Airstrip One

Something odd about Ariel

So all us peaceniks cheer when someone stands up to the Yanks (OK I don't care, but I'm special). So what if he's some chap called Ariel, and he totally humiliates the Secretary of State when he's visiting the place. I mean the way they're treating Powell you'd think that Israel was bunging the Yanks five billion bucks.

Do we peaceniks cheer and clap? Do we hell.

Here's a chap who takes Americas money and tells America that it can stuff it. And he survives. No military coup greets him like in Venezuala. And let's be honest, he's causing a hell of a lot more problems for the American governing class than some jumped up colonel with a Bolivar complex.

Now, I've always railed about how a big weakness of the peace movement is that on the whole its instinctively anti-American. Now this is just as brainless as the instinctive pro-Americans. However, here they see someone really smashing the Americans around and all they can do is tut tut that as if if the servant had rund off with the chequebook.

For that matter why are all the warbloggers cheering this brazen defiance? Do they not realise that the biggest obstacle in the way of their dream of a genocide on the Euphrates is this belicose little man in Jerusalem.

Ah, but the Israelis are - like - Westerners fighting against the oriental brown peril. The cross (well, almost) triumphing over the crescent. Stirring stuff. But what about when the Serbs did the same? And after all they have far more claim to be fighting the rising Muslim hordes and protecting the West. I mean, they are hardly a half-century old colony, they are real deal Christian peasants fighting the Mussalman hordes.

But when these chaps were blaring defiance of the West in what they saw as the West's defence (hey, in their own minds) we rain down fire and brimstone. We blow up their TV stations, we feel that bad about it. But when old Ariel goes and snubs his multi-billion dollar income stream in favour of some scripture eating nuts in Samaria they can't get enough of it.

What's up with that?