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Monday, January 08, 2007

The tiny minority of extremists

Today's cartoon in the Palestinian Arabic Maan News:



Maan is not an "extremist" news agency and their cartoonist is not the type that will put Nazi-like caricatures in the paper. It is the model of what would be considered mainstream and modern among the PalArabs by the West.

Although it has been pointed out countless times in the past, it is worth repeating and clarifying over and over again. This is what the cartoon signifies:

  1. The mainstream Palestinian Arabs are not interested in living side-by-side with Israel; they are interested in eliminating Israel.
  2. The mainstream Palestinian Arabs expect that their ultimate victory will be military.
One corrolary to these two statements is that any "peaceful" moves made by the mainstream PalArabs are tactical in order to get that much closer to their ultimate military victory over Israel.

Another corrolary is that those who are actually fighting now, namely terrorists targeting Israeli civilians, are the heroes in Palestinian Arab society.

Fatah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the other paramilitary groups may differ a bit over strategy, tactics and focus, but ultimately essentially nobody who calls themselves Palestinian nowadays would be the least bit offended by the cartoon above. On the contrary, it is quite mild and simply appears to be patriotic.

Yet its symbolism is clear - there is no room for Jews to control a single square inch of land in the Middle East.

When the mainstream adopts an extremist position, it is absurd to refer to some of them as "moderate." The fact that there are essentially no Palestinian Arabs who truly believe in a permanent peace with Israel mean that any concessions that Israel makes for "peace" are just small steps to Israel's destruction.