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Facts On the Ground
May 21st, 2011 | 45 responses
Andrew McCarthy accuses Pres. Obama of “borderline treachery” for telling Israel that a future Palestinian state must be drawn along Israel’s original 1967 borders, also called “the Green Line.” Here is a chunk of what he writes (emphasis is mine):
To begin with, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to point out, the 1967 borders are “indefensible.” That is why they have never been the starting point of U.S. policy, even though they always hover over negotiations. In its implacable hostility to Israel, the “international community” chooses to forget how and why the Arab side first grabbed, then lost, the territory in question. For nearly a half century since the adoption of U.N. Security Council resolution 242, the Washington Institute’s Robert Satloff explains, American administrations of both parties have called for eventual Israeli withdrawal to “secure and recognized” borders, a phrase interpreted as “not synonymous with the pre-1967 boundaries.”
By his new articulation, President Obama would deny Israel crucial negotiating leverage. If there is to be a peace settlement (which there cannot be until there are two parties that want peace), Israel must have the latitude to make territorial concessions in exchange for reliable concessions on security and other matters. It cannot be coerced into accepting an Obama-imposed fait accompli that leaves it fatally vulnerable to enemies whose ferocity is only encouraged by this bullying.
Bear in mind that what are called the “1967 borders” were never agreed-upon national boundaries. The Jewish claim on Judea and Samaria has roots in antiquity. This fact was intentionally obfuscated by Obama’s earlier suggestion in Cairo that Israel’s creation was an ill-conceived payback for the Holocaust, as it is by the convention of referring to Judea and Samaria as “the West Bank,” the name Jordan gave them when it seized and occupied them at the conclusion of Israel’s war of independence. The Arabs, of course, never created a Palestinian state when it was within their power to do so. Thus, the final disposition of this territory has never been resolved. It is a subject for negotiations, not predetermined Palestinian sovereignty.
I’m not sure what McCarthy’s claim that the Arabs “first grabbed, then lost, the territory in question” means. There was a lot of grabbing and losing in what is now the state of Israel and the Occupied Territories. This timeline for the period between 1917 and 2010 bears witness to that.
McCarthy’s next sentence is subtly misleading. He writes, “For nearly a half century since the adoption of U.N. Security Council resolution 242, the Washington Institute’s Robert Satloff explains, American administrations of both parties have called for eventual Israeli withdrawal to ‘secure and recognized’ borders, a phrase interpreted as “not synonymous with the pre-1967 boundaries.” The more accurate wording would be, “For nearly a half century since the adoption of U.N. Security Council resolution 242, American administrations of both parties have interpreted that resolution’s reference to ‘secure and recognized boundaries’ to mean ‘not synonymous with the pre-1967 boundaries.’ ” Meaning: It’s U.N. Resolution 242 — not the United States — that calls for “eventual Israeli withdrawal to ‘secure and recognized borders’ ” The United States has always interpreted the phrase “secure and recognized borders” to mean “not the pre-1967 borders.” Or, more accurately, the United States has supported Israel’s interpretation of “secure and recognized borders” to be something other than “the pre-1967 borders.” Resolution 242 itself does not say that “secure and recognized boundaries” means “not the pre-1967″ boundaries.
Furthermore, McCarthy omits the context in which the phrase “secure and recognized boundaries” occurs. Here is the entire text of the resolution (emphasis is mine):
The Security Council,
Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,
Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Affirms further the necessity
For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;
For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;
For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;
Requests the Secretary General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;
Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.
Obviously, Israel has complied with neither of these principles. Even worse, Israel has actively pursued a policy of creating a set of “facts on the ground,” in Moshe Dayan’s famous expression (scroll down to the paragraph that begins with the sentence, “At the same time Defence Minister Moshe Dayan called for the establishment of ‘facts on the ground’ in the Territories.’ “) This was the organizing principle behind the Allon Plan (named for its author, Yigal Allon):
On July 26, 1967, Defense Minister Yigal Allon presented a plan to then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol for a settlement with the Palestinians, which came to be known as the Allon Plan. The plan was clarified publicly in a 1976 Foreign Affairs magazine article. The basic features of the plan were:
1. Israel would retain control of the Jordan valley and of the “back of the mountain.” According to Israeli military strategists, this control was needed in order to control the West Bank militarily. Most of this area is desert and is not settled by Palestinians or used by them. However, the plan would control Palestinian access to Jordan and would create several separate enclaves.
