reality check
Who is in denial?
By Mark Goldblatt
JewishWorldReview


Delusions are a two-way street and the West is not immune. The West's principal delusion is that we can promote mass sanity among Muslims through diplomacy. It's an absurd pipe dream. You don't talk people out of the thing that gives their lives meaning; the best you can hope for is convincing them of its futility with minimal bloodshed.

The great exemplar here is the intellectual Left's perennial call for a "diplomatic solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; it's up to the United States, their argument goes, as the world's only superpower, to bring the two sides together, to find a suitable middle ground. In the abstract, this sounds fine. But when the Palestinians' persistent, heartfelt, non-negotiable demand is for the rest of the world to recognize their divine right as Arabs to possess the Islamic holy land -- in effect, to drive the Jews into the sea -- what would a middle ground look like? Jews agreeing to be driven into the sea up to their waists?