Tony is coming to town.



The final votes were barely tabulated in the American election when Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair began his squeeze on Mr. George Bush regarding the Jews. Now that Mr. Bush was reelected, it's payback time for America's primary supporter in Iraq. The Brits, like the rest of an historically anti-Semitic Europe, seek to gain or regain Arab favor at the expense of Israel.



Blair will be coming to Washington as the president's first official visitor from abroad in his new term. The prime minister has already announced his intentions to push for "peace" on the Arab-Israeli front.



Now, who could complain about that? Or, perhaps, Blair believes that Jews actually enjoy having their kids and other innocents constantly disemboweled and blown apart by his Arab friends.



The problem, of course, is what we mean by "peace".



One of Blair's predecessors, after all, promised the Czechs "peace" over a half century ago at Munich. We all know how that turned out. And the circumstances were a bit too similar for comfort, as well. The Czechs were sold out to Hitler in 1938 by their so-called "friends", Britain's Neville Chamberlain & Co.



Blair and others believe that, with Arafat now out of the picture, the time is ripe to demand yet more unilateral concessions from Israel a la Oslo. During the era of that last infamous "peace" initiative, the more hard concessions in territory and the like Israel was pressured by its "friends" to offer up for peace, the more "peace of the grave" it received in return. Furthermore, even the so-called "moderates" among the Arabs subsequently called such dealings with the Jews a "Trojan Horse" that would be used simply to win diplomatically what could not be won on the battlefield, advancing the Arabs' decades' old destruction-in-phases strategy vis-a-vis Israel.



The Brits are no dummies when it comes to the Middle East. They've been meddling in it for centuries. So Blair knows the difference between a hudna -- the most that even the Arab "moderates" offer to Israel -- and real peace. The former, modeled after what the prophet Muhammad offered up to his enemies until he could muster the strength to deliver the final blow, is but a temporary respite. One does not give away all but the kitchen sink nor bare the necks of one's babes and other innocents -- the Arabs' targets of choice -- for such a "deal".



It's interesting that Blair comes calling now on this matter. "Sickening" is actually a better way to describe it.



Representing a nation whose imperial dealings not that long ago shafted many different peoples, that legacy lives on today. In the very "Iraq" where the British now fight alongside of America, the latter sacrificed the best chance some thirty million Kurds ever had for modern independence and statehood.



Having promised Kurdish independence after World War I in Mesopotamia (there was no "Iraq" then), after Britain received a favorable decision in 1925 on the Mosul Question from the League of Nations - whereby the predominantly Kurdish oil-rich areas around Mosul were separated from Turkish Kurdistan and attached to the British Mandate of Mesopotamia instead - the Brits gave up the facade of supporting native Kurdish aspirations. The Kurds were thus sacrificed on the altar of Arab nationalism and British petroleum politics, as those areas became attached to a Hashemite Arab Iraq instead.



In the process of having their derrieres booted out of the Arabian peninsula by the rival clan of Ibn Saud, Britain's Hashemite Arab allies were princes in need of princedoms.



Like they were doing in their Mandate of Palestine, where some 80% of the original 1920 borders were turned over to another Hashemite Arab prince in the creation of Transjordan (today's Jordan), the Brits deemed it more important to keep the oil-rich Arab world as happy as possible by nipping in the bud the nationalist dreams of the Kurds. While Israel miraculously survived the attempted infanticide, the Kurds did not. We are living with the consequences of such callous realpolitik today.



Mr. Blair must be told loudly and clearly that Israel is not Mosul.



Israel's Jews (one half of whom who were refugees from the Arab/Muslim world) will not willingly sacrifice the security of their sole, miniscule, resurrected state for the sake of Britain's or anyone else's interests. A 22nd or 23rd Arab state (and second, not first, Arab one in "Palestine") will not be born at the expense of the one perpetually tormented Jews finally lived to see reborn.



Joined by multinational oil interests and their supporters (including those in the United States), the Brits found powerful allies in opposing Israel's very right to exist from the get-go. While, over subsequent decades, the reality of Israel led to an improvement in relations, the Brits intimate connections with oil-rich and far more numerous Arabs, whom they also formerly ruled, continued and continue to spell out the handwriting on the wall as far as Israel's interests are concerned.



On the other side of the world, a few decades ago, the Brits fought a war thousands of miles away from their home borders, just a few hundred miles off the coast of Argentina.



The Falklands War was fought in the name of British interests and sovereignty. Think about that long and hard.



Here's Blair coming to town to pressure Jews to return to a nine-mile-wide rump state status that the United Nations left it in after Israel was invaded by Arab states in 1948, but Britain can acquire territories, conquer lands and pursue interests thousands of miles away from home. Furthermore, while Argentina is no enemy of Great Britain, poll after poll taken among Arabs have shown that the vast majority of the latter will not accept a permanent, viable, Jewish State, regardless of its size, with or without the disputed territories in question.



Mr. Bush will be under increasing pressure to advance Middle East peace, including from the Foggy Folks (who also opposed Israel's rebirth).



While many of us want to see the end of this tragic conflict, demanding -- yet again -- suicidal, one-sided concessions from Israel is not the answer.



Before Israel is asked to yield anything further of substance, Arabs must first be made to live up to the terms of that earlier Oslo fiasco, which they simply ignored. They must put an end to their constant indoctrination of Jew-hatred and bloodlust among their masses. The Palestinian Authority must stop playing the game of good cop/bad cop with Hamas. It must recognize Israel as a Jewish State the same way Arabs claim the right to call some two dozen others -- inhabited by millions of native, non-Arab Kurds, Berbers, Copts, black Africans, etc. -- "Arab". The Arabs must show that they understand that a territorial compromise will be necessary over the disputed lands in question. Israel will never return to the 1949 Auschwitz/armistice lines. And they must understand that their expectation of a "return" of millions of real and fudged Arab refugees -- created as a result of the Arabs' own invasion of Israel in 1948 -- to overwhelm Israel's five million Jews is laughable. Again, as many Jews fled "Arab" lands as Arabs fled in reverse as a result of the 1948 war, but the Jews didn't have some two dozen other states to potentially eventually pick from.



Mr. Bush received most of his support in the recent election from people who understand all of this. So he must tell his good friend Tony that while he too wants peace, Israel will not be the sacrificial lamb offered up to achieve it.