Nothing seems to be able to displace Fareed Zakaria from his current perch in which he is treated as one of the country’s leading foreign policy experts. In August, he survived a brush with what should have been professional disgrace when both CNN and Time magazine reinstated him following his suspension for blatantly plagiarizing an article in The New Yorker. His employers decided the star’s misdeed was “unintentional” and an “isolated” incident. So Zakaria continues on his merry way, promoting conventional wisdom about the world and calling it insight. But his latest column for the Washington Post undermines what little is left of his credibility. In a piece titled “Israel Dominates the Middle East,” Zakaria demonstrates again that being labeled an “expert” by the mainstream media has little to do with actual expertise.
The conceit of Zakaria’s piece is that recent events demonstrate again that Israel is the superpower of the Middle East. From there he jumps to the conclusion that because Israel has a prosperous economy and is strong enough to defend itself from dangerous foes who wish to destroy it, it therefore follows that all that is necessary for there to be peace in the region is for Israel to wish for it. That such a prominent member of the foreign policy establishment should espouse such magical thinking says a lot about what passes for expertise these days. But more than that, it shows that being an expert doesn’t require one to have even given a passing glance to the events of the last 20 years in the region.
Zakaria is, of course, right that Israel is stronger than any of the surrounding states. Though the population of Egypt, the largest Arab state, is almost 12 times that of Israel, its military is no match for that of the Jewish state, leading even the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo to be wary of formally abrogating the peace treaty between the two nations. Israel’s economy, the product of the country’s democratic system of government, is also unmatched in the region.
That means that although enemies can terrorize its population — as Hamas did last week as it forced millions of Israelis into bomb shelters — and carry on a propaganda campaign aimed at denying its legitimacy, nothing short of an existential nuclear threat such as the one that is being built in Iran can threaten its existence. But it does not follow from there that Israel’s strength can create peace merely by the Israelis demanding it.
Zakaria writes:
Peace between the Palestinians and Israelis will come only when Israel decides that it wants to make peace. Wise Israeli politicians, from Ariel Sharon to Ehud Olmert to Ehud Barak, have wanted to take risks to make that peace because they have worried about Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state. This is what is in danger, not Israel’s existence.
The problem with that formulation begins with the characterization of Sharon, Olmert and Barak as “wise.” If there is anything the average Israeli has learned again in the last week, it is that those risk-takers have undermined their country’s security, not enhanced it.
As any political observer of the country knows, the overwhelming majority of Israelis would back any plan, including more territorial withdrawals, if they thought it would end the conflict. But every such initiative, beginning with the Oslo Accords and especially the withdrawal from Gaza that facilitated a Hamas takeover and the conversion of the area into a terrorist missile launching pad, has made peace less, not more, likely.
Parties that still back more concessions to the Palestinians have little support among Israelis not because they are right-wingers but because they have observed the events of the last two decades and understandably concluded that the other side doesn’t want peace. That’s why three Israeli offers of an independent state to the Palestinians in 2000, 2001 and 2008 were not accepted.
Israelis do want a two-state solution, but Palestinians have shown time and again that they are not willing to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. The rise of Hamas and its Islamist supporters in Egypt and Turkey make this trend even more obvious. And there is nothing that Israel’s economic or military might can do to persuade them otherwise. That leaves Israel and its backers with an intractable problem that can only be managed, not solved.
But Zakaria hasn’t noticed any of it. Instead, he and other liberal “experts” continue to blame Israel for the fact that the Palestinians can’t take yes for an answer. Part of the reason for this is the delusion that someday the West will hand Israel over to them on a silver platter. Rather than writing about the need for a sea change in Palestinian political culture that will make peace possible, Zakaria blames the Israelis for paying attention to the history of the last 20 years. Too bad such a basic skill isn’t required to make a person a mainstream media foreign policy expert.
I am no great admirer of Sharon or Barak but Zakariya;s praise for Olmert is hysterically funny. Everybody in Israel knows how infinitely corrupt Olmert is. This proves that Zakariya is grossly ignorant about Israel. As Jonathan points out, this is what qualifies as an expert nowadays.