2. The Jordan river would remain the eastern border of Israel, allowing Israel to prevent foreign armies from crossing into the West Bank and massing for an attack on the center of Israel.
3. Israel would annex areas in the Jerusalem corridor to secure the approaches to Jerusalem.
4. Palestinians would be given control of three populous enclaves – a northern enclave including Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm and Ramallah, a southern enclave including Hebron and Bethlehem, and an enclave including Jericho that included a crossing to Jordan. The enclaves would be connected by connecting roads.
The strategic concepts underlying the plan have been part of Israeli military doctrine since 1948. Labor party settlement policies generally followed this plan, concentrating settlements in the Jordan valley. The settlement in Hebron, and settlements in Ariel and other areas were set up despite Labor government opposition.
The Allon Plan was never adopted as formal policy or law, but it’s not difficult to see how Israel has applied it through the building of settlements in exactly the areas that Israel planned to annex. So not only has Israel failed to comply with Resolution 242 on withdrawing from the lands it captured and occupied in 1967, but it has also been engaged in deliberate sabotage of the peace negotiations that were supposed to rest on the two principles contained in the resolution. Every proposal or plan for a negotiated peace settlement since then has foundered on the settlements that Israel created precisely to achieve that outcome.
Henry Siegman of the Council on Foreign Relations explained how this has worked in the context of the “road map” for peace — a plan created by the U.S. State Department along the lines of a speech George W. Bush gave in June of 2002 (emphasis is mine):
The suggestion is that developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are being driven by the road map, whereas one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to be unaware that they are being driven by Sharon’s efforts to bypass, undermine and bury the road map.
From the 1967 war onward, Sharon’s key strategic goal has been to avoid a political process at all costs. He understood that the inescapable result of such a process would be Israel’s return to the 1967 border, with only minor adjustments.
Avoiding that process has meant, among other things, expropriating Palestinian land on a grand scale for Jewish settlements, as well as undercutting Palestinian efforts to reach a cease-fire with terrorist groups, since that might undermine Sharon’s claim that there is no Palestinian partner for a peace process.
Avoiding a political process is also the reason behind Sharon’s decision to withdraw Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip in return for an intensification of Israel’s presence in the West Bank – something he understood could succeed only with Bush’s acquiescence, if not explicit support.
Sharon himself explained his dramatic reversal on Gaza as the consequence of his fear that without any movement, the international community might force political negotiations on Israel. Yet his apologists absurdly claim that the withdrawal is intended to facilitate a resumption of negotiations.
When Bush launched the road map in Aqaba last June, he stressed that it required not only an end to Palestinian terrorism, but also an end to all further construction in the settlements and the dismantling of settlement outposts erected since the beginning of the intifada. Surely Bush must have noticed that despite solemn promises to implement these provisions, Sharon and his government failed to dismantle a single outpost while sinking vast new resources into the settlement enterprise.
Now Bush has declared that because of Israel’s “facts on the ground” – the very facts that the road map describes as unacceptable and illegitimate – Palestinians must give up any hope of recovering large areas in the West Bank.
Although Siegman wrote this piece several years ago, about events that occurred when Sharon was in power, the policy really has not changed in any significant way since then.
In my travels on the Internet researching this post, I came across a letter to the editor at the British newspaper The Independent that has an eloquent response to this concept that Israel can continue to take and ask for more, and Palestinians should humbly accept it:
It is an outrageous irony that the Palestinians should have felt it necessary to offer territorial concessions to Israel in their efforts to secure a peace deal (“Palestinians ‘ready to give up Jerusalem sites’ “, 24 January).Palestinians have lost a homeland and a majority are even prepared to recognise the right to exist of the country which has replaced them, Israel, in return for the latter’s withdrawal from the small portion of Palestine still left to them. What more can they give?
