How Can You Have Peace When You Can't Even Have A Peace Concert?

I have shamelessly stolen the title from the Talkback contributor in Germany who posed this plaintive question.

A concert in Jericho to support a two-state solution based on the pre-1967 lines has been called off after participants were threatened, the Palestinian organizer said Friday... "For security reasons we cannot have the concert at this time," said Nisreen Shahin, executive director of OneVoice Palestine. Shahin said Palestinian participants had been threatened and that the political situation in the Palestinian territories was too unstable for such an event. ..The Jericho event had drawn criticism from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization for its attempt to normalize ties with Israel. A Palestinian Internet posting had threatened to "wipe out" OneVoice's Palestinian offices, a spokeswoman said.

Methinks perhaps that "Another Voice," the quasi-anonymous Facebook plug against OneVoice, might share the PFLP's goals -- that of endless war against the Jewish state...maybe they even share funding?

Wouldn't surprise me -- Another Voice has now emerged from the shadows and can be found on the International Solidarity Movement's website, that front for fascists against Jews having their own country.

Endless war has its supporters. As always, follow the money.....what would guys in the various Arab militias actually DO for a living if the conflict ended? As 7th grade dropouts brainwashed to become shaheeds and terrorists, they don't have much of a future. But this is just the riff-raff....how could Uncle Mohammed pay for that snazzy new 4-story multi-family luxury house going up outside of Ramallah unless the United Nations and EU keep throwing money at Abbas & Co.? This form of trickle-down economy guarantees that the war will continue---Fatah gets loads of money, distributes it to the loyalists, all of whom have fancy cars, bodyguards, truly impressive houses, and the impoverished Arabs living in the "refugee camps" without a sewage system will continue to be educated in the ways of jihad.

Ah, but that's Fatah and we all know that Fatah is corrupt! Hamas, on the other hand, takes in as much or more money from Iran and Wahabist Saudi Arabia, and while they don't drive fancy cars, they do throw the opposition off of rooftops, execute opponents in the street, and murder unarmed women belonging to a clan which opposed them. Instead of villas, they buy advanced weaponry and new APCs and their Palestinians still have open sewers, too.

Folks can scream all they want about the Iraq War (and Gulf War before it) being "all about oil" and enriching the oil companies BUT the Israel-Arab conflict is the longest running money-maker in the Middle East. Sans oil. We have just scads of UNWRA employees (all Arab except for the "front guys" who are usually naifs from England or Norway), several platoons of UN employees all over the place (we have at least one platoon here in Jerusalem--they are easily noticed because of their obnoxious habit of driving slowly and pointedly down Derech Hevron on Yom Kippur), dozens of workers for each of the several dozen NGOs active here, plus liberal Christians here to push "liberation theology" and countered vigorously by the Evangelicals arguing more fiercely for Jewish rights than our own government. Then we have the various countries and arms manufacturers who are making money hand over fist supplying the local arms race as well as providing more than enough small arms to arm every Arab in the West Bank, man, woman and child, seven times over.

So here the grassroots Palestinians are, trying to find a common voice with their Israeli counterparts, even if everyone knows that there will be disagreements on the details and ugly sticking points in arriving at peace......and the PFLP threatens them. The PFLP, for those late to the region, was originally a Marxist organization and a rival of Fatah but lately acting under the auspices of their prime sponsor, Syria (and hence, Iran).

So these stooges of Iran/Syria up in Damascus in the name of "liberating" their fellow-Palestinians, criticize the concert and suddenly anonymous threats are being posted on the Internet. A shadowy terror organization with members in the thousands at most can shut up half a million moderate Palestinians by flexing their Kalashnikovs.

Yeah, right, let's have a peace conference....