Zakaria, Friedman and Beinart. n nObama advisers/influencers all. n nSays it all, doesn't it?
Yup. Last year the administration even boasted to the New York Times how with it Obama was about the Middle East, including the fact that he read Friedman and Zakaria to understand the Middle East.
Do you have a link for that? I'd like to have it.
Zakaria is in alignment with American liberal Jews who really believe PM Netanyahu, the Likud platform of Greater Israel and all those settlements' are the sole barrier to "peace". nGo read the comment thread in Peretz-free New Republic post by Judis for today's example. n nMaybe Fox needs to compete with Zakaria's GPS with Bret Stephens? n
I simply can't understand the thinking that says the settlements, whatever one thinks of policy around them, are the central obstacle to peace. It's like on this issue people lose all objective judgment. In fact there are good arguments legal and strategic and tactical for the ongoing construction. Legally, under UNSC 43, who is to say what land and when and until somebody finally decides, to be a negotiated thing. then what belongs to whom outside the green line? Strategically and tactically, the argument is the Arabs need moral hazard, need to understand they have something to lose, that their positions and actions have consequences. And with time passing they lose a little more always. n
"That leaves Israel and its backers with an intractable problem that can only be managed, not solved." n nUntil population transfer either becomes politically acceptable or occurs as the result of a Palestinian depravity that finally turns the Israelis into normal human beings, instead of Stockholm-syndromized victims willing to sacrifice their children on the altar of world opinion.
I do note in this regard the often recounted German observation of how easy it was to herd Jews to their death. n nI had never considered a link between Israeli tolerance of Palestinian depravity and Jewish tolerance for German depravity before.
"Population transfer"? nNow, where have we heard that before?
India-Pakistan, Czech Republic, Sudan and most of the world?
Even though seldom used in this regard, it describes what Egypt, Jordan, and Syria did to some of the Jewish lands they invaded in 1948, although you would need to use the word indiscriminate slaughter to describe what they did to the rest. It also describes what the PA demands as the price of getting them to accept a state. n nIt also describes what any number of Muslim countries in North African and the Middle East did to their Jewish populations when Israel was established.
Ha! It's a problem very smart and highly educated people have, Michael, this tendency to see artificial constructs as permanent and "intractable problems." Yet, at Israel's throat is only a pretend people with manufactured aspirations whose primary assignment, nay, whose only raison d'être is the destruction of the Jewish State to satisfy Islamic dreams of a Judenrein Middle East. But the thing that sustains the "Palestinians" and "palestinianism" is a stupendous amount of money to keep them fed, medicated, housed, armed and in the forefront of world affairs. As the Muslim world comes apart and as the West begins to exploit its newly accessible energy resources, the juice which fuels their artificial life support will dry up and for a pittance, an effective and mutually agreeable resolution will be "miraculously" found.
No, they are not a construct. They were there in the neighborhood on and off for 1400 years. There were Arabs in Eretz Yisrael 800 fracking years before Columbus sailed to the New World. Defining them out of existence doesn't help you to either make peace with them or, should it come to that, expelling them and razing their habitations to the ground so that one stone does not stand upon another.. The Muslim world's fractures are like the fractures in safety glass, it doesn't completely break or dissolve. Don't count on that either habibi.
You continuously conflate 'Palestinian culture and nationality' which IS a construct, a weaponized one, no less, with the humans who today choose to call themselves 'Palestinians' and act out the weapon part of the construct. n nThe culture and nationality CAN be defined or beaten out of existence, even if the human beings who wore that mantle, and their descendants, go on to live. n nThere are descendants of Attila's Huns, and Genghis Khan's Mongols, but they do not see themselves as Huns and Mongols seeking to 'kill their enemies and hear the lamentations of their women'. They are no more, no threat to anybody. n nThere is no reason why the word 'Palestinian' cannot be viewed, in a hundred years' time, in the same way Nazi, Hun, or Mongol are viewed today.
