bullets, whiskey, women's tears, Palestinians

"Women's tears have killed more men than bullets or whiskey."

From what western oeuvre that quote is drawn from, I've forgotten. However, I do remember its being uttered with disgust with a dash of regret, sure to follow complying with such motivation. For the sake of civil discussion, I'll allow there's at least one grain of truth in that comment.

For my part, I take a somewhat more expansive view of motivation that gets people killed for no good reason. From out of nowhere, like a bolt out of the blue, like compulsory divine revelation, it came to me.

However many have died, due to being moved by women's tears, that number is dwarfed by that of those, killed by asinine expectation . . . oh, yeah, dear Reader, you read it right . . . "asinine expectation".

Lean a little closer to your monitor screen. This is strictly between you and me . . . oh, yeah, likely enough, we should also take into account that pinhead, who's peeping over your shoulder. Eventually, so I'm promising you and peeper, we'll get to the crux of this post.

For now, I would like to relate the sad case of a young woman, who on a dare dove headfirst into a swimming hole of some sort. While in the local Intensive Care Unit, she discovered she was paralyzed from the shoulders on down.

Whatever was available in state-of-the-art medicine and physical therapy, she was afforded. For quite a while, she underwent the best regime for physical rehabilitation. One day, a weary nurse took hold of both of the unfortunate's hands and lifted them. "It's hopeless". Customarily, nurses are supposed to eschew pessimism.

For the woman, who would spend the rest of her earthly days as a quadriplegic, it was liberation. She had been cut loose from asinine expectation. What physical capacity she had left, she turned to art. Subsequently, I received by snail mail a packet of greeting cards. Each card was decorated with a design she had created . . . cute little woodland creatures, and other such. Holding a brush in her mouth, she had moved her head, up and down, side to side, and daubed away.

True enough, her creations fell far short . . . oh, alright (!) already, Ziggy had nothing to worry about. And yet, somehow, the provenance of her art was touching. And now, get ready for a rhetorical question.

"What does asinine expectation have to do with Palestinians?"

I say plenty. I'll say it plain. Time and time again, they've allowed themselves to be taken in charlatans, peddling asinine expectation. Their latest folly was their yielding what little sovereignty they had to "bedbugs", masquerading as political liberators.

Supposedly, the more rational and better and more sensitive folk among those bedbugs would like nothing more than a state, in which Muslims and Jews and Christians would live together and work together, harmoniously, prosperously.

What a coincidence! Somewhere in this blog, I mention one Avram Beilitzsyn, a Jew, who could read the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, the New Testament in the original koinonia Greek, and the Koran in the original classical Arabic. Just such an aforementioned state was his dream. So confident was he that it would arise, he predicted it in STEPPING STONES.

As I remember the text, Avram's "Shaloam" resembles more closely an ideal Islamic state than an ideal Jewish state, and more closely an ideal Jewish state than an ideal Christian state. He sank a truckload of money into having copies printed. With the outbreak of the Second World War just a few years away, he sank another truckload of money into setting up promotion and distribution. And then it happened. To safeguard good ol' American decency, agents of the United States Postal Service burned all the copies they could lay hands on.

And yet, he had hope that his state could still emerge. He was sure Islam would never pass up a "once-in-a-millennium" opportunity. If Avram is to be given some credence, the opportunity did exist for only a brief period between the end of the Second World War in Europe and the United Nations' partition of Palestine. Here's what made him so sure.

Thanks to Public Broadcasting Systems, most of the public is aware of how Mohamed won over the people of Mecca, after their defeat by his Faithful to end a brutal war. Instead of slaughtering his defeated enemies, which was the custom at the time in Arabia, he secured his status as Prophet by ordering the smashing of their idols.

Here's where Avram clued me into something that gets ignored by the vast majority of scholars, who specialize in Islamic history. At the time, Mecca contained Arab Christians and Arab Jews. Somewhere in the Koran, the Prophet urges the Faithful to have good relations with Christians and Jews. So, Avram was positive the Prophet ordered his Faithful warriors to leave standing churches and synagogues.

I guess one Muslim adage, in particular, impressed Avram . . . "those who ask Allah for nothing insult the Deity". Speaking for myself, I don't think I could be accused of insulting the Deity. Whenever I buy a Powerball ticket with Powerplay, I'm sure that, somewhere within my adiaphorestic being, some part of me is praying for winning numbers.

For the heck of it, let's take that adage just a little further by way of inference. If God gets insulted by those who ask the Deity for nothing, then the Deity must get royally roiled by those, who slight the unrequested gifts given by the Deity in the spirit of generosity.

Maybe, Avram was right. Between the end of the Second World War in Europe and the United Nations' partition of Palestine, his "Shaloam" was a possibility.. Seems like irony now. when Islam blew off that aforementioned opportunity, that expectation that the bedbugs have just recently successfully peddled to the majority of Palestinians.seemed reasonable. By the way, the first attempt to realize that expectation failed.

In doing their best to keep that expectation alive, the Palestinians helped land the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian military in some pretty awful circumstances. Hoping for a miracle to salvage victory, the man threw Arab unity out the window. As the Israelis were making hamburger, kosher, of course, of his military, he lied through his teeth to the monarch of Jordan. Get in on this glorious Arab victory, so the monarch was urged, attack the Israelis. That attack was repulsed, and the Israelis had their excuse for seizing more Arab land.

No doubt about hindsight is 20/20. The monarch should've been told the truth. What's more, the man who lied to him should've comported himself as the exemplar of Arab unity. In truth, instead of urging the Jordanian monarch to attack, that person should've counselled avoiding military conflict with the Israelis. Knowing the truth, the monarch would've known to keep out of the Six Day War. In that way, he would've deprived the Israelis of an excuse to seize Jerusalem and the West Bank.

After the failure of the third attempt, in the words of Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, "without Egypt, war is impossible." Evidently, the Israelis are willing to live in interminable war with Syria..

The head bedbug now in charge of the Palestinian polity reminds me of the character that Kevin Kline portrays in the movie A FISH CALLED WANDA . . . "Don't call me stupid!" That bedbug failed miserably to do his constituents any big favors by offering the Israelis ten years of truce in exchange for the land, "stolen" during the Six Day War.

Here's the thing about the "eternal people". Their history stretches back to the pharaohs. That conditions them to have long memories. Once already, so they remember, they came to agreements with the Palestinian leadership. If the intent on the Palestinian side had been pure, that would've meant exorcising that asinine expectation. Likely enough, many Israelis felt that the Palestinian leadership at the time avoided undergoing the required change of heart. What's more, many Israelis suspected the sole purpose of those agreements was temporizing.

When sufficient evidence that those suspicions were valid had been adduced, the Israelis came down on the Palestinian signatory to those agreements like a ton of bricks

Circumstances, so the Israelis now believe, compelled the predecessor of the new head bedbug in charge to the negotiating table. Likely enough, the Israelis are speculating that circumstances will eventually compel the successor to the negotiating table. Whoever will negotiate for the Palestinians is in for a rude awakening. By comparison, their predecessors enjoyed a piece of cake.

No doubt about it, the people at the other end of the table will be extremely wary, and will have no humor about temporizing.

toodles
....../
.he who is known as sefton