“Do You Want the Grapes or to Kill the Vineyard Guard?”

Libya (Libya!) schools the rest of the Arab world—and in the process the internecine “Palestinians” themselves—in how to succeed at delivering aid to Gaza if you really, really want to. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of Muammar and president of the Gaddafi Foundation, tells Ashark Al-Awsat in a July 18 interview about the deal struck by the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Libyans to get building materials and pre-fab houses—and $50 million—into Gaza, by diverting the Gaza-bound Amalthea to El-Arish and offloading “around 2,000 tons of aid and a number of Libyan, Arab, and foreign activists” there for distribution through the Rafah and Awja crossings. No blockade running, nor a single armed “humanitarian,” nor a single stabbing, nor a single beating, nor a single death required.

“[As] the saying goes ‘do you want the grapes or to kill the vineyard guard?’” Mr. Gaddafi asks.

We want the grapes, and now we have them, so there is no need to create problems. Our goal was not to confront the Israeli navy, but Gaza reconstruction and helping our Palestinian brothers. . . . This is a lesson for the Arabs, if they knew how to come to agreements and work well, it would have been possible for us to achieve more. . . . I see this as a lesson for the Arabs, it was also revealing about the true position of the Palestinian officials . . . for they let us down. There are conflicts between them taking place at the expense of ordinary Palestinians; everybody wants to see a show or spectacle or confrontation, rather than help . . . they all want to kill the vineyard guard at the expense of getting the grapes. . . . We believe that without work such as that which we are undertaking, the Gaza blockade would continue forever because all Palestinian factions are content with the status quo and the blockade will not be lifted when all Palestinian parties are seeking to exploit the suffering of their people to serve their own political agendas.

Interesting point that, about the exploitation by “Palestinian” parties of the suffering of their own people to serve their own political agendas. Of course one has heard such stuff before, most notably and often from members of the great neocon-Zionist conspiracy—but from the lips of an Arab actually in a position to do something to help? In public? Rarely, if ever at all. As for help, $50 million is a nice little tip—Mr. Gaddafi says it’s just a start—out of the abundant Muammarian coffers, but what of the riyals and dinars and dirhams in the hoards of the oil-drenched Saudi “king,” the gassy al-Thanis of Qatar, and the rest of the members of the Arab League who routinely shed crocodile tears over the fate of those same suffering people? They can’t seem to get their hands out of their own pockets, except maybe when it’s to fund the fanning out into the world of an extremist Islam, or the killing of one of those vineyard guards.