These are the words of Moshe Dayan (reported in Ha’aretz, 4 April 1969): “We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here. In considerable areas of the country [the total area was about 6 per cent] we bought land from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages… There is not a place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
Now Israel not only ignores UN resolutions to pull out of the occupied West Bank, but continues to build and expand within it, while we in the West generally look the other way. If the Palestinians were to receive the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in line with UN Resolution 242 (drafted by America in 1967) this would still leave them with only 22 per cent of historic Palestine; a land in which they formed a majority of 10:1 at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
And yet we are told by the likes of Andrew McCarthy that Israel faces an existential threat but Palestinians do not. Although Moshe Dayan himself tells us that when the Jewish people “came to this country [it] was already populated by Arabs,” and that “There is not a place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population,” somehow it’s the Jewish people alone whose claim to the land is rooted in “historical antiquity.” The idea that Palestinians and Jews both have ancient familial and spiritual connections to historic Palestine, and that any just resolution of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis must take the right of Palestinians to exist as a people with their own nation-state as seriously as it does the right of the Jewish people to exist as a people in their own nation-state, is simply not narrow or hateful enough for the likes of Andrew McCarthy.
45 Responses to “Facts On the Ground”
“From territories” has never meant all the territories and of course in no way establishes the pre-1967 boundaries as “official.” (“We left the ‘the’ out” (i.e., did not say “from the territories”) is the quote from the authors that’s best known. Other quotes can be found here, for example:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/un_resolution_242_for_dummies.html
The pre-1967 lines have never, never been “official” or sacred.
Netanyahu could have settled this is less than 15 seconds. Cancelled trip to the White House and told Obama to kiss his butt.
No matter what the official position of the US is, where does our President get off on giving the main opposition to Israel the starting point for negotiations. Why would they say anything but 67 borders was acceptible.
Obama need to shut his trap and stay out of other countries problems. He has enough here to take care of like our own borders.
I wonder if the Tea Party is melting into the Libertarian party?
“Obama to kiss his butt”
“Obama need to shut his trap and stay out of other countries problems. He has enough here to take care of like our own borders.”
Maybe the TP has found a new a more legitimate way to hate Obama?
I don’t know about Obambi, but I have no problem recognizing the brutish murderous nature of humanity, and the US is in no position to criticize anyone when it comes to violence and wars…
We the US have one of highest body counts of the twentieth century, starting with a couple hundred thousand Filipinos and ending with over a hundred thousand Iraqis…
When it comes to killing people most Arab countries are pikers when compared to the US…
Absolutely…
And a quick look at the body count will clearly demonstrate that when it comes to large scale mass murder, the Arabs are pikers compared to the US…
Let me help you here:
1900-1903 US invades the Phillipines kills approximately 220,000.
And we still have 97 years to go, two world wars, two nukes and Korea, Vietnam, Iraq…
Not to mention all our little revolutions, coups and death squads…
This coming from a citizen of a country that threw spontaneous parties when they found out Bin Laden had been killed…
A) How do you know Bin Laden is guilty?
B) We have killed far more innocent people than Bin Laden ever dreamed of killing in our search for Bin laden, how many innocent bystanders have our Drones killed?
C) As for humanity & tolerance, I think you should have a heart to heart with an American Indian if you can find one, or ask an African-American how their ancestors got here and how well they were treated (You may also want to talk to all the Vietnamese that we poisoned with agent orange, or all the Serbs and Iraqis that we have poisoned with depleted Uranium)…
D)We’ll see how humane US culture would be if it had been under occupation for over a century while foreigners stole all the valuable natural resources and left nothing behind but wasteland…
E)As for comparing cultures, it’s like comparing beef and lamb, you can compare them all you want, but at then end of the day it’s really not all that meaningful… The only real standard for comparing cultures is how long have they been around, and by that standard Islamic Culture is far superior to American Culture, it’s been around for over 1500 years, which is at least a millennium longer than American Culture…
F) Last but not least, when foreigners kill civilians and make war it’s because they’re barbarians, when Americans do the same thing it’s the imperfect-ability of human nature…
Love it!
