Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center - Dan Bilefsky and Ian Fisher
[C]entrists across Europe [are] angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence. [O]rdinary people as well as politicians - are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.
(New York Times)
Intransigent Hamas: It's Easy to Call for a Middle East Peace. But What If Palestinian Leaders Don't Want It? - Editorial (Washington Post)
While stirring but thoughtless appeals for a Middle East peace settlement continue to ring out around the world, the foreign minister of Egypt, Ahmed Aboul Gheit - who has spent the past several months immersed in a failing effort to restore the broken connections between the Palestinian Authority and its international donors, as well as Israel - placed the blame exactly where it belongs: on the Palestinian political leadership.
It's easy enough for global leaders to issue flowery appeals for action on the Middle East or to imply that progress would be possible if only the United States used its leverage with Israel. The stubborn reality is that there can be no movement toward peace until a Palestinian leadership appears that is ready to accept a two-state solution.
1 comment:
There is no doubt that threats should not be tolerated and if members of any religion do not want to participate in a free and enlightened society, they should not attempt to reside in them. The problem stems from calls for violence out of unenlightened and conservative areas that then spreads by fanatics dispersed throughout the world. Tolerance should only go so far, but maybe the answer is not isolationism and turning back the clock on multiculturalism, but rather turning up the heat on those who call for actions that break the law. The problem when one deals in these areas, is that it helps when you have the moral high ground and that is something we have not had for five or six years. I believe if America wants it, we will return to the stature we used to have in the world society. There can also be no doubt that at ther moment there is nothing left to ask of Israel. There will be no peace without the ability for both sides to acknowledge the other's right to exist, and in that Israel now is alone in the moral high ground now that the Palestinians have decided that their near term future belonged with Hamas. I still stand by my belief that we should, as a world community, examine what motivar=ted the Palestinians to do this, and no doubt their crushing poverty, lack of their own homelad, abandonment by their own Arab community, and the embarassment of being beholden to, and accountable to, the Israelis, all play a part. The Paletinian-Israeli situation is a world problem, and needs to be addressed by the world, and help, concessions and support of Israel must be demanded by the World community of all the Arab nations as well.
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