Two-state Manny strikes again

Hosting Israel’s PM Netanyahu, France’s President Macron took the opportunity to hector his guest on Middle Eastern politics.

By recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, he explained, Trump’s administration threatened peace. Even worse, that heinous act jeopardised the two-state solution.

The polymath Brigitte, Manny’s foster mother, clearly has her pedagogic work cut out. She has taught so many subjects (including Latin to my friend’s daughter) that one wonders if logic was among them. If so, she should give Manny six of the best, then run him through a simple Socratic process along these lines:

It’s possible to threaten only something that exists, n’est-ce pas? Oui, maman.

So suggesting that Trump’s action threatens peace presupposes that peace exists? Otherwise the statement is silly (une connerie), but yes? Oui, maman.

This raises another question: what’s peace? Er, maman… peace is… the absence of armed hostilities underlined by mutual good will.

Excellent, Manny. Now how does the current situation tally with your definition? Hamas keeps firing rockets into Israel from one end and Hezbollah from the other. Both, along with most Middle Eastern governments, are committed to destroying Israel and killing every Israeli. Not much evidence of peace, is there?

I don’t know what answer Mr Macron would offer at this point. But I can see how the notion of two states may be close to his heart.

For the policy of virtual apartheid practised by France towards her five million Muslims is well on the way to creating a state within a state. What’s a pipe dream in the Middle East may well become reality in France.

It’s reasonably clear that the French are reconciled to the demonstrable fact that Europe and Islam are incompatible. For a Muslim to become a good European, he has to become a bad Muslim.

Some are willing to do so, and more power to them. I for one don’t care about the racial or religious background of a loyal British subject or French citizen, provided he’s indeed loyal.

However, many Muslims don’t wish to adapt to their European homes. Instead, they wish to force their European homes to adapt to them – with the long doctrinal view of establishing an Islamic caliphate.

France’s solution to the problem has been to create self-contained Muslim enclaves all along city suburbs and leave their denizens more or less alone – on the understanding that such laissez-faire bonhomie will be reciprocated.

However, apartheid by any other name won’t work. Sooner or later a critical mass will be reached, and an explosion will occur. Civil war beckons, and France would be ill-advised to wait for it with insouciance.

Meanwhile, the Muslim banlieues around Paris and elsewhere do a decent reproduction of hell on earth, with the tongues of fire singeing the adjacent areas as well.

French Muslims, many of them native to the country, march through cities screaming “Nique la France!” (f*** France). Recently, leaflets have been spread all over the place, saying “if you meet a Jew, kill him”.

While indignant about such extremism, the French seem to be unaware that the entreaty comes straight from the Koran: “Take them [unbelievers] and kill them wherever ye find them” (4:91) and “Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends…” (5:51). So the leaflet is perfectly pious.

The Muslim banlieues are de facto ruled by sharia, which many French Muslims think should take precedence over the law of the land. And sharia isn’t the worst of it.

Drug trafficking, youth gangs, gun-toting zealots, 30,000 cars burnt around Paris every year, women sexually assaulted and forced into marriages or prostitution – these combine to turn the banlieues into no-go areas not just for regular citizens but even for police.

If they venture there at all, they do so in armoured cars bristling with rifle barrels. Alas, postmen have neither such vehicles nor firearms, which is why the Chronopost parcel service has refused to take deliveries to the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, home to 600,000 Muslims. One can understand their timidity: last year 51 delivery drivers were assaulted there.

The cauldron of civil war is bubbling, and recently Macron admitted this is the Republic’s fault. He’s at least partly correct, but here my imaginary conversion of Brigitte into Socrates with a touch of Hegel could come in handy again.

Thesis: Islam is incompatible with the West. Antithesis: the larger the Muslim population, the greater the problem.

So what’s the synthesis, Manny? Opening up Europe’s borders and importing Muslims at a rate of a million a year, as your beloved EU has done? Wrong, Manny. Bend over the desk and take it like a man. No, not that, for God’s sake. I was referring to caning.

The writer Christian de Moliner proposes a different solution – or rather a solution, for Manny isn’t proposing any. All he has to offer is bien pensant phrases.

Moliner’s solution is that same two-state arrangement Manny favours in the Middle East. Essentially Moliner suggests surrender based on a realistic assessment of the status quo.

France, he recommends, should accept the legitimacy of sharia in Muslim areas and let their denizens settle their disputes according to the Koran, not the Napoleonic code. Hence they should be allowed to have any numbers of wives in this life and any number of virgins in the next.

This is what a third of French Muslims (and almost half of their British co-religionists) want anyway. Since these more radical segments dominate the whole Muslim population, Moliner’s solution is to give in to them, hoping that would diffuse the situation.

However, Moliner’s solution would only exacerbate the de facto apartheid that already exists in France – and not only there. A country can’t have two parallel legal systems and hope to remain at peace. A clash will be not merely likely but guaranteed.

I don’t have a better solution – and neither does Manny, or for that matter May. Such problems are best prevented before they fester, not solved afterwards.

Stopping Muslim immigration is a must, but this is only a palliative because the problem of the millions of Muslims already here will remain unsolved. And anyway, no Western European government will have the guts for even such a half-measure.

One can think of any number of even more unrealistic measures, but suggesting them in public would run afoul of any number of newfangled laws, belying the notion of free speech.

One doubts Europe will wake up before a civil war breaks out, yet only a madman would wish for such a wake-up call.