We’re just human, after all, and being human tends to mean that we side with the princess rather than with the frog. So when the princess makes a false move, all the world is up in arms, but when the frog makes a false move, we hardly notice.
A certain princess in her glass cage was probably bored; indeed she explicitly said so to her “friend” Epstein, who had, after all, served his sentence and who must have been an extraordinarily interesting man, judging from the number of highly competent people who seemed to dote on him. Moreover, Norwegian royalty is merely ceremonial, so the princess is unlikely to have had access to state secrets to pass on, unlike some of her compatriots, among them a former prime minister, a former foreign minister and the famous “diplomatic couple”, fêted in the 2021 film Oslo.
The late Mr Arafat also made a false move back in 1993 and 1995. He signed the Oslo Accords, or rather he was cajoled and/or tricked into signing the Oslo Accords. Nobody wept. On the contrary, back then, most of us rejoiced. Only after many years have some of us – far from all – understood that those accords were a masterfully infernal, backhanded deception.
In the article The Oslo trap; How PLO signed its own death warrant Professor Raef Zreik explains the trap from a legal perspective, while Jasim Al-Azzawi adds colour to detail in You can’t see the forest for the trees: How the Oslo Accords became Israel’s greatest strategic victory.
Arafat failed to understand that the negotiating table itself was rigged, and he was on the menu. Most significantly, Arafat misjudged America’s role. He counted on the United States as an “honest broker”.
In essence they are both blaming the frog (Arafat was not a beautiful man, let’s face it). Until recently nobody blamed Terje Rød Larsen and Mona Juuel who are credited with having engineered the trap.
Raef Zreik, still a young and powerless Lawyer back in 1993 may have seen through the sham at the time, but all the world (and when we in the West say “all the world”, we usually mean the 12.5 % of the global population that inhabits our part of it) rejoiced. Today, almost all of us know that the US is far from an “honest broker”.
Back then, we believed that when a generation of brave American kids who had been brutally beaten demonstrating for civil rights and against the Vietnam war took charge, the US would mend its ways. The US had seen the film Missing, had listened to Arloe Guthrie, Angela Davis etc. And Clinton even played the saxophone! We rhapsodised about a new era.
Later, here in Norway, we were sure that after the disastrous Iraq war the US would finally have learnt. And again, after the financial crisis in 2008, some of us still hoped… Actually, to be fair to myself I had long since lost my illusions about the USA, not to mention Israel. But back in 1993 and 1995, I was still easily duped.
You see, there was this massacre in 1982. That was the first time, from my perspective at least, that the press was able to convey some of the horror we have regrettably grown quite used to: The Sabra and Shatila massacres. Quoting Wikipedia:
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the 16–18 September 1982 killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias.
No matter how they turn this around in the blame game, it was and is clear to me that this was an expression of Israeli racist loathing. It became clear to me, that every Palestinian anywhere near Israel risked being exterminated. So ten years later, the Oslo Accords seemed preferable to extermination. Therefore, Prof. Zreik and Mr Al-Azzawi: don’t blame the Frog!
Blame the lionised diplomatic couple Terje Rød Larsen and Mona Juuel. Blame their employer, the Norwegian Foreign Service, who must now endure the shame of having been one of Jeffrey Epstein’s gullible targets. Please note, also, that with 12 US military bases on Norwegian soil, my country is a US vassal. If Trump “takes” Greenland and/or Iceland and/or the Svalbard archipelago, there will be nothing, nothing, we can do about it.
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Post scriptum: I suspect that Epstein’s collusion with powerful citizens in my country (and, in the event, yours) will not be properly examined by our judiciary: It is too embarrassing. I therefore urge you to search through the enormous cache of Epstein files. It is a treasure trove, consisting mostly of worthless pennies with the occasional ingot. Sifting through files under “rod larson” I found, for instance, Epstein’s will of 29 June 2017 – since revoked: Epstein designated three executors, one of whom is Terje Rød Larsen. Nowhere in the press have I seen this piece of information. This is, as I see it, an ingot which we can use to force our authorities to come clean on their collusion with the racist state of Israel.
Here is our gold mine: