There were few people whose work I enjoyed reading as much as Dean’s. It was always fresh, invariably witty, and never cruel or mean-spirited. But my favorite Dean readings were the dozens and dozens of emails I received from him over the last couple of years. We corresponded regularly, and it was always a delight to see Dean’s name or “Soxblog” in my inbox. Regardless of which publication we were each writing for, I always felt like he was a colleague down the hall, with whom I could commiserate and rely on for a sanity check.
We only actually spoke on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, where he was as charming and witty as he was in print. I owe him a personal and professional debt for his many kindnesses and wise counsel. And in a world of whiners and complainers, he was neither, and remained a constant reminder to keep all of what we do in perspective. I will miss him terribly.
Doesn’t this imply that Kadima will soon splinter and ultimately disappear, having fulfilled its dubious mandate anyway?
I always thought Sima Kadmon was a woman.
Livni would be smart to enter into opposition. Bibi is doomed to failure. The right will again be discredited under his leadership. She will return as PM of a left-center coalition with at least a shot at peace.
Further, America, under successive administrations — Republican and Democrat, has determined that it is on our national interest for the Palestinians to have a sovereign state to call home. Americans should stand behind the party that is going to deliver on this promise, which fits our wroldview, and reject any plans, like those of Likud, that make us less safe and reduce our standing in the world.
So Shmuel seems to be arguing that Livni’s staking out of a “leftist” position is just a question of her deciding to claim a section of the electorate. He wonders if Livni really believes her own rhetoric about the desperate need to push a two-state solution.
Now, if this is true, then she’s a political creature of the worst sort. She’s unable to join a Netanyahu government because of the demotion in her status such a move would mean, so she misrepresents her true position on the most important issue facing Israel. If Shmuel is right, she would, upon assuming the prime ministership again, abandon any high pressure move to giving the PA a state. What is the Israeli electorate supposed to make of such a self-serving and deceiving politician?
I do suspect, though, regardless of her own real position on the PA, the West Bank etc, that Livni would be, as she has been throughout her term, weak-willed when it comes to appeasing the “international community”. With that vainglorious and deluded U.S. envoy — however amiable he is to American Jewish leaders — George Mitchell. trying to re-marry Hamas and Fatah, Israel cannot afford to have a leader who makes an idol of untroubled relations with the current U.S. president.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/23/israel-arms-embargo-gaza
amnesty international calls on US to suspend arms “sales” to israel.
what say you president obama?
#3–The so-called “Palestinians” have a “sovereign state to call home”–Jordan. Of course, the minority governing Jordan hates the “Palestinians,” killing far more of them than the Israelis have, and there was a time when Americans left and right would have thought that sort of dispensation rather unacceptable, and perhaps forced a change.
In any event, no one has ever explained to me why Egypt and Jordan, when they held Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, didn’t effect the “Two State Solution.” If Arab states, in the immediate neighborhood, didn’t feel the need, why should anyone else? The sooner we abandon this fantasy the sooner progress toward the only realistic approaches–”Palestinian” absorption by existing Arab states, or continued “Palestinian” isolation and despair–can proceed.
Dare say you guys at Commentary are already onto this, but this is no joke.
“Chas W. Freeman Jr., a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is tipped to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, is a piece of work……..”
Link: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3380291/an-american-addition-to-the-islamists-armoury.thtml
Apologies for cutting across the discussion.
#6
If you’re looking for a one-state solution, there’s only one that would be acceptable to Americans. One man, one vote. We’re spreaders of Democracy, right? If Israel wants to keep the Palestian lands, they can absorb the Palestinians and give them full citizenship. Otherwise the world, including America, has drawn the line: pre-1967 borders. The world won’t brook any solution that smacks of apartheid or ethnic cleansing. And Israel risks losing the one strong ally it has in the world. Toting up the balance sheet, it is increasingly hard to understand what strategic value we get from being allied with Israel. And if we no longer share common democratic values, well, that really would be a tipping point in our relationship.
Seth gets to the point. Kadima hopefully will now fade away as those that joined it from the right go back to their natural party and those in its ranks who favor peace at any cost and under whatever dubious terms head home to Labor.
#8, I don’t see where #6 was looking for a one state solution. I guess its any excuse to threaten Israel’s relationship with the US.
“The world won’t brook any solution that smacks of apartheid or ethnic cleansing” Typical leftist ranting, would you like to name the peace solution from Israel that attempts to achieve this? Or perhaps, this is actually the current proposal of Hamas and Islamic World Jihad.
The world, the world, the world…. How many times will someone ask you for the humanitarian record of this so-call world community, before you will give it up already? The world is the same world that watched over the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur, to name of few genocides. What is the moral authority of this world? I don’t see much of a record to stand on and lecture Israel about human rights.
You sound like a Durban II rep.
Thanks, E.C.S. lester, there’s your Arab-loving, dhimmi Pollard-in-waiting. I was going to say that the Kadimites could put their sorry existences to redeeming use by advocating a transition to a less rotten, more accountable parliamentary voting system. Kinda cynical, I know, but not a bad signature issue even for a party with no discernible reason to exist..
