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Home Truths and One Illusion

(Spectator-UK) Melanie Phillips - Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair was forced out of office early because, weakened by his backing for the war in Iraq, he refused to condemn Israel for the Lebanon war of 2006. Now, in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he has delivered some desperately needed truths about the way in which the West is all but handing victory to the Islamists. "We think if we sympathize with the narrative - that essentially this extremism has arisen as a result, partly, of our actions - we meet it halfway, we help the modernizers to be more persuasive," he said. "We don't." There was, however, one other thing Blair said which jarred. When he was in office, he frequently observed that if only the Israel/Palestinian impasse could be resolved, this would take much of the steam out of Islamic extremism worldwide. In his remarks this week, Blair repeated the canard. The Islamists don't hate the West because of Israel. The horrifying fact is that it is this pathological, psychotic hatred that is being stoked up by the West's adoption of the false "narrative" of Muslim oppression - while the "peace process" that Blair has so assiduously promoted for so many years, and which is based on the tragically naive premise that this is an argument over land boundaries, gives the Islamists every incentive to continue their manipulative and murderous "strategy of stages" towards Israel's destruction and the defeat of the West.
2010-10-07 11:40:39
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