“Palestinian Arabs must accept the legitimacy of Israel. They must convincingly renounce terrorism against Israel (“resistance” equates to a propoganda lie).If Palestinian Arabs do these two simple things, then territorial disputes will resolve themselves, and a state of Palestine will come into existence for the first time in history.”
gcotharn – If you believe this you are very naive. The Jews of Israel will not hand over anything unless absolutely necessary. From more than 5 decades of first hand experience believe me when I say, the arabs will get nothing except what they force Israel, directly or indirectly, to yield.
You make Jewish Israelis seem like some altruistic tribe and arabs some kind of monsters. Have you ever met an Israeli or a Palestinian?
My Irgun grandfather was a stone cold killer, just like Begin and Shamir. How do you think Israel was accomplished in the first place? The Jews did not say “pretty, pretty please” can I have a state. They killed for it, just like hundreds of other peoples have over time.
The whole idea in modern times is to replace laws of the jungle with something more humane as all the Sacred Texts have told us G-d wants. That is what Obama is telling both Israelis and Palestinians.
I will just add that Greg’s highminded concern for the value of Jewish lives and his certainty about the superiority of Western over Arab culture is laughable considering the indisputable well-documented record of Western anti-Semitism — very much including the United States.
When it mattered the most — when the Jewish people were absolutely powerless and were being slaughtered by the millions by a regime that was determined to exterminate all of European Jewry — the United States actively opposed and squelched almost all efforts to save the Jews of Europe. The United States turned away an entire ship full of Jewish children and their mothers and fathers and sent them back to their eventual death.
When Western values of humanity and tolerance were most urgently required and would have done the most good for countless Jewish human beings, the United States showed all but none.
Kathy
Too funny, cotharn is trying to lecture jdledell on Israel politics and history.
gcotharn-Hatred and dehumanization of a culture is no more acceptable from Pal’s that hate Jews than it is from defenders of Israel that hate and dehumanize Arabs and Pals. It is bigotry and hatred and is unacceptable on either side, once you see that both sides play the game it may result in a tad less Israeli fandom as well as general Islamophobia. Calling one side names while ignoring or denying the sins of your “side” has a long history in humanity and it almost always ends badly, often involving extermination of a large mass of people.
The reason the west now loves Israel and Jews is that it is now allowed to hate Muslims openly and without being judged. The sentiment and the venom has changed little, the main difference is the target and how socially acceptable it currently is in “polite company.”
ANALYSIS: After WikiLeaks comes “PaliLeaks” – why and who benefits?
If you don’t want peace, just start a war…
Of course Obama was wrong not only to coach Israel into a weak (and less than defensible) starting position, and a favored lefty goal (which has nothing to do with legality to justify such a position). It could be another case of amateurism and ineptitude, as well as being out of touch again.
Israel vacated Gaza. Terrorists took over, rockets were launched into Israel.
Sky wrote:
This has never been observed; the West (mainstream population, notably in the USA) has been on Israel’s side because it is very democratic and modern, whereas the Arabs with their terrorism and ailing states are not. There is a tendency among some (which amounts to many people, absolute number-wise, but is a minority) ready to sell out Israel in the name of “peace.” The larger threat of loss of US support for Israel is dependence on oil (and the Arabs and someday, Iranians), arguably the most important US interest in the Middle East, not Israel.
Greg – I don’t even know how to respond to your generalization about arabs. Calling an entire people “inhuman brutes” is the kind of thinking that led to the shoah. Anytime you dehumanize people then it makes killing them no different than killing animals.
Growing up Jewish in America during the 1950′s was no bed of roses. The discrimination by wonderful righteous Christians was nauseating.
Perhaps you are too young to remember the taunts of Kike and Christ Killer.
