In Which Melanie Phillips Refuses to Outline her Final Solution to the Palestinian Problem

Dear Melanie

I read your Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media with interest. It is clear from this document – and the large number of other articles you have written on the subject of the Middle East – that you do not support the creation of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state. You believe that people of Jewish faith or ethnicity* have the right to settle anywhere within the biblical land of Israel as citizens of Israel, but you do not believe that people of Christian or Muslim faith and Arab ethnicity currently living outside the currently internationally recognized borders of Israel have the right to settle within those borders or, indeed, much in the way of rights as to where they settle outside those borders but still within the biblical territory. You do not accept that the Arab population within the biblical land of Israel but not living within the currently internationally recognized borders of Israel should be given the right to become citizens of a future Israel with expanded borders. (Please correct me if I have any of this wrong).

So now my question:

What is your proposal for what should happen to the non-Jewish inhabitants of these territories when you (and people who think like you) eventually get your way and Israel is expanded to include much or all of the biblical territories?

I have tried to make no judgements about who is right or wrong here and have tried to avoid opening any arguments about the historical background to the current situation. I am genuinely intrigued as to what your proposed solution is to the question I have raised. I cannot find the answer to this question in any of your extensive writings on this subject.

Yours sincerely

Mike

*I separate out these two facets of “Jewishness” because a number of members of my family have the right to go and live in Israel (or the areas Israel currently controls) under the “Law of Return”, but none of them are actually religious. Their recent ancestry is German rather than Middle Eastern.


Melanie's reply:

Your message displays a quite astounding degree of ignorance; virtually every one of your assumptions is based on a false factual, historical or moral premise. I have no intention of wasting my time answering you. There is ample information on my website already, were you able to understand it -- which clearly you are not.

Do not bother me again.

Melanie

Interesting that Melanie took the time to reply to me but did not use that time to correct any of my "assumptions" about (I'd call them "descriptions" of) her views or to answer my question.

I have read Melanie's website in some depth. I have read her forthright views on evolution, abiogenesis, and climate change and her descriptions of the various conspiracies amongst the world's scientists to keep us all misinformed in these areas. I also have read her extensive writings on the situation in the Middle East. While there is a great deal of material advanced in favour of Israeli policy - past and present - I have searched in vain for any proposals as to what should happen to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the territories in question under any future scenario that would be acceptable to Melanie P.

I think Melanie owes (not necessarily me but) her general audience a response here.

Why I’d be more than proud to have Sarfraz Manzoor in my family

Reading Sarfraz Manzoor’s moving article about the reaction of some members of his family to his marriage (to Bridget, who is white and not a Muslim) I began to muse on what sort of circumstances might prompt me to refuse to speak to my brother. I suppose that if I heard that he had disowned a member of his family because that family member had fallen in love with someone of the ”wrong” colour or the ”wrong” religious tradition*, that would do the trick.

After all, if someone cannot see for themselves that this kind of “not like us” view of other sections of humanity is morally repugnant, it is hard to think of any common starting point for any sort of discussion about ethical matters, or indeed about anything at all. As Ludwig Wittgenstein put it: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

I think Sarfraz Manzoor’s relatives who continue to oppose his marriage and who continue to refuse to talk to him are very lucky indeed that Sarfraz still seeks reconciliation with them. I find it hard to imagine that I could ever be so forgiving in similar circumstances.

I have not broached this with my daughter, Sarfraz is already spoken for, and if I were to meet him personally on a regular basis I’d probably break down and suggest he refrain from using a Van de Graaff generator to style his hair; but, these minor caveats aside, I’d be very proud to have Sarfraz Manzoor as my son in law.

Telling anyone in my “community" about this would not be a problem, since the only community I belong to is humanity.

*I use the term religious *tradition* advisedly since neither my brother nor I believe in any sort of supernatural overlords, but we are both, I suppose, “cultural Christians” who celebrate Christmas and Easter albeit in a largely (though not completely) secular fashion.