The Proposal

to Put European Troops in south Lebanon
For a generation the Europeans have been accusing Israel of using force and occupation instead of negotiating with the Arabs, who are after all reasonable people acting from a justified sense of grievance. Certainly once the European soldiers were nice to the Arabs, the Arabs would like them. I had hoped that the Europeans would believe their own lies enough to do it.

Alas, I underestimated the hypocrisy of the Europeans. They know, and have known all along, that the Arabs are xenophobic irrational primitives whom nothing will mollify. Their insistence that Israel treat the Arabs as reasonable people with a legitmate grievance was purely cynical. They knew better all along and supported the Arabs anyway.

In any case, Israel has embarrassed them by calling their bluff. It is of dubious value since recognizing their own hypocrisy is not something the Europeans are good at. It would have been great for their troops to have been getting killed one and two at a time and the left and the press in their own countries finding ways to blame the victims for the Arab violence. I would especially like to see Belgian, French, and Scandinavian troops there and some Slavs and Muslim troops to commit the occasional rape and treachery.

Best of all, it was a European proposal in the first place.