Haaretz says it ALL!

I know that it’s mere coincidence, but still found it a meaningful one…

I was skimming through the newsfeed for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when I found an article entitled “It’s a sorry plight to be a citizen in many Arab states” and right next to that article was another with the title “Obama begins pressuring Arab leaders on deal with Israel” . While these are 2 separate subjects, but going through the first article, you are left with the impression that the Arab World suffers extensive underdevelopment, and the ‘leaders’ of these countries are to be blamed for the situation. In such times – Lo! And behold! – the leader of the super-power has come to the rescue. Obama begins pressuring Arab leaders on deal with Israel…what now?! Is ‘deal with Israel’ a code word for doing what’s good for their peoples or leave? Well, who know…diplomacy is such a complicated language!!

The farce only completes by reading into the 2 headlines…

The article about the plight, that comments on a report made by the UN on the Development in the Arab World, opens with the fact that “It’s not easy living in an Arab state. Egyptians stay away from government hospitals“…Can’t agree more.

In an awkward use of the passive form this sentence goes ” The report notes that during the past seven years some 78,000 homes were demolished or damaged in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” No insight about a possible source for the demolition.

For the 3rd time the article asserts: “the illiteracy rate among women in some countries exceeds 50 percent“. Very relevant that it ushered a paragraph in the famous Obama speech in Cairo University.

The unavoudable conclusion: “However, the overall picture is bleak and sometimes scary.” Again, can’t agree more.

Now let’s dive into the 2nd headline..

Q: So why is the US president pressuring ‘us’? A: “An intensified and more public focus on this idea appears to be one of the byproducts of President Barack Obama’s July 13 pledge to American Jewish communal representatives to address perceptions that he is pressuring only Israel.”You get to wonder sometimes, where is our share of these pledges?

And as a reminder of the Arab generosity that gets more sickening by the time, an Arab diplomat comments: “In return for a symbolic compromise on the settlements, some Arab states will be willing to pay with some symbolic gestures.“Come on! What freaking compromise do you expect? There’s no such word in the Hebrew lexicon.

Talk big leader to me please! “According to experts and diplomats, tensions between Washington and Riyadh were building even prior to Obama’s meeting with Jewish leaders, as a result of a June 3 meeting between Obama and King Abdullah in the Saudi capital. The meeting ended with a clear disagreement over the issue of Israel.” Of course the omnipotent King of the paradise slash kingdom. Forget about illiterate women now, and try to get over the fact that women are not allowed to drive a car there. Just focus on Israel.

And under the title New Sadat this comes: “In a July 16 op-ed published in The Washington Post, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the Bahraini crown prince, called on Arab countries to reach out and communicate with Israel. “Essentially, we have not done a good enough job demonstrating to Israelis how our initiative can form part of a peace between equals in a troubled land holy to three great faiths,” Khalifa wrote. I’m no big fan of Sadat, but for crying out loud, how on Earth can this ‘crown prince’ ever be compared to Sadat or Bahrain be compared to Egypt. That’s more funny than outraging.

I might have been reading too much into the coincidence of proximity of these 2 articles, and that they shed a light on the hypocrisy of Politicians who care only about power and money, and who would choose to harass a country or be friends with not on how democratic they are, but on how much complicity they show. Yes I might have been. But we have a saying in Arabic that رب صدفة خير من ألف معاد – a coincidence can many times be better than a 1000 fixed appointments!