Daniel Greenfield article: The Noose Around Israel's Neck
The Noose Around Israel's Neck
Posted: 16 Jun 2010 08:42 PM PDT
Israel is being hung on a public gallows erected on the grounds of the United Nations with yards of rope gleefully supplied by the Muslim world. But the hangmen are mostly Westerners who still think that the Muslim lynch mob at their doorstep can be pacified with the death of a single victim.
There are three things you can do when you are about to be hung. You can walk proudly, recite a glorious line or two to embed your martyrdom in historical memory, and then allow yourself to be hung. Jews have an extensive body of experience with that brand of martyrdom.
Alternatively you can plead your case all the way to the gallows, arguing that a mistake has been made, that your case has been improperly reviewed, begging for someone to listen and do something. This way also ends in a hanging. But it's the hanging of a slave without even a shred of dignity attached to it. A man that dies pleading with his murderers, and puts his fate in the honesty of the liars and hypocrites whose own crimes makes the worst of his look like virtues, is a craven fool.
Because there is really only one thing you can do when the noose is being placed around your neck. Resist. A noose works by tightening around your neck and cutting off your air or breaking your neck. If you resist the tightening of the noose, you may actually survive. On the other hand if you follow through all the procedures, if you allow your hands to be tied behind your back, and the noose to be fastened around your neck while trusting in the system to do right by you-- your death is inevitable.
For seventeen years Israel has been walking toward the gallows. Its leaders have led it there by the nose ring of international assurances. Its people have been led there by refusing to see what is waiting ahead for them, even while the blood was being cleaned off the streets. Every attempt to reach a peaceful solution, every concession and show of good faith, has only tightened the bonds around its hands and the noose around its neck.
That is because every concession Israel has made, has further restricted not only its ability to defend itself, but even its ability to do basic things such as build residential housing in the capital of its own nation. Every gesture and agreement Israel has signed has bound it to ever more restrictive terms. And none of them have brought any peace. All they have ever done is set the bar higher for the next round of concessions demanded by the enemy and its aiders and abettors in the next phase of negotiations.
This is not a peace process, and it has never been one. It is a public lynching. It is the lynching of a country whose only real crime is that its existence offends the religious fanaticism and prejudices of a billion Muslims, who control much of the world's oil, and whose followers are willing to riot and kill in the streets of nearly every major city in the world at the slightest offense.
The lynching began as a trial where the murderer wore a fine suit and his victim sat in an orange jumpsuit in the dock. Every day during the trial, the murderer would be allowed to leave the courtroom to kill again. And every afternoon he would return to the courtroom with bloody hands that the judge and jurors would pretend not to see. And if the victim dared to call attention to those bloody hands, he would be silenced and told that those murders too were his fault. Hadn't he after all provoked the murderer into committing them?
In a year in which the Iranian regime raped and murdered protesters after a stolen election. In which China and North Korea continue torturing and murdering political dissidents. In which Saudi Arabia and Dubai live off Southeast Asian slave workers. In which Venezuela's Chavez continues shutting down independent media outlets and imprisoning opponents. In which Turkey continues holding thousands of Kurdish political prisoners while occupying Cyprus. In which Russia continues to dismantle democracy and murder journalists. In which Sudan continues perpetuating genocide and the rest of the world nods mournfully but continues on with business as usual. In that year, Israel is the main culprit for such dastardly acts as reportedly assassinating a Hamas terrorist leader in Dubai and intercepting a flotilla providing aid and comfort to Hamas. Every country, including the nations on this list, are rushing forward their condemnations and demands that Israel be held accountable. Accountable for what? For refusing to be lynched.
Every time Israel tries to be accommodating, it instead takes a step closer to the gallows. It allows the noose to be tightened around its neck. And every time that happens, it has to fight harder for air. Eventually if things keep going this way, there will be no air at all. Only a sad forlorn figure swinging in the hot eastern wind from the desert. And cries of Ibtach al Yahood among the rubble of cities and gardens of Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv and Ariel.
The world will always condemn Israel regardless of its intentions. But like any form of namecalling, those condemnations only gain power when Israel allows its actions to be dictated by them. Israel is not condemned because of what Israel does. It is condemned because of a diseased pattern of Islamic bigotry, left wing radicalism and international dhimmism converging in one place. This is a pattern of hate that cannot be undone. It can only be ignored.
When you listen to the threats and taunts of those who hate you, you give them power over yourself. If you try to accommodate your behavior to gain their favor, their outpouring of hate for you will only grow. For it is not your behavior they hate, it is you. By showing weakness, you invite attack. By giving your enemies power over you, all that you accomplish is to drive them into a feeding frenzy at your vulnerability. If you go on this way, you will either be a slave or a corpse. A slave if they have any use for you alive. A corpse if they don't. Either way you have put your head into the noose they made for you.
Israel cannot go on this way. No country could for long. Yet it does, marching on toward the gallows, protesting that there has been a terrible mistake here. But there is no mistake here. None at all. The executioners nod sympathetically and promise to look into it, as they bind his hands behind his back. It's a farce and everyone except the dumbest among the lynch mob, and the condemned knows it.
But like the condemned man refusing a blindfold in the anecdote who's scheduled to be executed, we keep being warned not to make trouble. Go quietly. Breathe deeply. Soon it will all be over. What will the world say, if we resist? Exactly what the world says now. That we're the neighborhood bully. The troublemakers that are the cause of all the troubles of the otherwise peaceful nations of the Middle East. The worm in the lovely healthy apple otherwise covered with Muslim tyrannies.
Every threat that has been made has come about when Israel made concessions, not because it refused to. Every time Israel has chosen the high road, its enemies have ambushed it from the low road. It's past time to wake up and start learning some lessons. The noose is drawn. And the nation is gasping for air. That breath of air was Jerusalem. The next one will be the Galilee. And then what? How many more breaths do we have left before we choke and die?
The last month should have been a final education. A grim testament to the fact that even when Israel withdrew from Gaza, allowed Hamas to control it, and did nothing but prevent Hamas from having outside access, the world is howling as if Israel had filled the country with graves from end to end, as Sudan or Iran or some of the other members and former members of the UN Human Rights Commission have. That is now justice. That is a lynch mob. And what does Netanyahu do in response? Like nearly every Israeli government before him, he backs off on the blockade. Because given that tidbit the lynch mob will be appeased. It will, won't it. Won't it?
This is what a noose looks like. These are the gallows. As its hands are bound, Israel loses the ability to defend itself. As the noose tightens, Israel dies. Only by resisting the noose, can it survive. Only by fighting to free its hands, can it resist. The way of surrender is the way of death. And after Israel dies, its own hangmen will be next. Because the lynch mob has only begun. Its appetite is whetted by death. Its hunger will only be sharpened by blood, not sated by it. And it will cover the world in blood, if it is not stopped. But now the noose draws tight. Only a little more air is left. What will we do with that air? Appeal for justice, or fight with all our strength to rip the noose away. For now the choice is still ours. When the noose has done it work, it no longer will be.
“Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac”
Neighborhood Bully, Bob Dylan
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