Generations.

 

In response to Ed Husain's assertion that the U.S. needs to"create a new narrative" for "a new generation of Arabs," Mannie Sherberg astutely observes that

 

The Husain commentary is just more of the same preposterous piffle that's bedeviled American foreign policy for years. America can create an endless series of new "narratives" or new fairy tales or new bubba meyses -- and all of them together won't have any influence whatsoever on "a new generation of Arabs." It's up to that new generation of Arabs to provide its own new narrative -- a narrative markedly different from the Jew-hating, infidel-despising, woman-fearing, jihad-loving, caliphate-dreaming, death-obsessed narrative that now rules the Muslim world. America can't change this narrative because Americans can't rewrite the Koran. Only Muslims can. As long as we accept the Husain-Obama thesis that American-made narratives can re-make the Arab world, we can look forward to more carnage in the Middle East and more Americans returned to their native soil in coffins.

 

Mannie's comments reminded me of the old "new generation," as celebrated by LIFE Magazine back in 1970  (I'll do the math for you; that was 42 years ago). 

 

In turn, this reminded me of La Fallaci's slightly later, 1976, interview with Yasir Arafat, may he rot in hell and his name be erased for eternity.

Arafat: “We won’t accept [a peaceful agreement]! Never! We will continue to make war on Israel by ourselves until we get Palestine back. The end of Israel is the goal of our struggle, and it allows for neither compromise nor mediation. The issues of this struggle, whether our [Arab] friends like it or not, will always remain fixed by the principles we enumerated in 1965 with the creation of Al Fatah.

First: revolutionary violence is the only system for liberating the land of our fathers; second: the purpose of this violence is to liquidate Zionism in all its political, economic and military forms, and to drive it out of Palestine forever; third: our revolutionary action must be independent of any control by party or state; fourth; this action will be of long duration. We know the intentions of certain Arab leaders: to resolve the conflict with a peaceful agreement. When this happens, we will oppose it.

Fallaci: Conclusion: you don’t at all want the peace that everyone is hoping for.

Arafat: No! We don’t want peace. We want war, victory. Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else. What you call peace is peace for Israel and the imperialists. For us it is injustice and shame. We will fight until victory. Decades if necessary. Generations.

 

It seems some things never change... or perhaps better put,

 

"You can take the Muslims out of the 8th century,

but you can't take the 8th century out of the Muslims."

 

Or was it the 7th century? I forget.

Comments

[Joel]

I remember reading that magazine cover back in 1969 (at the Dentists office lol).

[Joel]

Life Magazine was always anti-Israel.

[bunuel]

mannie is an astute observer. thank you

[Mannie Sherberg]

Gee whiz, Yael ... 1976 was decades before I was born -- so thanks for reprinting the Fallaci interview and the LIFE cover, both of which were originally published long, long before I learned to read. In all seriousness, as the years go by, we realize more and more, I think, how much we miss Fallaci's astringent intelligence. She had an unerring instinct for spotting hokum, flim-flam, baloney, trumpery, flummery, humbug and every other variety of bunk -- and the ability to report it in prose so acerbic (at least in English translation) that it could not possibly be misunderstood. She was a rare treasure -- and the paradigmatic truth-teller.

[Yael]

She was my hero and I will miss her forever. http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2006/09/oriana_fallaci_.html