Stop believing with the rest of the rubes in the power of words and the magical ability of definitions. So they're Arabs. Does that help? They've been around for centuries and centuries. It does you no good to define and beat the culture out of existence. The people are real. The culture is what they make of it. We're all, so the secularists, tell us, the descendants of apes, and our genetic information we carry from our zygotes is statistically equivalent. You have to live with your neighbors or if they persist in defining you as the enemy with their own magical juju and trying to kill you, not some abstract "culture" but you, as the embodiment of the culture, then you have to kill them.
regarding: n nThere is no reason why the word 'Palestinian' cannot be viewed, in a hundred years' time, in the same way Nazi, Hun, or Mongol are viewed today. n nAs the world understands, the "Palestinians" only want to kill Jews, so the hatred is not so much. n nJews are not very popular…the Vatican is sucking islamic/iranian butt big time recently-I wonder why??
Yes, they were in the neighbourhood, but as Muslim, Arabic-speaking tribes and clans, not as a unified people identifying as "Palestinians," which is the invented construct I refer to, Besht. The majority were migrants moving about the Ottoman empire; their Syrian dialects, clan loyalties and family connections certify to that. n nBut all that will be neither here nor there and my point still stands; the "Palestinians" are there only because they have been artificially defined and are artificially maintained with billions. They are expensive pets and one day their lavish welfare benefits will run out as the world and their uncaring brethren tighten their purse strings and lose interest due to more immediate concerns. n nEdit/PS: And as Michael puts it rather pithily, "why stay in the overpopulated dusty shitholes that are Gaza and Ramallah, if you do not have some ideological reason (even if it is genocidal) to do so?" And those places won't get better without the billions thrown in by UNRWA, one might add.
Az ma. There they are. Historically, I wouldn't count on their inflow being disproportionate to the Zionist inflow of returning Jews from the 19th century onwards–they were the clear majority after all in Mandatory Palestine when the White Paper froze the Zionist enterprise–until they weren't. And they left. n nWe can debate the dialectics of sovereignty and natural rights from here to kingdom come. They aren't there "only"–they are there because they live there and raise their families there and have a critical mass to get that financial support and given the world we live in that money will never run out. They stay in Gaza because they can't get back to where they used to live and they want to go back there not somewhere else. They stay in Ramallah because the West Bank is being developed and it isn't a hell hole. And that's their pivot westwards. n nThey cannot be interpreted out of existence. And the case for making peace with them or killing them is not strengthened or lessened as to whether they are an organic culture or a syncretistic one. Is Communism "natural"? Were the Soviets Russians or Reds? Complicated matters conceptually but that's the sidebar to the war that took place between the Germans over here, however defined, abstracted, analyzed and the Russians over here who turned them back at Leningrad and Stalingrad, drove them back at the Kursk salient, and then bloodily fought them yard by yard mile by mile back to Berlin. n nI"m telling you that they are sufficiently emplaced in the local flora and fauna that redefining them as tribes or clans is an empty exercise. Those tribes and clans began to define themselves as Palestinians parallel to the rise of Arab nationalism as a political movement. n nDid they have the national right to keep the Jews out? Do I buy into their Western elite supported campaign to define Jews and Zionism and Israel out of existence? Not this old pooch. But who cares? it isn't Israel's task to argue its enemies out of existence or its duty defend its own existence by arguing with its enemies. n nStatus quo, peace, or an Israeli campaign to decimate the material strength and capacity for harm of the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza or both–calculations have to be made and decisions worked through the system. imo we've had enough of the exculpatory PR on both sides of the divide. n nThere they are. Peace, uneasy coexistence, or an attempt to force acknowledged and unconditional surrender from a people whose back is broken. imo the rest is mood music.
