Erasing Reality

Firebrand Italian politician Fiamma Nirenstein on
Erasing Reality: The Invention of "Peace" in the Middle East

With the Palestinians, the idea that we like to convey is that of a world in which Fatah, in opposition to Hamas, is amenable to achieving peace through a partition plan that would enable "two States for two Peoples." But this is far from reality: all the most recent statements, including those of a few days ago in which Abu Mazen declared that there would be no room in a Palestinian state for even a single Israeli, or that of his chief negotiator, Sa'eb Erekat, according to whom there would be an inevitable "return" of 7,000,000 refugees – or their grandchildren and great-grandchildren – inside the borders of Israel, which has precisely 7,000,000 inhabitants, including the Arabs; or the declared Palestinian lack of willingness to negotiate land-swaps or to recognize the existence of a Jewish State -- all these are in keeping with what is perhaps the most dramatic rejection of peace: the culture of hate and terrorism which the TV, the press and the Palestinian schools disseminate. Squares bearing the names of suicide terrorists; the Fatah congress opening with standing ovations for the suicide terrorists;, the "study" on the Palestinian Authority website of a Vice-Minister of Culture, who declares that there has never been any trace of Jews in Jerusalem; or the invention of a Palestinian Jesus persecuted by the Jews at a time when the concept of "Palestinians" did not even exist... perhaps all these truths, together with the weakness of Abu Mazen who now wields his power with substantial use of the police force while Hamas threatens him from afar, should remind us that a peaceful end of conflict with Israel might not be a priorit

And on Turkey:

Turkey, which is also the site of the upcoming meeting of the 5 + 1 group, continues to be, in the collective imagination, the country that has played the role of mediator between the West and Islam ever since the time of the revolution of Kemal Atatürk eighty years ago. The truth is that the secular revolution has been shelved to give way to an Islamist drift in which what wins is an alliance with Iran. The alliance with Syria, a country with which countless commercial and military treaties have been signed -- including Hamas, with which Turkey's Foreign Minister Davutoglu met last July -- clearly reveals the path chosen by Turkey. Its political attitude is now overtly pro-Islamic, and it has transformed its anti-Israel policy into a political flag.