#3
America, America. Who is that America anyway??? Jewish people are been around much
longer then “America”. There are others in this world, who can be friends and “without
benefits”. Lets the Jews decide their own destiny!!! Remember, there is a power much greater
then America.
#8–Keep what “Palestinian lands”? Please define. And while you’re at it, share your view on lands bought by Jews long before modern Israel existed; should Jews be allowed to occupy them? Oops–that would include large swaths in the West Bank and Gaza.
Well, what about lands formerly owned by Jews in Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Egypt, etc, from which the owners were drive-do they get them back?
The Arab/Jew thing too complicated? How about the lands we took from Mexico? How about the lands the Mexicans took from the Spanish? How about the lands from which we drove millions of Germans at the end of WW II, to give to Poles and others, because we were tired of wars caused by pockets of disaffected aliens analogous to the “Palestinians” with their tiresome claims?
Indeed, explain why Jewish claims to Israeli territory, including territory conquered after the then claimants to same launched a war of extermination on the Israel occupying the “pre-1967″ borders you extoll, are somehow less legitimate than any other country’s claims to territory taken after an assault; to what state would you roll back the world’s national frontiers to accord with the principle, assuming you have one, you’re asserting against Israel?
And if your concern for land claims extends no further than the generally bogus claims “Palestinians” make for Israeli territory, please explain why the fairest conclusion isn’t that you’re simply a simple-minded Jew-hater.
10
“I don’t see where #6 was looking for a one state solution.” –Jonas M
No. 6 called “Palestinian absorption by existing Arab states,” the only realistic approach. That either means that Palestinians would leave Gaza and the West Bank, ostensibly to Israel, and resettle elsewhere, or that a neighboring Arab state would be given Gaza and the West Bank with the Palestinians being made citizens of that Arab state.
The former is a one-state solution, in which Israel ends up with Palestinian lands.
Hence, my first sentence. Notice the conditional construction: “If you’re looking for a one-state solution, there’s only one that would be acceptable to Americans.”
America is never going to be a party to any plan that moves the Palestinians off the land they currently occupy. In fact, we expect Israel to return many of the areas its settled in violation of current UN mandates and agreements.
And I doubt Palestinians would find the second alternative acceptable, either. They have their own national identity.
America backs a two-state solution.
13
Big deal. I can list just as many lands, taken in war, that were returned — usually, because holding them would have been too costly.
And for the record, I’m all for giving Texas back to Mexico.
#14 & 15–Since American governments, Democrat and Republican, have agreed that Israel’s pre-’67 borders invited the kind of attack the year produced, there can be no question of reverting to that unsettled and unsettling state of affairs–it would be “too costly,” as you put it. The fact is, Israel can hold the West Bank as long as it likes (Gaza, in case no one’s told you, is already a “Palestinian” state; or maybe “Hobbesian” better describes it?) Since releasing the West Bank to become another Gaza-style pus pit is undesirable, I suspect Israel will hold it for a long time to come.
As to the “Palestinians” having “their own national identity,” how intriguing, given they never even had their own nation. “Palestinian” is a bogus construct, like “Hispanic.” You might as well acknowledge the territorial claims of the Easter Bunny.
If you must give parts of America back to Mexico, make it California; Texas isn’t bankrupt.
Dippi Livni realizes her support came from a Left desperate to stop Netanyahu. If she has any hope of keeping her level of support, and building upon it, then she’s naturally going to adjust her attitudes and policy prescriptions to jive with the Left.
This was expected.
#14, of course, you ignored most of my challenges because you are unable to name that peace process plan by Israel that calls for ethnic cleansing. It is simple slander.
A one state solution is really what your ilk is calling for, truth be told. You want to see a bi-national Israel that is eventually transformed into an Arab state. However, you cannot bring yourself to write the true intention of your ideas.
Many thoughtful people in Israel do not believe that Ariel Sharon underwent any ideological change. Rather, it is commonly believed that he perpetrated the unilateral Gaza withdrawal in order to have the “Leftists” in the state prosecution office and the Supreme Court let him off on the criminal charges stemming from some major scandals, such as the Greek Island and Cyril Kern affairs. If true, this is extremely shameful. In any case, many thousands of Israelis are paying for Sharon’s unconscionable action.
Jeff seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. On the one hand, he claims to be holier than thou regarding human rights and such blah blah. On the other, he is all for “American national interests.” Of course, just what is moral and what serves human rights and just what US national interests are are serious questions. Many wise Americans believe that a strong Israel facing the jihadist threat is good for America. On the other hand, alleged exponents of US national interest, like Obama’s advisor Zbig Brzezinski, and Obama’s admirer jimmuh carter, have caused great damage to the US and the world by harmful policies like helping Khomeini take over Iran [the carter-zbig adminstration] and training Ben Laden as part of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. Anyhow, Jeff, just who is fit to decide what US interests are? Do you accept whatever comes out of the State Department, CIA, White House, Pentagon, etc.?? Is that how you define US national interest? As far as Arabs are concerned, do they have a right to commit mass murder on the Jews? Recall that the chief Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini, British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, joined with the Nazis during the Holocaust, spending his time in Berlin by urging the Germans and their satellite state to murder more Jews. This came after more than one thousand years of Arab-Muslim oppression of Jews in Muslim-ruled lands.