Dehumanization of Jews and arabs is equally evil.
gcotharn-And I find your statements offensive as a human and bigoted. Lookie now we are both offended and outraged!!!
*looks for a cross to hang from*
You do realize that hatred and intolerance towards groups other than Israeli’s is equally unacceptable right?
Words like Brute, Savage, Inhuman and the like to describe a group is generally done to A. dehumanize them or B. allow a person to avoid seeing a groups humanity and create allowance for bigotry to grow and blossom. Avoid such terminology and you avoid looking like you are doing A or B, if you do not avoid it I will only apologize that I have the ability to read and inform you of what it looks like.
Rather than the back and forth over who is evil or good, maybe we could focus on why a negotiated solution in the current context simply cannot happen.
Look at it in terms of simple game theory. The fundamental problem with “land for peace” as a negotiation framework is that land is transferred immediately and peace must be maintained over time.
Having transferred land under whatever negotiated outcome, what is the guarantee for peace. Looked at differently, what possible upside is there for Israel in exchanging land now for a promise of peace later?
As I posted in another thread, the only way I could see a solution occurring is if both sides agreed to a solution that was land for peace for land. That is, were the peace consistently violated by either Arabs or Israelis, the land solution would have to be changed to the detriment of the side that violated the “for peace” part of the agreement. Even that solution is highly unstable and subject to a political process but it’s the only thing in my view that stands a chance.
A one time land solution for a permanent promise of peace is simply not tenable from a game theory perspective.
Greg – One of the things you fail to acknowledge is Jewish terrorism during the British Mandate. Can you please explain why Jewish terrorism to gain freedom is good and arab terrorism to gain freedom is bad.
In addition you have a very simplistic view of previous peace negotiations. Barak’s offer at Camp David did NOT include the Jordan Valley. Thus the Palestinians would only gain about 70% of the West Bank. Barak tried to finesse the point by saying maybe in a couple decades Israel “might” give it up.
Taba came close but Barak walked out of the negotiations before the conclusion because he was in the middle of an election campaign and he was behind in the polls. He felt he would ruin his election chances against Sharon if he offered too much.
The Olmert/Abbas negotiations also came close. Olmert’s 6% of the west bank was countered by Abbas’s 1.9%. The 4% difference might have been bridged in a few weeks but Olmert had to drop the negotiations because of his legal troubles.
The problem is Netanyahu wants to go back to square one and is only prepared to offer about 45% of the West Bank.
You live in a Saturday morning cartoon world, Greg. Real life is a lot more complicated than a video war game.
Kathy
You see human imperfection on one side and monsters on the other. That’s what I meant when I said you live in a Saturday morning cartoon world.
Kathy
He is, but he wouldn’t have heard them anyway. Greg is a Christian evangelical who has never been in the position in life where he would hear such taunts.
Kathy
The problem is that you do NOT see the politically powerful elements on the Israeli side who reject any peace that requires them to give up one inch of the land they took from the Palestinians in 1967. Israel’s long-term survival is much more endangered by the refusal of these elements to recognize how much Palestinians have already lost, had to give up, had taken from them by force; and by the refusal of those elements to recognize the legitimacy of Palestinians’ longing for self-determination, for national sovereignty — something that the U.S., for one, has recognized in the instance of other peoples but not in the instance of the Palestinians.
Obama to AIPAC is here. Article includes disavowals by others, too.
Here is the deal that any Palestinian leader, including Arafat, would have accepted: A contiguous (i.e., without Jewish settlements or apartheid wall) Palestinian state with the borders determined by the pre-1967 Green Line and an internationalized Jerusalem under both Arab and Israeli control.
Jdledell can tell me if he does not think the above is a realistic description of a settlement any Palestinian leader would agree to.
Kathy
ETA: *Raping Israeli women*? What about IDF forces raping Palestinian women? I seriously doubt whether even a single Israeli woman has been raped by a Palestinian in the Occupied Territories.
“Contra leftist theology: there is nothing wrong with accurately and truthfully describing such persons.”
