Conrad Black's New Year Wishes for the Holy Land

Here:

...The Palestinian attempt at U.N. membership has failed; the claimed community of interest between Hamas and the PLO is a Swiss cheese, the ultimate quarrel among thieves; West Bank prosperity continues to increase and violence in Israel is at a recent historic low. There have been large oil and natural gas discoveries just offshore in Israel; the problems of Europe are in distinct contrast to Israel's sharply rising levels of prosperity and economic growth. And the new state of South Sudan is decrying Arab racism, and Muslim racism generally against black peoples, and has cracked the solidarity of the Arab-led claque in international organizations which has turned many of those organizations into Israel-bashing fronts. It is setting up its embassy in Israel in Jerusalem.

No Arab country has stable political institutions, and none of the non-oil producing Arab states can generate any serious economic growth. After the usual posturing and primping, this fact will take hold in Egypt. The agitation about settlements is nonsense. Israel demonstrated in Sinai and in Gaza that it is prepared to uproot settlers for peace. This is just another episode in the protracted Arab canard about trading an instantly revocable peace for irretrievable Israeli concessions of land. Israel should just continue to prosper and build its economy, and not negotiate with any entity that does not accept at the outset the right to exist of the Jewish state, albeit with borders still to be defined precisely. Except perhaps for the demented genocidal ravings from Tehran, which may have to await a new administration in Washington to receive the abatement it requires, the rest of Muslim sabre-rattling against Israel is just histrionics. Turkey won't send anymore ships to Palestine, and nothing will happen in the Arab world until some of the Arab countries, like the Eastern Muslims (Indonesia and Malaysia), develop some capacity for self-government, generate economic growth, and start to bootstrap themselves out of underdevelopment, as East and South Asia and most of Latin America have been doing.

References to the Holy Land are rare. And Christmas carols and sacred music that celebrate wondrous events and saintly people in the Biblical lands may hit a wall of momentary implausibility. But more purposeful hymns like "Onward Christian Soldiers" still resonate well.

So does Hatikvah.

I wish all readers a happy 2012.

Cheers!

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