Suddenly Relevant

With apparent intention to conceal it behind the publicity surrounding the Sotomayor nomination, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the obstacle to peace is Israeli settlements.

Not unabashed Hamas terrorism, not the Palestinian Covenant to destroy Israel that is the founding document of the "moderate" Palestinian Authority, not unending Palestinian media propaganda denying Israel's right to exist, not an educational curriculum that unwaveringly literally demonizes Jews as subhuman. Not forty years of Rejectionism. Certainly not the universal glorification of suicide bombers. Nor Iran's development of nuclear weapons which it openly avows it will use to destroy Israel.

No, none of these are the problem in the Middle East, none of these are the obstacle to peace. The Secretary of State, clearly on orders from the White House, announced that growth of settlements are the problem. It must stop she announced. No fudging, no obfuscation, no exceptions. Her statement sounds very much like it was written for her by the Palestinian Authority.

This amounts to a declaration of war against the Jews by the Obama administration. I am sorry to have to admit that my confidence in the administration was misplaced. I assumed the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff precluded the sort of policy we have just seen announced. I was wrong.

This editorial is by a blogger calling himself Sultan Knish (http://sultanknish.blogspot.com)

The Prostitution of Peace

If you believe the current regime of diplomats and pundits, peace is something that can be obtained for the right price. Where peace once meant the mutual cessation of war, peace has now become something that can now be bought and sold. Put the right amount on the table and peace can be yours, the pimps of peace cry on every corner. Behind them stand their gruesome wares, the terrorists and mass murderers who will have peace with you, perhaps for a night or two, if the right price is paid. The tricks may think that peace is a long term marriage, but they know it is only a one night stand. Hudna. Ceasefire. Time enough for them to rearm and kill again.

We live now in the era of the prostitution of peace. Love doesn't enter into it. Brotherhood doesn't enter into it. We no longer have peace because we are both tired of war and wish an end to it. No, peace has become something that the brute, the thug and the monster offers to the civilized world in exchange for weapons, power and international stature. And so we no longer have peace, instead the very idea of peace has become a lost hope, a compulsive gambler's winning streak, an alky's last beer, a forlorn cause in the darkened streets of civilization's modern diplomatic dystopia.

Peace once used to be an end to violence, but now peace has become a process, a long ritual of meetings and paper shufflings that never actually produces peace, but keeps the creaky wheels of diplomacy turning. And so the men in suits come and go and photographs are taken and signed and newspaper headlines cry, "Peace, peace," but there is no peace. The diplomats who prostitute peace from Oslo to Camp David, from Taba to Ankara, know full that what they are selling is a disease ridden lie. What they are truly selling is the illusion of a rational world to the last remnants of a dying civilization confronting the savagery of a Dar Al Harb that laughs at reason and glories in savagery.
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The rain falls in the dark, the wind blows ragged newspapers down a deserted street. Munich. Camp David. Brussels. Oslo. It doesn't matter anymore, only the hotel rooms and the expensive booze at taxpayer expense poured into wineglasses. The pimps pander, the prostitutes pose with their weapons and bombs and the tricks put up everything they have certain that this time it will be different. A toast is made. "To peace!" Peace in our time. Peace in no one's time.

The prostitution of peace is a lurid cynical act, far more gruesome than the sort of crimes men and women are arrested for on civilization's streetcorners every night. For the prostitution of peace is not merely the false promise of love, it is the false promise of an end to the killing, only to enable and perpetuate it.

Leftist agitation and activism has turned peace into a meme, a lie everyone can have if they only sing loudly enough and demand it from their government. And so they die. And the leaders of their government go to the hotel rooms in distant cities and continents and buy it for them. The glasses clink, everyone cheers and in the morning there are more corpses to be swept from the streets.

The insincerity of peace is at the heart of the prostitution of peace. It is an act of irresponsibility on every side. The pimps of peace in the foreign ministries and state departments inflate their own prestige certain that the right transaction will finally win over the sheiks of the east. The prostitutes of peace grin cynically, knowing that they are not selling anything that they cannot take back tomorrow. The tricks come with a mix of corruption and despair driven by the self-destructive impulse of decay to buy something they cannot have at a price they cannot pay.

No one in this trinity of the damned wishes to hear about the moral bankruptcy of their profession or its devastating price. Again and again the price is paid and blood runs in the gutter and in the hotel rooms the glasses clink.

"To peace."