AbbaGav

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post explains that Israel's Greatest Mistake is existing, and suggests we Israelis solve his problem by allowing ourselves to be bombed out of this inconvenient state:

'The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.'

I probably should just give him a quick moral answer and leave it at that. But moral answers don't change the immoral mind -- and believe me, we're looking at an immoral mind here. A moral mind doesn't proclaim it wrong for Jews to live in Israel -- the Holy Land of Jewish King David, as well as the Jewish Jesus revered by those "some Christians" who haven't yet fled the growing Islamic violence and domination of their historic places. A moral mind recognizes Jewish claims to this land no less than those of her implacably anti-Semitic enemies since documented Jewish claims predate by many, many centuries the invention of the Islamic freedom fighter's suicide belt.

So instead, I'll just suggest a practical reason why this is not just evil immoral, but stupid as well. Mr. Cohen lives in a country that is also being blamed for producing warfare and terrorism. If Mr. Cohen's goal is to establish precedent for aggrieved Islamists to whine their opponents into submission before bombing them into oblivion, he's off to a good start.

There is no point in condemning Hezbollah. Zealots are not amenable to reason. And there's not much point, either, in condemning Hamas. It is a fetid, anti-Semitic outfit whose organizing principle is hatred of Israel. There is, though, a point in cautioning Israel to exercise restraint -- not for the sake of its enemies but for itself.

Let me see if I've learned the lesson properly.

North Korea should be left to its atomic ambitions, since the Glorious Leader is obviously not amenable to reason -- all the broken deals and bad hair cuts through the years make at least that much clear. So for America's sake, for South Korea's sake, for Japan's sake, lest we drive the Revered Madman into a nuclear rage, we should just tiptoe out of the negotiating room, and leave him to his own devices, so to speak.

But Cohen's argument is so simultaneously stupid and immoral that it demands I escalate the rhetoric to "Nazi Levels." I beg your forgiveness in advance.

Clearly, we are also being taught that no one should have wasted breath condemning Nazi Germany. They were fanatic racists who could not listen to reason. Instead, England should have been restrained from fighting back -- for its own sake, to save the loss of so much innocent life.

But wait, there's more:

All that the critics warned has come true. But worse than what is happening now would be a retaking of those territories. That would put Israel smack back to where it was, subjugating a restless, angry population and having the world look on as it committed the inevitable sins of an occupying power.

Better Israel should submit to the missiles and rockets of enemies Mr. Cohen acknowledges to be fetid, anti-Semitic zealots whose guiding principle is a hatred of Israel. But at least we'll get positive PR for our funerals, and Mr. Cohen won't be embarrassed about his last name at swanky cocktail parties anymore.

The smart choice is to pull back to defensible -- but hardly impervious -- borders. That includes getting out of most of the West Bank -- and waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else. This will take some time, and in the meantime terrorism and rocket attacks will continue.

I'm speechless. That doesn't happen too often. This is a stunning little nugget right here, definitely a nominee for the Stupidity Hall of Fame. And I should point out, just to be clear, that the (and hoping) was Mr. Cohen's own insertion and not a bit of mocking sarcasm from me -- but if he hadn't added it, I probably would have. Hey, I wasn't speechless after all!

His big conclusion, the payoff for so much idiocy:

Much of the Islamic world, notably Iran under its Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stands outside that circle, refusing to make even a little space for the Jews of Europe and, later, those from the Islamic world. They see Israel not as a mistake but as a crime. Until they change their view, the longest war of the 20th century will persist deep into the 21st. It is best for Israel to hunker down.

But it is best that Israeli families hunker down in lead lined bunkers while waiting for the brave leaders of the rest of the world -- presumably like Mr. Cohen -- to stop Ahmadinejad from dropping nukes on patient little Israel. The advantage to Mr. Cohen that he will be able to copy and paste 6 million copies of this article for all the obituaries he will write on that day. But at least Israel will have won the PR war, proving once and for all that its enemies really are genocidal fanatics, and that Jews really are at their best only when they are victims.

And, in the wake of his admonitions to "Little Satan" Israel, Mr. Cohen should also bear in mind how Ahmadinejad feels about the Great Satan. But with any luck, Ahmadinejad will get distracted after his final solution of the "Great Mistake" and move on to something else. Like Zionist-controlled Great Britain.

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