Anyone who has seen the film The Miracle Worker will remember the scene in the dining room where young Helen Keller (played by Patty Duke) eats her meal by going around the table grabbing food from everyone’s plates. Her parents, who pity her “affliction” as they call it, and at the same time feel intimidated by it, allow her to do this because they don’t know how to treat her like a normal human being.
When Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) comes to teach Helen, and sits down to her first meal with the family, Helen goes around the table doing her thing, but when she gets to Annie Sullivan and grabs her food, Sullivan stops her. Over and over, Helen tries to take the food, and each time her teacher stops her.
Helen’s parents object. “She’s accustomed to eating from our plates,” says her mother.
“Yes, but I’m not accustomed to it,” Annie Sullivan replies.
I thought of this scene today when I saw the Commentary crowd’s reaction to Pres. Obama’s meeting with 15 American Jewish leaders at the White House to discuss his policies regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was quite a diverse bunch — a true cross-section of mainstream Jewish opinion, ranging from far right (the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman) to left-liberal (Jeremy Ben-Ami from J Street).
Here is how Haaretz described the meeting:
At the meeting, Obama told the leaders that he wants to help Israel overcome its demographic problem by reaching an agreement on a two-state solution, but that in order to do so, Israel would need “to engage in serious self-reflection.”
On the Iranian nuclear issue, Obama told the leaders that “the door to dialogue is open. If the Iranians do not walk through it, however, we will have to see how we proceed. But it would be a mistake to talk now about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.”
One of the participants at the meeting asked the president to take a lower profile regarding the public differences between his administration and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the United States’ demand that Israel freeze all settlement construction activity in the West Bank.
“This situation is not helpful,” he told the president, who rejected the request, saying that during the eight years of the Bush administration, such disagreements were never made public but that such an approach was not helpful in advancing the peace process.
Obama added that there is a narrow window of opportunity for advancing the peace process and that he plans to speak openly and honestly with Israel – “a true friend of the U.S.” – just as he did with the Arab nations in his speech at Cairo University in June.
See that part about “self-reflection” that I’ve bolded? Well, the neoconservative hawkish-on-Israel talking heads went ballistic.
First, William Kristol:
“Serious self-reflection!” It’s really good that Barack Obama is reminding the leaders and people of Israel to engage in that. I hope they’re up to it. After all, what do Israelis know about reflecting on, and living with, the life and death consequences of political decisions? What do Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak and Moshe Ya’alon — either as individuals or as leaders — know about war and peace? These are guys — and the Israelis are a people — who just coast along, taking an easy path, never debating, never thinking, never questioning, never second-guessing…and never making or asking their fellow citizens to make sacrifices.
Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod, on the other hand — they’re seriously self-reflective individuals. Look at their wide experiences at peace and in war. Look how they’ve had to grapple with life and death decisions for decades. For them, it’s not just talk and spin and positioning. The American president and his advisors — they’ve made personal sacrifices, they’ve come to grips with the tough choices over their decades of accomplishment in public life. They’ve got the standing to lecture the people and leaders of Israel on the need for self-reflection.
Next, Marty Peretz. “Obama’s Chutzpah. Sorry, Only Israelis Have Chutzpah. So It’s Obama’s Haughty Condescension.” And that’s just the title. Peretz continues:
Frankly, I am sick and tired of President Obama’s eldering–more accurately, hectoring–Israel’s leaders. It is, after all, they whose country is the target of an armed and ideological cyclone that Obama has done precious little to ease. He brought nothing back from Riyadh and Cairo, absolutely nothing except the conviction of the Arab leaders that they need do nothing but sit and wait until the president squeezes one concession after another out of Jerusalem. Oops, I apologize. Maybe I should still say Tel Aviv. In any case, waiting is exactly what they are doing. Palestinian President Abbas has prided himself in doing just that. He had said so, as I pointed out in this space a few weeks ago.
Maybe you weren’t offended by Obama’s advice to Israel, via some 15 American Jewish leaders, that it had to “engage in serious self-reflection,” as if it took its perils frivolously. But I know many Democrats who are; they’re just a bit intimidated to say so.
What message did the president think he was giving the reactionary and cloistered Saudi monarch when he curtsied before him? That Abdullah should engage in serious self-reflection the way royals are accustomed to doing?
Rick Richman at Commentary identifies the problem: Israel has given its heart, its soul, and its last ounce of blood and final measure of devotion for peace, but the Palestinians just stomped all over it. Israel has given all that it possibly could and even more and kept all its promises and done exactly what it was supposed to do for the last eight years, and the Palestinians have broken all their promises and asked for more. In fact, here’s how outrageous it is: Palestinians want the entire West Bank! (Emphasis mine.)
During this eight-year period, the Palestinian concessions (aka reciprocal “progress”) can be enumerated more briefly: zero. The “peace partner” still demands “every inch” of the West Bank, the entire Old City of Jerusalem, and a “right of return” to Israel for every Palestinian “refugee.” It refuses to negotiate without the immediate and continued cessation of any Israeli population growth in areas Israel will keep in any conceivable peace agreement.
Oh, yes, yes, yes! How dare those Palestinians object to continued Israeli population growth in the settlements built on the West Bank, outside of the Green Line, for the very purpose of becoming an obstruction to any peace settlement? How dare Palestinians demand that Israel immediately and permanently cease “any Israeli population growth” in occupied territories that Israel had no legal right to grow their population on in the first place? Don’t they understand what “facts on the ground” are?
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