It is not leftist theology, it is human history since such language has been used to exterminate everything from Kurd’s to Jews to Muslims to Gypsy’s and that is only in the last 100 years or so and also ignoring many other groups. Use the language you like but you sound like you are making WWII propaganda posters and you can pick any nation that used the tactic including the US that used it against Japan and then interned others of their bloodline like cattle.
No matter who is using the words to describe a group the results remain very similar and your attempt to defend the right of the use of bigot and dehumanizing language falls on deaf ears. I do not ignore it when used by any race or cultural group precisely because of its long and dark history of resulting in mountains of bodies.
Very bizarre response, in the context of everything else you’ve written here, but thank you. I think.
Kathy
Arafat died six and a half years ago. In the here and now, what are Israeli leaders prepared to give up for peace? Keep in mind that Palestinians have given up everything.
Sky wrote:
The Left has routinely used terms as bad as and worse than these when describing or “discussing” the GOP or conservatives, and let us not forget how the Left routinely referred to President George W. Bush.
I wrote:
I left out what the Left routinely says about, say, white Southerners. And don’t forget the Religious Right (real and imagined).
Greg,
jdledell — who knows more about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than I could forget for the remainder of my life — has already answered this point of yours. Here it is again:
Hi Kathy, you know I don’t feel comfortable offering my opinion on the general Israel-Palestine question, but I did want to thank you for a strong, well-written piece. One of your best recently, great job.
LOL Greg. Jdledell’s reply did not dispute that the Olmert-Abbas deal was close to a deal that Abbas could accept. Read the last sentence, Greg. See if you can figure it out.
Kathy
Greg – As I said in another thread the 6% that Olmert wanted to keep included Har Homa(a settlement specifically designed to block Palestinians in Bethlehem from accessing East Jerusalem) as well as Ariel which as you know cuts very deep into the West Bank. The question is why did Olmert reject the Abbas offer of 1.9%? That is just as honorable as the Olmert offer of 6%.
Greg – I have spent a lot of time with Sari Nusseibeh at his forums at Al Quds University in Jerusalem. Yes, not only am I fluent in Hebrew but I can handle conversational arabic. I have met and talked with many Palestinians, including Saeb Erakat as well as Hamas members. Your inflamed concept of Palestinian leaders as brutish and uninterested in peace is FAR off the mark. 95% of them are just as human as you and I. Interested in making a living, having love and family.
Are their terrorists amoung Palestinians? Yes, there is a percentage of people in every population who are sociopaths. However, if you could listen to Palestinians discuss their dreams and aspirations you would not be so dogmatic in your opinions. Jews and Palestinians basically all want the same thing – that is what makes the whole situation so ridiculous. Jewish pride and arab honor are the attributes that are preventing a deal. Israelis don’t want to be friers and Palestinians think Jews will use their superior position to screw them.
Gcotharn-K Arafat is a special case, the guys entire power was based on the conflict and HE had no interest in peace. Of course Arafat has been dead for a good long while now though so his actions matter on this topic about as much as Rabin’s (do not take that wrong Rabin was the light to Arafat’s dark but they have equally little to do with the last decades stalemate).
Describe what their leaders have done, the actions they have allowed blah blah blah. That is history and not an attempt to animalize an enemy which is specifically what I take issue with. When you start getting creative with dark adjectives and only in a single direction things can get out of hand, or things can go exactly as you desired as is the case in state sponsored propaganda(not what I accuse you of, I really think you are just passionate on the topic and not thinking of the dangers of such language choices). We as a society since 2001 have embraced a very dark way of describing Arabs and Muslims in general and I no longer have patience for it because we do not accept it about other religious/racial/ethnic groups without calling it what it is and noting the historical dangers. For a long while I tried to ignore it but I cant anymore because it IS the same type of language used against Jews, Gypsies, Kurds and others that at different times have suffered mass exterminations as a consequence of allowing such language and opinions to go unchecked.
