The West: three times wrong in one day
Il Giornale, July 1, 2012
It is gloomy: the compass has gone haywire, we do not know where to head to. Yesterday our universe revealed again and altogether symptoms of losing awareness and space. Let’s set off from Geneva where Hillary Clinton’s round eyes and Sergey Lavrov’s almond shaped ones starred at each other, chilly and useless. Kofi Annan almost cried at the five powers meeting he heedlessly convened in Geneva. And again the best possible outcome would be a re-drafting of the useless six-point document that Annan had already given the world in order to solve the Syrian puzzle. Should Assad step back? What a great idea. But, for the time being, Americans do not want remains of the old regime in the new power, Russians do not want to get rid of Assad without their presence in the Middle East being granted. Beyond the corner, the salafis wait, and everybody know.
Another symptom of a crisis is all the credit given for nothing to Turkey; the once secular and now islamist country, strutted, arrogant looks for popularity, and accepts uncertain the unlikely role of Muslim mediator that we as Westerners would desperately like to entrust her. In a word, Syria goes on killing, and we can’t do anything but arguing.
A second gloomy scenario is our western reaction to the speech by the newly elected Egyptian president Morsi. The European and American establishments and the same old columnists scrutinize all details of it, looking for signs of moderation, and they do find some, why not. The Muslim Brothers are good at fooling us while designing the caliphate. A brave Egyptian feminist, Dalia Ziada dared reminding him that he had previously stated that shaaria values are the best warrant for women. And this goes also for the way Muslim Brotherhood sees human rights. It is noticed that, while declaring today that he will honour the peace treaty with Israel, he called its leaders “vampires” and “murderers”. Morsi has also pledged to get sheik Omar Abdel Rachman released, a terrorist sentenced to life in the United States. Yet, we content ourselves with a word of noble tolerance, forgetful that this is indeed the Brotherhood’s technique: getting in on the sly, seizing everything as soon as possible.
A last additional event proving how useless we are: UNESCO declared the Church of the Nativity as “World Heritage”. It is the first site within the Palestinian territory, therefore entrusted to a Muslim authority. Generally, Muslim authorities don’t manage to keep a tolerant attitude towards holy places of other long. Salam Fayyad praised the decision as “a victory of our cause, a global recognition of the rights of our people”. He forgot the basilica was shelter to the terrorists during Intifada. He remembered instead how Unesco be a militant organization of the Palestinian fight. Unesco recognized Palestine as a state, it declared the tombs of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as the Tomb of Rebekah as Palestinian sites. Now the Basilica has been delivered to the Palestinians in Bethlehem, where Christians have largely been expelled by Muslims.