You make good arguments, as always, Besht, however facts do get in the way of some of the assumptions you make. The issue is not with rooted Arabs, but with the undetermined mass of opportunistic mendicants who live as UNRWA "refugees" and who do nothing but serve as cannon fodder and consume free stuff supplied by the world. My argument is that the free ride cannot last forever, because soon enough the reluctant donors, who are essentially paying tribute for access to expensive fuel and a little bit of iffy peace, will run out of dough. What then? n n…./
cont'd… n nAs for the Palestinianism bit, the way I read it, Arab nationalism expressed itself as Pan Arabism. The "Palestine" bit was a clear and openly announced plan to create a fake minority, as smaller one than the Jewish, for Western weeping hearts. Yet not even Arab nationalism, be it Pan Arabic, or of the nation-state variety ever stuck, much less Palestinianism. It's clear that Islamism is on the ascendant. n nMy core assumption is that the economics will determine the future. Given the humongous amount of funds rquired to keep the current "Palestinian" identity and the conflict afloat, even a moderate reduction will have a significant impact. I'm not assuming that forced population exchanges are necessary for a resolution, but that under different vastly different economic and political circumstances, satisfactory solutions which do not threaten the demographic political integrity of the Jewish state and provide Arabs with rights, will "organically" emerge from practical Israelis and Arabs.
Palestinian nationalism qua Palestinian nationalism emerges as a separate contending stream with the other Nazi-incubated Arab nationalisms at least with the with the Mufti–that was Arafat's accomplishment such as it was, to ride out the various tigers and pan-Arabisms and Shukariis and Arab League agendas to get something that was local if expressed archaically in the revolutionary Marxist national liberationist patois of the day. n nNot to say that bringing him out of Tunisian exile wasn't a bungle but the first intifadah had been exhausting and water under the bridge etc. n nThe same dynamic of and-yet-Palestinian identity plays itself out with Hamas which manages not to be completely subsumed by the pan-Islamic sea in which it swims. While advancing Palestinian "resistance" as a first-among-equals exemplar of anti-Jewish/Zionist/Crusader pan-Arab/Islamic triumphalism. Still, when it's time to get out of Damascus, it's time to get out of Damascus…. n nI don't know that being on the UNWRA dole in Gaza city is a plum gig, whatever arbitrariness cements the pattern of internal displacement. n nPersonally I dont think the money need run out completely–since it doesn't want to foster a vacuum, Israel will probably continue to be the banker/electrician of last resort to keep the lights on in Gaza if necessary and financial institutions in the West Bank that final step from insolvency–if it can get some quid for the quo–the conditions may be tacit but outright war/intifadah on the eastern and western flanks is kept suspended. n nWhat about the EU? Have they been donor states? Don't they have enough problems with the "PIGS"? n nThe IDF and security leadership imo agree with you, not only in that determining weight of economics but administrative, scientific, financial etc. organization and flexibility generally–that high tech and sophistication can be as maneuverable and adaptable as low-tech, distributed jihad networks. n nIsraeli leadership is *not* in a state of panic or seized by a claustrophobic foreboding of siege or downfall, arguably also re: Iran. n nShould we in the Diaspora then be so seized with angst?
Excellent. n nI have long believed Israel has only to hold out until the oil weapon is no longer a weapon, and the arabs overplay their hand in Europe.
And Israel is discovering oil and gas reserves. Hopefully it won't be bullied by Russia's GAZPROM which wants to develop them and keep Europe dependent. Not that I care much about the latter, but dealing with Russia is always bad news.
Zakaria entirely fails to recognize the reality of what 'Palestinian’ culture is. It is a weaponized culture and nationality, whose one goal, and entire identity, are based upon erasing Israel. Take that away, and they will melt into the surrounding Arab nations – for why stay in the overpopulated dusty shitholes that are Gaza and Ramallah, if you do not have some ideological reason (even if it is genocidal) to do so?
there is no real Palestinian culture–rather, it's a "cult" of martyrdom and jihad. as someone said elsewhere, every war is a win-win for Hamas. if Jews are killed, that's great. if Palestinians are killed, that's even better, because those guilt points from around the world just pour in. n nbtw, does anyone doubt any longer that Jerusalem is truly a Jewish city? if it wasn't, why would Hamas have been shelling it?
And imagine how awkward they would've felt if one of the missiles had knocked off their precious Al Aqsa dome.
Nah, they would have blamed it on the Jews, and the world press would have run with it.
