Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Jeremiah Wright's Protégé Attacks the Israeli Occupation

Israel is at war. Hamas provoked the violent confrontation by killing three Israeli teenagers. One suspects that Hamas was goaded by Tehran.

The Israeli Defense Forces have attacked the Hamas redoubt in Gaza and Hamas has responded by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel.

What, you may ask does the Obama administration have to say about all of this? What contribution did an administration run by Jeremiah Wright’s protégé make?

Yesterday, President Obama sent his special assistant for Middle Eastern affairs, Philip Gordon to a peace conference convoked by the liberal Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.

After paying lip service to America’s commitment to Israel, Gordon pretended to apportion blame equally. In the end he blamed it all on the Israeli occupation. By his lights, the Israelis are depriving the Palestinians, even the terrorists, of their dignity.

With friends like that, who needs enemies?


Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank is wrong and leads to regional instability and dehumanization of Palestinians, a top American government official said Tuesday in Tel Aviv, hinting that the current Israeli government is not committed to peace.

In an unusually harsh major foreign policy address, Philip Gordon, a special assistant to US President Barack Obama and the White House coordinator for the Middle East, appealed to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make the compromises needed to reach a permanent peace agreement. Jerusalem “should not take for granted the opportunity to negotiate” such a treaty with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has proven to be a reliable partner, Gordon said.

“Israel confronts an undeniable reality: It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability,” Gordon said. “It will embolden extremists on both sides, tear at Israel’s democratic fabric and feed mutual dehumanization.”

And also:

Specifically, Gordon went on: “How will Israel remain democratic and Jewish if it attempts to govern the millions of Palestinian Arabs who live in the West Bank? How will it have peace if it’s unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security and dignity? How will we prevent other states from supporting Palestinian efforts in international bodies, if Israel is not seen as committed to peace?”

Of course, Israel’s supposedly reliable partner, Abbas, has allied himself with Hamas in a unified Palestinian government.

Happily for the Palestinians they do not need to argue their point of view. The Obama administration is doing it for them. Happily for the Palestinians they do not need to negotiate with Israel. The Obama administration considers that that fault lies primarily with the recalcitrant Israelis.

Jeremiah Wright’s protégé is telling the Israelis that they need to compromise. He never seems to expect the other side to comprise. Since it’s all the fault of the Jews, if only they would institute a policy of appeasement and retreat, all would be well.

The radical left has always been happy to defend the Palestinian cause against a free enterprise, liberal democratic state like Israel.

It has not figured out that, for Palestinians who want to rid the Middle East of both Jews and Christians, Israel is an illegitimate state that is occupying lands that belong—by divine right—to the Arabs.

Were Israel to offer more and more concessions, concessions that are met with defiance and contempt, it would be supporting a position that the Palestinian authority and Hamas hold to be the ultimate truth: that all of Israel is an occupying state and that its elimination will bring peace to the region.

Because, we all know, Muslims never kill other Muslims.

6 comments:

  1. "Happily for the Palestinians they do not need to argue their point of view." They never argue their point, they merely state and restate it. If they spoke Latin, it would be Israel Delenda Est.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The path of the Palestinians is the politics of despair. It's about optics, not substance. Israel is not going away, yet the Palestinians continue to commit suicide in every form hoping that the world will notice and make Israel go away. Not going to happen. That's why Tehran needs a nuclear weapon. And when Iran goes nuclear with Israel, the Israelis will retaliate in kind and then...

    We can try to hide from the world and be reasonable, but the world always seems to find us in the end. Obama sounds like Michael Corleone in "The Godfather, Part III" -- "I keep trying to get out, and they keep pulling me back in!"

    Yes, crazy people have a way of doing that. What's your move? Thus far, President Obama has voted "present."

    Tip

    ReplyDelete
  3. Is Israel a democracy? I didn't know, and found this article:
    http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Is-Israel-a-true-democracy-352445

    I have no strong opinion what sort of governmental structure is optimal, especially when its existence is in continual threat.

    The biggest issue for me, is the same issue we had with occupying Iraq - if the U.S. needs to give continual military and financial to keep a stable Iraq, and if we leave, it becomes chaos, we can ask similarly if Israel is in a place of self determination if the U.S. stopped backing Israel.

    Who knows, maybe the U.S. LIKES to have Israel as our "lightning rod" to give us an excuse to care about the region, and they're willing to pay the price of holding and defending land?

    Iraq is a rich country in regards to oil, and Israel is a rich country in regards to its modern technology exports, and both can afford to defend their own lands.

    Whatever argument you make that Iraq's enemies or Israel's enemies are unworthy and need to be fought, you have to consider what happens if we can no longer afford to support these fights, no matter who's right.

    Presidental candidate Romney made a quip, that for all government spending, he'd ask himself if it's worth spending money from China to pay for it, and if not, he'd cut it. I might expect Israel would be on his cutting block, but values are confused things, and every says the U.S. spending more on defense than all other countries in the world combined is a good thing, even if we're borrowing money from China to do it, right?

    So I have no faith in Palestinians ability to rule anyone. I think the whole region is filled with traumatized people who are not going to get along.

    In sort, I admit, if I was Jewish and I lived in Israel, I'd strongly consider moving, and let the fools fight their good fight on both sides, and I'd say good riddance. Maybe I'm a coward, but I don't want to live in a place where people are incapable of getting along. Life is too short to fight fools to keep it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Interesting question: Are there any real functioning democracies in the world?

    I guess there is a reason why Athena was the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill and who is is portrayed as a shrewd companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavor.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yeah, Athena was a pretty hot goddess, as far as attributes go. She had it all goin' on. And she had a nice house... wasn't the Parthenon dedicated to her?

    Tip

    ReplyDelete