DLS-I do not think we traded one hatred for another. I think we have accepted a hatred and bigoted views on one group which allowed anyone with that kind of hatred in their hearts to focus on a target that people didnt shun them for saying such things about. At one time that group was Jews but after the 60′s or more correctly probably the 50′s it fell further and further out of favor. Now we can insult Arabs and Muslims without people lifting an eyebrow.
In my view this has given cover to racists and islamaphobes much like Jews were an accepted target of hate and distrust in the early cold war era which gave cover to actual anti semites to say and do as they wished.
As for “selling out Israel” as I have stated since the 90′s our foreign policy should be based on OUR interests which diverge from Israel on the issue of oil price. That does not mean abandoning them but instead reminding them that every person in this nation pays a price for the lack of a peaceful resolution every time we go to the gas station. Our link to them has nothing to do with the fact that they are democratic but that we used them in the cold war era for a proxy war with Russia, before then we had little interest.
If we cared so much about ME democracy we wouldnt have spent so many years fighting against it and backing dictators. Either way they are no longer the only democracy in the ME.
We can do many things like cutting funds and letting Israel and the Pals truly work it out on their own. We could also let our “friend” know that this is costing us huge buckets of money in many directions and we are BROKE so its a rather good time to resolve this. Israel is NOT in danger, they have nukes and a strong military. Those “indefensible” borders WERE defended just fine in 67 and poking at Israel will still mean poking at the US. These are empty excuses and common ones from an invading force trying to keep land which they are free to do but if they so chose it should be their job alone to ensure their own peace and stop whining about it, they have choices they are just refusing to make them.
DLS-I was actually thinking about how we talk about opposition parties in this country when jumping up and down about how we discuss Muslims and Pals. You make a highly valid point but I would say that 1 we have a long and relatively peaceful history among political groups but not with racial/ethnic groups and 2 both sides have always done it to such an extreme that if it held the dangers that the racial/ethnic/religious version does we would have had many more civil war type incidents.
I think the difference is that the people that say those things tend to have bipartisan friends that they do not lump with the “brutes” if you will which makes them a tad less likely to try to exterminate them. Now having said that other nations have had different histories and a common feature of revolution is often an attempt to exterminate another ideological group. I agree that I am being a tad myopic on the subject due to being an American and not seeing as much danger in it but I tend to view such things in the purely political sphere as merely stupid, silly or over emotional and that includes when I do it and feel stupid and ashamed of myself.
Greg,
The above has no connection to the reply that jdledell gave you concerning your claim that Abbas “walked away” from Olmert’s proposal. I told you to read the last sentence of jdledell’s quote, which I pasted again into my reply to you.
I don’t know what’s going on with you, Greg. I have put bold coding around the last sentence and I request that you read it again and then see if you can reply to the point that the bolded sentence makes. Just read the bolded part, Greg. Read it slowly.
Greg, do you see the part that I am asking you to respond to now?
Kathy
He posted info that showed that to be a flawed statement based on what may be an untruth. The info he has gathered seems to point to the idea that there would not of been an agreement and there was never a 1.9% counter offer. The truthfulness of source may of course be questioned, but he has responded to your question.
Yes, of course Olmert disputes Abbas’s claim. How does that prove or disprove anything? Especially when he has publicly confirmed that his legal problems helped scuttle the peace talks. (See below.)
Greg, Olmert had to resign because he was facing a criminal investigation after being indicted on three counts of criminal corruption. Olmert himself acknowledged that his legal troubles were part of why the peace talks failed. Here:
Link: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/ehud_olmert/index.html
Kathy
Not if the deals they were offered did nothing to end their suffering. The Palestinians have never been offered a legitimate, viable state of their own. The Olmert offer was the closest they came, and for reasons already explained and having nothing to do with Palestinian willingness, that fell through.
I do not know what you mean by “merely negotiating.” Jdldell did not use that phrase or any other phrase like it, nor did he say anything that you could rationally use to confirm your belief that Palestinians are not suffering terribly.
