellow journalism” denunciations of the war may have been at least slightly wrong. And, the conservative media has a hard time acknowledging that many of its current, burning issues have been pioneered by–you guessed it! Second Wave feminists. Here, I am thinking about the following issues: trafficking and female sexual slavery, the sexual abuse of children, including incest, the necessity for a “law and order” approach to rape and domestic violence, but there are many more such issues.
Thus, I am grateful to the internet and to all the websites and blogs that speak in a million voices and that fly right under the polarizing radar.
Perhaps I should have titled this piece “Ode to Cyberspace.” Perhaps that’s a future blog. But, I am also weary, the year is ending, it is cold, and all the things that matter to me and to the well-being of so many seem to be frozen stuck.
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3 Comments
1. Greenconsciousness:You always say what I feel - my friends ask- do you think the peace talks will work this time - and I think, what planet are you living on?
I remember all that hope when Clinton made them shake hands. Then Arafat walked off the plane and the first thing Arafat said into the camera was “To hell with the United States” I knew then it was all a game.
People are making their living from this conflict and they have no other way to sustain their self.
The Palestinians do not seem to be able to govern a State or function as a government, so why on earth do we want to spend time negotiating a 2 state solution with them? They have no concept of responsible statehood. They exist as strongmen thugs. It is all they know - most of them have an eighth grade education. What is there to negotiate? These people define fascism.
The question this latest peace farce presented to me was, Why? When did it become mandatory for the U.S. to intervene to solve the Palestinian problem? Why does every U.S. administration feel duty bound to bring “peace” to the Palestinians who have no desire for it as they proved in their last election. Let them live in hell until they make peace on their own.
3rd parties cannot save an addict -addicts have to save their own selves. Islamic fascism is addicted to hatred and violence. We cannot save them.
The US can only protect their victims and those trying to get out of that environment. Let’s put out energy there and stop funding the rest their insanity. The peace game is a foolish game to keep playing with crocodiles.
It is cold here just as you describe New York. Although the leaves have fallen, the evergreens are green. But it is so cold the bottles I left outside broke. Wisconsin has put on its’ gloves and its’ Lands End parkas but people are anticipating the Winter Solstice Season fiercely. They are out there shoping and being kind to one another in the Malls. We refuse to be frightened by the energy bills we know are on the way.
Nov 29, 2007 - 3:35 pm 2. George Jochnowitz:It’s certainly true that most people read those newspapers that agree with them. Once in a while, however, news is available in unlikely places. For example, on November 26, the New York Sun had an editorial informing us, “It was Mrs. Clinton who spoke out about a punishment of 200 lashes that a Saudi Arabian court gave to a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape by seven men.” And on November 28, it was the New York Times, in a story under the headline “Palestinian Is Killed in Hebron as Police Disperse Protest Over Mideast Peace Talks,” that cited a 17-year-old woman saying, “There are those after food, life, those that are materialists, like Abbas, and there are those like us who are seeking life after death.” So it was the Times that informed us that Hamas supporters would rather die than accept an independent state.
Nov 29, 2007 - 3:43 pm 3. Fern Sidman:I do hope that sooner or later, pro-Israel blogs will be able to tell the world about the THREE NOES OF KHARTOUM, when the Arab states, in 1967, dismissed any possibility of peace with Israel. By doing so, they provoked the building of settlements on the West Bank.
Sudan has sentenced Gillian Gibbons to 15 days in jail and deportation for allowing her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Although the sentence is an outrage, she could have received 6 month in prison and 40 lashes. The New York Times, despite its unwillingness to report bad things happening in Islamic states, did publicize the case of Ms. Gibbons
and may have helped to modify the sentence she received.
What occurred in Annapolis had little to do with creating peace. I truly believe that the Bush administration also believes that no long lasting peace will be conceived at this summit. It is merely an attempt to preserve for the history books, Bush’s legacy as a perceived “honest” broker of Middle East peace.
The Palestinians have everything to gain and the Israelis have everything to lose if substantial progess takes place with these talks. Israel, being so pathetically desperate for world approval (so, what else is new?), is willing to make dangerous territorial compromises that will certainly place their national security interests in jeopardy, while relinquishing their eternal capitol, Jerusalem (a most emotionally charged subject) for a worthless piece of paper.
It is precisely because the Israelis really do not believe that this land truly belongs to them, that they are willing to slice it up. The Palestinians, on the other hand, hold deeply held religious beliefs that this land is theirs and are willing to fight for it.
On to Iraq. According to political pundit, Bill O’Reilly who recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan, he corroborates your views and says, “After years of strategical chaos, the so-called “surge” in Iraq has finally allowed the military to carry the fight to the terrorists. The Iraqi civilian population saw this and began to cooperate with the good guys, Americans, informing on the bad guys, terrorists. Thus, things are improving on the ground in Iraq.”
If only the rest of the media, held in a liberal-leftist stranglehold would report this too.
Nov 29, 2007 - 4:41 pm