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Sat. Apr 20, 2002

QuoteLog, 4/20

QuoteLog, 4/20 – "With due respect to all that has been recently said about Arab economic power and demands that they assume an international political role, it is important for us to realize that emotional words are one thing and cold reality something else [...] I was astonished to read that the productivity of the 13 countries which belong to ESCWA [the UN’s Economic and Social Committee for Western Asia] 12 of which are in Asia and one, Egypt, in Africa amounted to $392 billion annually. This represents only 1 percent of total world productivity! [...] To put it another way, that same amount represents the productivity of one small European country Holland with a population of 16 million. In other words, Holland’s productivity alone is equal to the total output of the 13 ESCWA countries! We should also bear in mind that oil represents 90 percent of ESCWAs exports and that Holland possesses neither oil nor gas. The report went on to point out that the number of tourists in the Arab world does not exceed 2.5 percent of the total number of world tourists. In Europe, Spain hosts 70 million tourists annually; France 50 million and England 40 million. The report also mentioned that the rate of illiteracy in the ESCWA is 42 percent of the population and is higher among women. The rate of unemployment is 16 percent of the work force [...] It seems they are saying that the Arabs must confront the results of Black Tuesday and also boycott America and other Western countries which ride on its heels. Who, I ask, are we deceiving? I ask the writers and TV personalities who call for a boycott: Are you serious or is it all a sick joke?"

Abdullah Bajubeer, Arab News

"I had a conversation not long ago with a European, who typically so, began with the pained look of someone who was methodically entering a long grandfatherly lecture about the American pathologies of ’unilateralism’ and ’exceptionalism.’ When I laughed and told him he should worry more about keeping us in NATO than threatening to leave, more about America turning its attention to Russia, India, Japan, and South America than to Paris and Rome, and expect pride rather than guilt that we stopped the Russians, fought the Gulf War, kicked out Noriega, and bombed in Serbia. In short, when I made it clear that Europe is irrelevant, he was shocked and, mon dieu!, of all things, hurt! Europeans, I think, are going to learn that their real fears are not that we wish to control them, work with them, influence them, or corrupt them, but rather that we simply prefer to forget about them. They are rapidly becoming little more than an old windy Nestor wordy, impotent, and full of empty advice about a glorious past in someone else’s busy present. And the future? I would imagine at the end of the year there will be a reckoning with Iraq. And sadly, after much disruption, recrimination, denunciations, unexpected terror, death, and more mayhem, we will see something like the current chaos of Afghanistan, gradually settling down to something far better than what was there before. If we prevail, there may well be upheavals in many a surrounding country akin to the revolutions in Eastern Europe that ended communism. None then as pessimists now predicted such a thing. Yet like communism, Middle Eastern fundamentalism, theocracy, and autocracy also cannot appeal to the human desire for freedom and security especially when the alternative is not thousands of miles distant and cloaked, but the flip of a switch away and readily apparent on the computer and television screen. And so like the twilight of communism, the day of the Arab strongmen is nearing an end."

Victor Hanson, National Review

"And yet many Italians love him, yes. Just like they loved Mussolini. And many other Europeans do the same. I find it shameful and see in all this the rise of a new fascism, a new nazism. A fascism, a nazism, that much more grim and revolting because it is conducted and nourished by those who hypocritically pose as do-gooders, progressives, communists, pacifists, Catholics or rather Christians, and who have the gall to label a warmonger anyone like me who screams the truth. I see it, yes, and I say the following. I have never been tender with the tragic and Shakespearean figure Sharon. (’I know youve come to add another scalp to your necklace,’ he murmured almost with sadness when I went to interview him in 1982.) I have often had disagreements with the Israelis, ugly ones, and in the past I have defended the Palestinians a great deal. Maybe more than they deserved. But I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews. I stand just as I stood as a young girl during the time when I fought with them, and when the Anna Marias were shot. I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And disgusted by the antisemitism of many Italians, of many Europeans, I am ashamed of this shame that dishonors my Country and Europe. At best, it is not a community of States, but a pit of Pontius Pilates. And even if all the inhabitants of this planet were to think otherwise, I would continue to think so."

Oriana Fallaci

"Palestinian mouthpieces claim that the Israeli military killed as many as 500 civilians in Jenin, a stronghold of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. When the Israelis cleared the booby traps and allowed Western media into the city on Monday, the reality turned to be completely different: difficult door-to-door infantry fight; 23 Israeli soldiers fallen in battle; dozens of terrorists killed. No massacre [...] The IDF repeatedly ceased fire and demanded that all civilians leave the area, but the top Palestinian terrorists, true to form, were using them as human shields. If this action had taken place in Afghanistan, U.S. troops would have called in the ’vitamin B’: B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers. If it had happened in Chechnya, the Russian generals would have called in artillery and flattened Jenin, just as they did Grozny. Israeli tanks were there, and they could have shot straight into town and the refugee camp. Instead, Israelis fought on foot, placing themselves at risk while trying to protect Palestinian lives [...] After the city fell, 1,000 Palestinian fighters surrendered. In any other place, in any other war, there would be no one left to surrender. The air force, rockets, and artillery would have done the job. The Israeli Army is putting the number of Palestinians killed in a five-day battle at about 200, while 30 Israeli soldiers were killed [...] The Jenin ’massacre’ that never was is yet another Big Lie in the Palestinian PR campaign, a campaign that for its persistence and audacity would have made Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s propaganda chief, proud."

Ariel Cohen, National Review