The False Messiahs of the Eurozone

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

It is a very old joke, and a very profound one. A visitor to a zoo chances upon a cage in which he sees the most astonishing of sights: a wolf lying down next to a lamb. Overcome with awe, he runs to the zookeeper and proclaims: “It is exactly as Isaiah foretold! The wolf dwells with the lamb! The eschatological era is upon us! The permanent period of peace has come! How have you achieved this astonishing state of affairs?” To this the zookeeper immediately and modestly replies: “Oh, it was easy. Every day we put in another lamb.”

The joke comes to mind as we prepare for the sorry and sordid spectacle of European leaders descending on the United Nations to proclaim their support for Palestinian statehood and to attend a conference promoting the “two-state solution.” French President Emmanuel Macron is therefore profoundly irked that Mahmoud Abbas has been barred by the Trump administration from attending. “Our objective is clear,” Macron announced, “to rally the broadest possible international support for the Two-State Solution—the only way to meet the legitimate aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians.” The barring of Abbas is therefore, Macron declared, “unacceptable.” With nothing but bloodshed in the decades following Oslo, and with the Palestinian Authority giving every indication that it is still interested in finding and celebrating the murder of Jews, Europe will continue to assert its purported solution as sacred doctrine.