Do you think, Rulieg, that Hamas may have 'shelled' Jerusalem for the same reason as, say, Britain bombed Amsterdam and Antwerp in Holland or much of northern France where some 40,000 to 50,000 French civilians died as a result of British bombing during the period of the war – because it was occupied by the enemy.
"That leaves Israel and its backers with an intractable problem that can only be managed, not solved." n nPerhaps that "can" should be "will". n
American liberals, in giving the lightweight Zakaria all the respect and 'gravitas' they do, once again display their bigotry and high self regard. n n'He's dark skinned, he has an accent and an exotic name, and he's obviously a genius (because he mirrors back to us what we think!). He's perfect!!!' n
And don't forget Zakaria is a Muslim by way of India. I'm sure the Indians don't regret that he expatriated himself to the US.
Tobin is right to hone in on the hole in Zakaria's piece, which piece does make some acknowledgements Israel's way. With the increasing lethality in asymmetric warfare, the notion of "willingness to take risks" is a laughable abstraction by someone who has nothing to lose, doesn't really know what he's talking about and is intellectually reckless to boot. But I don't agree with the argument that it was wrong for Israel to leave that hellhole Gaza. On the logic that it was a mistake to leave, then Israel should retake it, which it could, but that's surely a counterintuitive thought if there was one. Barry Rubin on that: n n…And for Israel to overthrow Hamas it would either have to govern the Gaza Strip itself, restarting the whole post-1967 process and facing daily gun battles there or to turn over the territory to someone else. Since the Palestinian Authority isn’t interested in such an arrangement and is incapable of even making a serious effort to overthrow Hamas nobody else is going to do so or take power there…
Well yes, the Gaza thing, that cat's out of the bag now, so the only thing Israel can realistically do is either read the Riot Act to Egypt about letting weapons in, or retake and control the Philadelphia corridor and maybe build a nice base right in Hamas' face on the western outskirts of Sderot. None are great choices, but having genocidal lunatics lobbing thousands of missiles at your civilians is not cricket either.
Plus keep up the targeted assassinations of course, when and if it suits her. n
Kinder still than the remedy I'd recommend, which is to lob artillery shells in the general direction of the incoming trajectory of Hamasniks' missiles as any self-respecting country would do. Or would you prefer the Grozny approach?
I don't think Israel or any liberal democracy can simply "lob artillery shells in the general direction of…" That would entail the indiscriminate killing of civilians without it being the collateral damage tail of the military purposed dog. So I don't buy that that's something any self respecting country would do. I'm not sure what Grozny approach you have in mind, the failed attempt to storm and seize it or the constant barraging it thereafter. If the former can be likened to a ground war, I leave it to the Israelis decide that. The second sounds like the indiscriminate civilan death approach I just commented on. And that's not going to happen, the way I see things.
I ovestated the shelling barrage for literary effect, such as it is, Scrum, but the fact is that the Geneva Conventions and common practice allow for a much more "robust" response to cross-border attacks on civilians. Unfortunately, Israel has played along with the gradual international effort to eliminate its ability to defend itself and is now paing the price, with governments tearing their hair over the deaths of 25 Gazans, whilst 40,000 Syrians have been snuffed out. Absurd, no? n nThe Grozny reference was to Russia getting away with virtually pounding Grozny to the ground. Assuming what is and what is "never going to happen" is never a safe sport; history shifts in unpredictable ways. It takes a lot of money and effort to maintain absurdities, such as protecting a terrorist regime which lobs missiles at civilians, and the money and the effort can not be guaranteed.
Russia, unlike Israel, has a veto on the UNSC.
They're genocidal. But not lunatics, unfortunately. Lunacy suggests some reason could prevail. Hamas tragically knows what it's about and my view is that Israel can't do much more than play it the way she has been, levelling enough force as the situation and real politik realities– like American strong preferences–allow for as in the recent ceasefire.
You and I define lunacy differently, methinks. Reason is not a property I associate with it. But perhaps the better word would be evil, for only evil people could plan to turn their children into human bombs and instead of teaching them a trade and a love for the decent, productive life, to hate with all their being. n nAh, yes, and as for your advice for Israel, it's the slow death of a thousand cuts, for no nation can grow under the shadow of ever-increasing threats of annihilation. It will either break or it will lash out.
