Decades of educational
brainwashing of the Palestinians in particular and other Arab peoples has
produced a constituency of Dead Enders no less charming than the Hitler Youth.
The real delusion is that there
is anyone to negotiate with at all. We
only have around seventy years or so of proof to the contrary.
The Israeli Palestinian
confrontation is now inevitably sliding downward to a military confrontation
that will plausibly precipitate outright expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza , Southern Lebanon and the West Bank into Jordan and in
the process creating a formal Palestinian state.
This was the original Zionist dream,
and it could only be thwarted by either Israeli failure or Palestinian
intransigence. In fact the failure of successive
Palestinian leaders to reach an accord has allowed the piecemeal extraction of
land in the West Bank already making a Greater
Israeli a fact on the ground. This was
not a plan but it was also allowed to happen because there was no treaty to
prevent it.
The other fact on the ground is
that the population of Israel
is today 7.7 million, which is a far cry from even the numbers back in
1967. Its war making capacity, been a
completely modern society is about 1.5 million boots on the ground including
women of which the pointy part could easily be 250,000 highly effective
soldiers. Recall this compares to the US force that eliminated Saddam in Iraq so
handily.
In the meantime all the natural
allies, if we can call them that are engaged in serious internal revolts whose
outcome cannot be determined yet could well promote adventurism.
The best shield against
adventurism is an American fleet growling of the coast. At the least it allows all the hawks to growl
loudly while doing nothing in apparent good faith.
In this latest speech, Obama has
foolishly withdrawn that shield and has set the stage for his version of Jimmy
Carter’s Iranian Blunder that we are still attempting to neutralize.
Where Obama is Leading Israel
Posted by Caroline Glick on Jun 2nd, 2011
Reprinted from The Jerusalem Post.
In the aftermath of US President Barack Obama’s May 19 speech on the
Middle East, his supporters argued that the policy toward Israel and the Palestinians that
Obama outlined in that speech was not anti-Israel. As they presented it,
Obama’s assertion that peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians
must be based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps does not mark a substantive
departure from the positions adopted by his predecessors in the Oval Office.
But this claim is exposed as a lie by previous administration
statements. On November 25, 2009, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu’s acceptance of Obama’s demand for a 10-month moratorium on Jewish
property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the State Department issued
the following statement: “Today’s announcement by the Government of Israel
helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can
mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the
Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines,
with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and
recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli
security requirements.”
In his speech, Obama stated: “The United
States believes… the borders of Israel
and Palestine
should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure
and recognized borders are established for both states.”
That is, he took “the Palestinian goal” and made it the US ’s
goal. It is hard to imagine a more radically anti-Israel policy shift than
that.
And that wasn’t Obama’s only radically anti-Israel policy shift. Until
his May 19 speech, the US agreed with Israel that the issue of borders is only
one of many – including the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist,
their demand to inundate Israel with millions of foreign Arab immigrants, their
demand for control over Israel’s water supply and Jerusalem – that have to be
sorted out in negotiations. The joint US-Israeli position was that until all of
these issues were resolved, none of them were resolved.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, claim that before they will
discuss any of these other issues, Israel has to first agree to accept the
indefensible 1967 boundaries as its permanent borders. This position allows the
Palestinians to essentially maintain their policy of demanding that Israel
make unreciprocated concessions that then serve as the starting point for
further unreciprocated concessions.
It is a position that is antithetical to peace. And on May 19, by
stipulating that Israel must
accept the Palestinian position on borders as a precondition for negotiations,
Obama adopted it as US
policy.
Since that speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only
reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US
president Israel
has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that
Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel .
Friday’s Yediot Aharonot reported on the dimensions of the threat Obama
may pose to the Jewish state. The paper’s account was based on administration
and Congressional sources. The story discussed Obama’s plans to contend with
the Palestinian plan to pass a resolution at the UN General Assembly in
September endorsing Palestinian statehood in Jerusalem ,
Judea, Samaria and Gaza .
According to Yediot, during his meeting with Obama on May 20, Netanyahu
argued that in light of the Palestinians’ automatic majority support at the
General Assembly, there was no way to avoid the resolution.
Netanyahu reportedly explained that the move would not be a disaster.
The General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the PLO’s declaration of
independence in 1988.
And the sky still hasn’t fallen.
Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in
a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the
Palestinian resolution. Obama’s distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly
frustrated US Ambassador
Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians’
Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel
for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem ,
Judea and Samaria .
