Shallow Patten
From Mr Herb Greer Sir: I was bemused (again) to read Chris Patten's views ('Commissioner Petain fights back', 2 November) on a) the Middle East and b) the chimerous thing called Europe.
His serious suggestion that the Palestinians will give up the idea of 'swamping Israel' with homecomers, and blithely make Jerusalem a sort of mutual capital of Israel and a Palestinian state, is so shallow as to stun the intellect. The Palestinians are not the problem. They never have been. The problem is (or are) the massive majority of Muslim peoples in the Middle East who share Osama bin Laden's view of Israel: a modern cognate of the Crusader kingdom — which must, at any price, be extirpated, complete with its Jews, as that kingdom was.
The Palestinians are a relatively small part of that majority, are despised by it, and have been used by it quite cold-bloodedly over a generation to draw support and sympathy for Israel's enemies from suckers like Mr Patten. The famous Sharon stroll on the Temple Mount is an example of how superficial twits like Patten have consented to that manipulation. The Palestinian 'defence minister' has admitted, long since, that the intifada was planned and organised long before that walk and would have happened without it. Verb. sap.
As to Europe — what Europe? There is no such thing as Europe. No body politic, no citizens to give it loyalty, nothing beyond a geographical-cum-bureaucratic conceit peopled by corrupt, quarrelling, mendacious, undemocratic, unaccountable, dictatorial 'officials', who use pleasant figures like Patten to anaesthetise, celebrity-style, the intelligence of the British electorate; meanwhile steadily moving for a superstate-style bureaucratic takeover of this country. Patten, true to the style of his Middle Eastern complaisance, goes along with this game. Boris Johnson was far too easy on him.
Herb Greer
Salisbury, Wiltshire
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