Tuesday, July 12, 2005

In the Crossfire


Professor Juan Cole
warns about Arial Sharon's latest attempt to trigger the next phase in the jihad against the west. If you are not a regular reader of Informed Comment then you should be. Professor Cole is always on target with his analysis of the events unfolding in Iraq and the region. In this case he is warning of the Muslim response to Sharon's illegal and morally corrupt plan to wall off a part of Jerusalem and why the "feces will hit the rotary ventilator" as a result. We won't be able to say we weren't warned.

The Ariel Sharon government in Israel has announced that it will build a huge wall on someone else's land through Jerusalem, cutting off 55,000 Arabs from the city (they'll have to go through nasty Israeli checkpoints every day to get into their own city!)

This is land theft on a massive scale. Worse, it is theft on a stage of sacred space that affects the sentiments of over a billion people. Whether Westerners like it or not, Jerusalem is considered by Muslims their third holiest city, and Israeli theft of the whole thing drives a lot of them up the wall. A partitioned Jerusalem where the Arab east is connected to the West Bank is the only route to peace. Sharon in his usual aggressive, grabby way, is trying to make that forever an impossibility.

And, folks, this sort of thing, which the Washington Post didn't even notice, may very well get you and me killed. I think what Sharon is doing is morally and politically wrong to begin with. But I sure as hell resent the possibility that I or my family is going to get blown up because of it.

Radical Islam is being fueled by the United States' unflinching support, both political and economic, of Israel and especially of the the Jews' intent to deny Jerusalem to the Muslim world while the Islam considers it one if its three holiest cities. If Sharon and Israel move forward on this plan for Jerusalem all hell is going to break loose and the U.S. is going to be caught in the middle.

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