Yediot’s report asserts that Obama refused to brief Netanyahu on the
steps his administration is taking to avert such an unpalatable option. What
the paper did report was how George Mitchell – Obama’s Middle
East envoy until his resignation last week – recommended Obama
proceed on this issue.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the
Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security
Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said
would be “painful for Israel ,”
would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem ,
Judea and Samaria
is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the
Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject
just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama
could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically
anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that
Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security
Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell’s policy represents the most
anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama’s
actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell’s
policy recommendations
First there was his speech before AIPAC. Among other things, Obama used
the international campaign to delegitimize Israel ’s
right to exist as a justification for his policies of demanding that Israel capitulate to the Palestinians’ demands,
which he has now officially adopted as US policy.
As he put it, “there is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing
their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an
impatience with the peace process – or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab
world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia .
That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitals
around the world.”
From AIPAC, Obama moved on to Europe .
There he joined forces with European governments in an attempt to gang up on Israel
at the G8 meeting.
Obama sought to turn his embrace of the Palestinian negotiating
position into the consensus position of the G8. His move was scuttled by
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper, who refused to accept any resolution that made mention of borders
without mentioning the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through Arab
immigration, Israel’s right to defensible borders, or the Palestinians’ refusal
to accept Israel’s right to exist.
If Harper had not stood by Israel , the G8’s anti-Israel
resolution endorsing the Palestinian negotiating position could have formed the
basis of a US-sponsored anti-Israel Security Council resolution.
Israelis planning their summer trips should put Canada at the
top of their lists.
The final step Obama has taken to solidify the impression that he does
not have Israel ’s
best interests at heart, is actually something he has not done. Over the past
week, Fatah leaders of the US-backed Palestinian Authority have made a series
of statements that put paid any thought that they are interested in peace with
Israel or differ substantively from their partners in Hamas.
At the Arab League meeting in Qatar on Saturday, PA
President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian state “will be free
of all Jews.”
Last week the US-supported Abbas denied the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and claimed absurdly that the
Palestinians were 9,000 years old.
Equally incriminating, in an interview last week with Aaron Lerner from
the IMRA newsgathering website, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that
now that Hamas was the co-leader of the PA with Fatah, responsibility for continuing
to hold IDF St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit hostage devolved from Hamas to the PA. And
the PA would continue to hold him hostage.
Shaath’s statement makes clear that rather than moderating Hamas, the
Fatah-Hamas unity deal is transforming Fatah into Hamas.
And yet, Obama has had nothing to say about any of this.
Obama’s now undeniable antipathy for Israel and his apparent
willingness to use his power as American president to harm Israel at the UN and
elsewhere guarantee that for the duration of his tenure in office, Israel
will face unprecedented threats to its security. This disturbing reality ought
to focus the attention of all Israelis and of the American Jewish community.
With the leader of the free world now openly siding with forces bent on Israel ’s
destruction, the need for unity has become acute.
Maddeningly, however, at this time of unprecedented danger we see the
Israeli media have joined ranks with Kadima in siding with Obama against Israel
in a joint bid to bring down Netanyahu’s government. Yediot Aharonot, Maariv,
Haaretz, Channel 2, Channel 10, Army Radio and Israel Radio’s coverage of
Netanyahu’s visit and its aftermath was dominated by condemnations of the prime
minister, and praise for Obama and opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who called for
Netanyahu to resign.
The fact that polling data showed that only 12 percent of Jewish
Israelis regard Obama as pro-Israeli and that the overwhelming majority of the
public with an opinion believes Netanyahu’s visit was a success made absolutely
no impression on the media. The wall-to-wall condemnations of Netanyahu by the
Israeli media lend the impression that Israel ’s
leading reporters and commentators are committed to demoralizing the public
into believing that Israel
has no option other than surrender.
Then there is the American Jewish leadership. And at this critical time
in US-Israel relations, the American Jewish leadership is either silent or
siding with Obama. Right after Obama’s shocking speech on May 19, the
Anti-Defamation League released a statement endorsing it. Stand With Us
congratulated Obama for his AIPAC speech.
With the notable exceptions of the Zionist Organization of America and
the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA),
leaders of American Jewish organizations have refused to condemn Obama’s
anti-Israel positions.
Their silence becomes all the more enraging when placed against the
massive support Israel
receives from rank-and-file American Jews. In a survey of American Jews taken
by CAMERA on May 16-17, between 75% and 95% of American Jews supported Israel’s
position on defensible borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian “refugees,” Palestinian
recognition of Israel’s right to exist and the right of Jews to live in a
Palestinian state.
The refusal of most American Jewish leaders, the Israeli media and
Kadima to condemn Obama today makes you wonder if there is anything the US
president could do to convince them to break ranks and stand with Israel and
with the vast majority of their fellow Jews. But it is more than a source of
wonder. It is a reason to be frightened. Because Obama’s actions over the past
two weeks make clear to anyone willing to see that in the age of Obama, silence
is dangerous.
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