Recognizing a Palestinian state is an empty, cowardly gesture that rewards Hamas for its massacre
No one
should be under the illusion that the histrionic purported recognition of the
Palestinian Authority as the government of the fictional state of Palestine, of
uncertain borders, by Canada, France, the United Kingdom and Australia is
responsible for any progress. The supposed leader of this beneficiary of
western appeasement is Mahmoud Abbas, the 89-year-old survivor of 70 years of
comparative and well self-paid moderation in a Potemkin regime in Ramallah that
has little authority and to which the Palestinians themselves rightly attach no
credence. He is a former KGB agent and, to his credit, for decades a rival of
Yasser Arafat, and the recognition of him as Palestinian leader is conditional
on the so-called Palestinian Authority being renovated by free and fair
elections and a comprehensive program of reform and suppression of its
profligate corruption. It is also conditional upon the return to Israel of the
remaining hostages seized by Hamas, and the removal of Hamas from the
government of Gaza. Mahmoud Abbas has no more ability to deliver on those
clauses than any reader of this column. The Palestinians see Abbas as a crook
and an over-bribed puppet of Israel masquerading as a legitimate spokesman for
the Palestinian interest.
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Abbas has no
standing to commit Hamas to anything; this entire process is just a charade. It
is, as U.S. President Donald Trump informed the General Assembly of the United
Nations on Tuesday, an empty, cowardly gesture that goes some distance towards
respectabilizing the authors of the barbarous Hamas massacre and hostage-taking
of Oct. 7, 2023. With all his bombast and egocentricity, Trump again
demonstrated the absolute inability of anyone else to give the practical and
moral leadership the western world needs to deal with present challenges from
China, Russia, Iran and its terrorist clients, and North Korea.
Trump
correctly stated that the United Nations is just a worthless talking shop that
could not even make its escalator and teleprompter work and whose agencies had
contributed substantial amounts of money to assist destitute people and often
hardened criminals and deranged people to invade the United States illegally.
He correctly warned all the other 192 member states that the international
organization was effectively supporting the two factors, which, if unchecked,
would destroy western civilization: the invasion of advanced countries by
undesirables claiming to be authentic immigrants and refuge-seekers, and the
mindless pursuit of a reduction of carbon use in the name of preserving the
planet from the unsubstantiated existential threat of climate change.
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He accused
those countries, including Canada, who are extending this spurious
pseudo-recognition to Palestine, of effectively whitewashing the monstrous
crimes of Hamas, and stated that the United States, and he personally, did not
forget what happened on Oct. 7, 2023. Trump, and his secretary of state, Marco
Rubio, have repeatedly said they would support Israel in its now almost
completed effort to destroy the terrorist apparatus of Hamas and expel it from
Gaza. It is correct that any alleged solution that accomplished less than that
would only guarantee a continuation of terrorist attacks on, and reprisals by,
Israel. And the claim that is Israel is attempting genocide in Gaza is a
slanderous falsehood. Pope Leo XIV rightly stated two weeks ago that the charge
of genocide was being loosely and falsely bandied about. Canadians, especially,
should identify with this, given the attempt of former prime minister Justin
Trudeau and former Supreme Court chief justice Beverley McLachlin to represent
our forebears as having attempted any form of genocide on the Native people.
(This is not to say for a moment that the Indigenous people have no legitimate
grievances, but no form of genocide is among them.)
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The first
step to peace in the Middle East is to exterminate the terrorists and official
American support of that position reassures that that fate for Hamas is now
imminent. (Last week in this column, I inadvertently left out a sentence that
referred to the disintegration of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea starting
under the heirs of King Solomon (Rehoboam and Jeroboam), followed by the
Assyrian invasion of 722 BC, the Babylonian occupation, deportation and
captivity of 586 BC, and the Persian liberation of the Jews in 538 BC and their
return to Israel, which was thereafter under the control of Persians,
Macedonians, Seleucids, Romans, Byzantines, Turks and British until the
establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. I apologize to readers for my
omission.)
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There has
also been a decisive turn in the Ukraine war. President Trump has attempted
conciliation with Russian President Vladimir Putin as he wished to avoid
humiliating Russia so severely that it remained durably in the embrace of China
with the potential danger of becoming a vassal state leasing the exploration of
the resources of Siberia to China and making China effectively the preeminent
power of the Eurasian landmass and a more resource-rich country than China has
ever been. Putin has rejected those conciliatory efforts and Trump has publicly
advised the European NATO allies that the United States will apply the
secondary sanctions necessary to cripple the Russian economy by boycotting
imports from countries that ignore sanctions on Russia, but that the European
NATO powers urging a strong stand on the United States must cease their
importation of Russian oil, which effectively finances Russia’s aggressive war
in Ukraine. This is another illustration of the stupidity of European posturing
about being tough with Russia and helping Ukraine when they are in fact
financing the Russian invasion.
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Trump has
promised to arrange replacement sources for western European energy, including
the United States and friendly members of OPEC, and as he has persuaded the
Europeans to raise their defence budgets, he has sold them $825 million of
sophisticated American military equipment that will be delivered to Ukraine to
carry the war back into the face of Russia with renewed ferocity. He has deftly
got the isolationists in his own party off his back by selling this hardware to
the Europeans rather than giving it to the Ukrainians. Putin is about to learn
the gravity of his error in rejecting Trump’s compromise overture and relying
on the hypocrisy and cowardice of the Europeans to enable him to continue his
illegal belligerency.
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Trump has
withdrawn his tentative acceptance of some permanent Russian takeover of
Ukrainian territory. Russia has a GDP smaller than Canada’s, has taken over a
million casualties in this insane aggression, has suffered over 50,000
desertions and hundreds of thousands of evasions of conscription and he is
about to see the collapse of its export income and the escalation of the
Ukraine war; the Russian public will soon become more familiar with the
inconveniences of war.
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As this
column is being finished, there appears to be an emerging consensus that former
U.K. prime minister Tony Blair is about to lead an international group that
will supervise the departure of Hamas from Gaza, the return of the hostages and
the demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza.
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Both these
wars should be satisfactorily over before the end of this year.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/trump-exposes-the-palestine-charade-at-un