RUTHFULLY YOURS

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to arrive in the Middle East at the end of this week to engage in another round of shuttle diplomacy. It is possible that his trip will be cancelled, however, as his wife suddenly fell ill a few days ago.

Well, he would do far better to stay by her side — where his presence might actually have a beneficial effect — than to honor his commitment to arrive for what will have been his sixth endeavor at peace-brokering since March.

It is true that Egypt is now on the brink of a bloody civil war; Syria’s population is still being slaughtered; Turkish strife is escalating; and Iran’s race for nuclear weapons is becoming a sprint, rather than a marathon.

It is also clear that American interests are not being served by any or all of the above. But none of it is even remotely related to the purpose of Kerry’s repeated visits to the region.

No, what the America’s top diplomat is obsessed with is mediating between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. And because the latter’s goal is the elimination of the former, the only possible progress Kerry can make involves pressuring Israel to agree to a slew of Palestinian preconditions — not for peace, but for “peace talks.”

Even if such preconditions (i.e., the 1949 armistice lines as the starting point and the release of massive numbers of terrorists in Israeli prisons) did not constitute suicide for the Jewish state, meeting them would not result in anything resembling peace.

Last week, while State Department representatives remained in Israel to continue persuading “both sides” to sit down at the negotiating table — and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has been prepared to do so all along, without preconditions — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ official television station treated its viewers to a sweet little feature, ahead of the Ramadan holiday that begins Wednesday. In it, two little Palestinian girls recite a poem, introduced by a doting TV host. The broadcast was released by Palestinian Media Watch on Sunday.

The following is the English transcript:

Girl 1 — “I do not fear the rifle because your throngs are in delusion and ignorant herds.
“Jerusalem is my land, Jerusalem is my honor
“Jerusalem is my days and my wildest dreams.
“Oh, you who murdered Allah’s pious prophets,
“Oh, you who were brought up on spilling blood
“You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship.
“Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations
“Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs.”

Girl 2 — “Jerusalem is not your den
“Jerusalem opposes your throngs
“Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity
“Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate
“And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure.
“I do not fear barbarity.
“As long as my heart is my Quran and my city
“As long as I have my arm and my stones
“As long as I am free and do not barter my cause
“I will not fear your throngs
“I will not fear the rifle.”
(PATV, July 3, 2013)

Such ongoing expressions of Jew hatred and Israel “replacement theology” in official PA mouthpieces indicate why the Israeli public is skeptical about the prospect of a peace deal in the foreseeable future.

Indeed, according to the most recent Peace Index Poll, conducted monthly by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, while 64 percent of Jewish Israelis favor peace negotiations with the Palestinians, only 22% have faith in Kerry’s chances for success.

If Kerry’s endeavor were merely an exercise in futility, it could be dismissed as yet another example of the American administration’s overall foreign policy impotence. The trouble is that Israel is the only country in the region whose door is always open for the United States to knock on.

And what the White House and State Department are ignoring is that a Palestinian entity that refers to “sons of Zion” as the “most evil among creations,” and likens them to “barbaric monkeys and wretched pigs,” is no more on the path to democracy and peace than Syria and Egypt.

As long as Washington is in denial about this reality, Kerry might as well stay at home.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”