I’m too old to learn Mandarin

I don’t much like reading the paper these days. It’s depressing to read about thousands of useful idiots marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to stop the ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

For those who may have forgotten, on 7^th October 2023 terrorists from Hamas crossed from Gaza into Israel to attack civilians, raping, torturing, murdering, and taking hostages. 1200 died, 251 were taken hostage. It was inevitable (and expected) that Israel would retaliate. Today, 50 (live) hostages are still in captivity, somewhere in Hamas’s tunnels under schools and hospitals. Everybody seems to forget about that. Sure, what’s happening in Gaza is awful. Nobody wants to see that sort of thing happening. But all the pressure is being put on Israel. Why isn’t anybody marching to insist Hamas releases the remaining hostages and lays down its weapons? Why are we watching videos of emaciated Jewish hostages digging their own graves? Why are we seeing disgusting acts of antisemitism in our cities?

As for a Palestinian state – the idea of a two-state solution — creating separate Jewish and Arab states in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean — has been proposed multiple times since before Israel’s independence in 1948, and in most cases it was rejected by Arab leaders or Palestinian representatives.

The first formal plan came in 1937, when Britain’s Peel Commission proposed partitioning the British Mandate of Palestine into a small Jewish state, a larger Arab state joined with Transjordan, and a British-controlled corridor around Jerusalem. The Jewish leadership accepted the principle of partition, though they objected to the small territory offered. The Arab Higher Committee, representing Palestinian Arabs, rejected it outright, refusing to cede any land to a Jewish state and demanding an end to Jewish immigration.

In 1947, the United Nations put forward Resolution 181, which again called for partition into independent Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under international administration. The Jewish Agency accepted the plan, while all Arab states and Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it, leading to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War when Israel declared independence. The Arab states’ stated position at the time was that all of Palestine should remain Arab-controlled.

Since Israel’s founding, variations of the two-state idea have reappeared — notably after the 1967 Six-Day War, during which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty did not produce a Palestinian state, but the 1993 Oslo Accords created a framework for Palestinian self-governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza, with the understanding that final-status talks would address statehood. Those talks broke down in 2000 at Camp David, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered a plan for a Palestinian state over most of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Yasser Arafat rejected the offer, and the Second Intifada erupted shortly after.

Other proposals, such as the 2008 offer from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, which reportedly included near-total withdrawal from the West Bank and land swaps for the remainder, plus shared arrangements in Jerusalem, were again declined by Palestinian leadership. In each of these cases, disagreements over borders, the status of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and security arrangements were central to the refusal.

The mantra is ‘from the river to the sea’ – that is, the complete destruction of Israel. Even so, more Western useful idiots are prepared to recognise a Palestinian state – without any sort of clarification of what that means in terms of borders and government. It’s all reminiscent of the Voice  – we’ll sort out the details later.

Henry Ergas wrote a brilliant piece in The Australian, pointing out what happened when Yugoslavia disintegrated after the death of Tito. There was a rush to recognize the little nations that rose after the split, and that led to more death and destruction. Here’s a paragraph from Promises on statehood? We’ve been here before, with dire consequences. (Behind a paywall – sorry)

“The consequences of premature recognition in Bosnia-Herzegovina were, if anything, even graver. Greatly aggravating them was the fact that the Europeans’ abject failure to enforce the Badinter conditions radicalised both sides. It encouraged the Bosnian Muslims to abandon the peace agreement they had signed only a week before, confident that violence would yield them greater territory; and every bit as importantly, it convinced the Bosnian Serbs, many of whom had been moderates, that they were utterly on their own, strengthening Slobodan Milosevic’s most intransigent supporters. Genscher had assured his European counterparts early recognition would help bring peace. In reality, said Lord David Owen, who coauthored the Vance-Owen peace agreement the parties rejected, by empowering the extremes that “gratuitous” gesture turned out to be a crucial step on the path to genocide.”

The media bleats about starvation in Gaza – which is at least getting supplies, although most of it is probably being stolen by Hamas. They even resort to showing a picture of a seriously ill, emaciated child with a genetic illness to illustrate the starvation in Gaza. But nobody seems to talk about what’s happening in Sudan. 24.6 million people are facing acute hunger as famine and war decimate the country.

And then there’s Ukraine. Putin has agreed to talk to Trump in Alaska. Call me a cynic but that’s all about Putin buying time before Donald puts in more trade sanctions. Ukraine has made it plain that it won’t trade territory for peace (and neither it should). And even if it did, that would be a repeat of Hitler’s Nuremberg agreement in 1938. Yeah, that worked. Oh, and all that blather about Israel committing genocide – no, that’s Russia. The Russians deliberately target civilians. The Russians grab Ukrainian children to rear them as Russians. They intend to destroy Ukraine, its culture, and its people.

Back at home the Government still insists that solar and wind are the cheapest options for power generation and that they can replace fossil fuel or nuclear power plants despite the overwhelming evidence that it ain’t so. Even Germany, once the poster child of green innovation, is quietly reopening its coal plants to compensate for the loss of Russian gas. We (and the rest of the world) have shifted all our industries to China, India, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines so that we have a good score in the nonsensical ‘net zero’ scale. Hello! Atmosphere is not a national attribute. Meanwhile, we’re destroying arable land (of which Australia doesn’t have a lot) for solar farms, wind turbines, and power lines. Never mind the constantly increasing cost of power, which of course affects small business and the less well off the most.

Meanwhile, Australia’s defence capabilities are at about the same level of preparedness as they were in 1940. Abysmal. The Chinese can barely contain their contempt as they sail a task force around our coast with hardly a murmur from Canberra. It’ll be decades before we get those American subs via the AUKUS agreement. How about some drones, proved to be so effective in Ukraine and Israel? They’re (relatively) cheap and we won’t have to wait for a decade to get them. And our witless PM hasn’t even managed to have a meeting with our great ally, the USA. Maybe he’s afraid he’ll be told off.

I dunno. Sometimes I wonder what things were like as the Roman Empire began, ever so slowly, to collapse. It was probably a lot like what’s happening now, to the West. And I’m too old to learn Mandarin.