'Spontaneous' Combustion

Here are a few quotes from this morning's news.  See if you sense a theme:

"Trump’s Jerusalem decision putting region in ‘ring of fire’"
~Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan~

"Trump's 'flagrant aggression' has opened 'the gates of hell'"
~Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh~

"Trump [is] a 'pyromaniac' and ... going through with the move risked inflaming the region."
~MK Ayman Odeh (The head of the Knesset’s Joint (Arab) List)~

"Jerusalem has a tendency to explode when you fool around with the status quo"
~Aaron David Miller, vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former Middle East adviser to the Clinton and Bush administrations~

"Trump's announcement might be intended as an opening move in the administration's yet-to-be-revealed Middle East peace plan, but risks igniting a "powder keg"
~[unnamed] US Analysts~

This repeated warning of 'spontaneous combustion' on the Arab 'street' is crap.  Violent demonstrations and riots require direction and a lot of advance planning.  They require leadership, communication, transportation, materials, signage, flags, manpower, food, water, etc..  

If the Palestinians were going to 'spontaneously take to the street' because of the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, they would have done so last night.  They didn't. 

What we saw repeated in a loop on the news last night were a few carefully orchestrated groups of people burning US and Israeli flags (gee whiz, who just happened to have US and Israeli flags lying around?!), captured in very tight camera angles so as to hide the modest size of the crowd.

However, the Palestinian Authority (PLO) and Hamas have both called for (meaning ordered) tomorrow (Friday) to be a 'Day of Rage'.  The Imams  and 'community organizers' will get everyone good and whipped up, give them their marching orders and send them off to burn, maim and kill.

It remains to be seen just how wide open the leadership will turn the spigot, and for how long.  But make no mistake,it is a spigot, and there is a firm hand on it... so this should in no way, shape or form be confused with 'spontaneity'.  

But to be clear, spontaneous combustion can, under ideal conditions, occur.  But in the case of the combustion metaphors being tossed around in the news today, there should be no question about who is lighting the fires and fanning the flames.  And when it happens, it will be arson, plain and simple.  

I've said this before but it bears repeating:  What the world leaders and media outlets are doing to the Palestinians is called 'infantilization'.  It is degrading, insulting and actually calls into question the ability of the Palestinians to join the grown-ups at the diplomatic table of nations. 

Simply put, those who scream and lash out violently when they don't get their way are called 'children' (or at very least, are acting childishly).  Such people are not ready to manage their own affairs, enter into international agreements and raise an army.

Yet the 'grown-ups' of the family of nations seem to experience no sense of irony (or cognitive dissonance), when repeatedly warning that if the Palestinians don't get their way, they will be unable to keep themselves from screaming and lashing out violently... while in the same breath insisting that the Palestinians are indeed grown up enough to run their own country (and all that goes with that).