The fact that you could say something as callous and ignorant as that, and that you apparently actually believe that the suffering of Palestinians for the past 60-plus years is a myth, or a lie, delegitimizes every claim of fact you have made on this subject. A person would have to be completely hardened in heart, mind, and spirit to say, and to believe, that the horrible suffering Palestinians experience every minute of their lives is not real. Or maybe you just don’t think of Palestinians as real human beings. Either way, your opinions on this issue have no credibility.
I did not at any point say or imply that you should shut up. I said that your views on this subject are not credible because I feel that if a person cannot acknowledge the humanity and suffering of both Jews and Palestinians over the past 60 years, their credibility to opine on the subject is nil. But that doesn’t mean I’m telling you not to say anything. It just means I don’t think what you say on this subject is worthwhile. It just means I don’t take what you say seriously. And your right to say what you wish does not imply an obligation on my part to take it seriously.
Re your last line: I do think that on this subject you are a hater who has no credibility. But I am not stopping you from speaking. You have just as much right to speak and think in hateful ways as I have to point it out.
Kathy
“The facts indicate that Abbas’ claim is not credible; is propaganda designed to bolster his current agenda of bringing the U.N. strongly into the issue.”
Greg – This is a continuation of your attitude that Jews are good and always honest and arabs are bad and untruthful. Did it ever occur to you that Olmert might be spouting spin to make himself and his legacy look better?
Take a look at the information gathered by the James Baker Institute at Rice University about the negotiations.
http://www.bernardavishai.info/Baker.pdf
Greg,
Jdledell does not owe you an apology. First of all, he did not call you an “ignorant bigot.” He accurately and substantively described your apparent belief that Jews are always good and honest and Arabs always bad and untruthful based on the evidence of your own words that *you* have provided throughout this thread.
Second, the “evidence” that you say you have “forthrightly” presented is not persuasive at all. You are merely repeating Olmert quotes from the JPost and elsewhere, which you somehow take as dispositive while at the same time dismissing anything Abbas has said.
Your claim to have supported your claims, in my view, is specious and disingenuous.
Kathy
“Consider” all you like, Greg. Every single comment from you, without exception, in this entire long thread, has (1) portrayed Palestinians and Arabs in general as thuggish, dishonest, treacherous, terroristic, and motivated entirely by the desire to destroy Israel; and (2) portrayed Israel as being fair, generous, compassionate, noble, and motivated only by the desire to protect the safety and security of the Jewish people against the evil, violent Arabs who want to kill them all. This is not a matter of opinion. Your words are there in black and white and everyone has read them, Greg. Palestinians and Arabs in general do not have one thing in the world in their favor to recommend them for your consideration as having a legitimate point of view; and Israel does not have one thing in the world to their discredit to persuade you that its actions are anything but exemplary or that Israel’s leaders have acted with anything less than perfect and utmost integrity. Throughout this very long thread, you have not expressed one word of sympathy for Palestinians in this conflict, or hinted at even the slightest belief that Palestinians have suffered at all in the past 60 years. Nor have you written a single word that could indicate an understanding on your part that Israel has wronged the Palestinian people in any way whatsoever. Palestinians are the aggressors and the evildoers; Israel is the persecuted victim.
Now, I cannot force you to acknowledge the truth of all this — but I certainly am under no obligation to offer you any more “evidence” than your own words and my noting of them throughout this thread, and other people’s noting of them throughout this thread, have provided.
As a nominally religious person, with supposedly sincere and profound spiritual beliefs and faith in an Almighty God, it is my opinion that you could benefit from some sincere and genuine soul-searching. But I can’t make you do it. And of course it wouldn’t be valuable if I could.
Kathy
“EFF ALL THAT! I refuse to grant your leftist premise that I am somehow unfeeling and uncaring unless I make ritual shout out to your various favored victim groups”
And I think that goes the other direction as well when it comes to lefties support of conservative “favored victim groups” like in the current discussion the Israeli’s or more generally evangelicals, homophobes, Palin and a long list of others that have turned the GOP into a victim group party like the Dems were in the 80′s.