It's reason aplenty but I won't argue semantics with you and will agree that it's say evil reason at work. n nAs for slow death by a 1,000 cuts I think not but regardless of what I think, these are calculations best made by the military and civilian command charged with such decisions. While of course they can err they usually know better than others what's best for Israel and don't need direction from pishers in these matters such as myself.
Pishers such you and I don't provide direction, Scrum; we state opinions and provide moral support for policies and actions we agree with. It's not only a right, it's a duty, especially in a world which is hostile to Israel. Israeli policy makers do, on occasion, take into account views from outside of Israel.
Exactly right. n nThey are exquisitely sensitive to what those outside of Israel say, too sensitive, obviously. n nLet them read that not everyone is counseling them to suicide. n n
Just as they applauded Obama’s ascendancy and forgave his shortcomings, in the name of diversity, political correctness, the righteousness of affirmative action and the concept of distributing the wealth and leveling the playing field and all that rot, do they give their collective pass to this particular bloke. If it had been a Jew, he would be ruined.
This is a sick society we live in today and it is getting sicker by the minute. Employers allow their Jew hating employees to gang up upon and harass the Jewish employee with no limits. The employer human resources or gov’t oversight will not step in and put an end to it. It is every Jewish person for themselves. Even their families do not wish to stick out their necks, prefering to believe their child or nephew is hallucinating. No, you morons, it was real, can you see it now. The country is overrun with Jew hatred. Still, they can’t see it. Guess they were too busy with the important issue of the day, gay marriage. Twisted and sick. Let’s donate money to support someone who sat in Reverend Wright’s Church for decades and described him as his mentor.
Obama may have been re-elected, but we put up a good fight and he knows WE have Israel’s back.
“Part of the reason for [why Palestinians won’t take yes for an answer] is that someday the West will hand Israel over to them on a silver platter.” This is what Islamic Fareed Zakaria is working for. n n“Nothing seems to be able to displace Fareed Zakaria from his current perch in which he is treated as one of the country’s leading foreign policy experts.” n nOf course not. Zakaria is the perfect spokesman for the anti-Semitic Islamophilic MSM. They have dubbed him an expert. He must be rehabilitated from any misdeed, sort of like a mini Obama.
"…Were the Soviets Russians or Reds?" n nUnder the Czars, the Russians were serfs. Under the Commisars they were Soviet citizens. Under President Putin they are capitalist citizens. Where the benefit of one form of government over another for them or the rest of us? n nNational character counts. Russians are servile by nature. As for the Arab national character, suffice it that a Russian Orthodox serf or an atheist Soviet citizen is a prince and a paragon of virtue beside a Muslim Arab of any stripe.
Read what I'm saying. It isn't hearts and valentines. Try reading the last five words of the post you think you are replying to.
Why not then try and transfer them before having to kill them? n nThe point is they have shown they are incapable of accommodating themselves to the existence of Jews not only in the ancestral Jewish homeland, but anywhere in the world. n nThey are eternal enemies to their core. n nAbsent a destruction of their culture and reprogramming of their minds, there is no hope for peaceful coexistence with them. n nA 'managed' coexistence is where we are currently. n nDo we stay this way forever? As a flock of deer harvested by wolves, part of nature's design? n nIt is up to the Israelis of course to decide when they have had enough, and what they do. n nBut it is interesting that you concede the moral imperative to kill them if they persist in killing us, but when someone suggests trying to destroy their cult/'culture', or transfer them, you get all philosophical with the 'they have been here forever and are not going anywhere' BS. n nIs not trying to rework their culture or transfer them out more humane (to both sides) than total war to the death, that they would lose, but that would cost us much as well? n nJews were there since forever in many places until recently, and now they are not. n nWhere are the Huns, Mongols, Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Romans?
why not transfer now? Yes, I believe that's a decision for the Israeli political system and society and they choose otherwise. n nI think totally abnegating Palestinian history and society by fiat is a diversion, and leads to misunderestimating your enemy and their resources as enemies: tactical, organizational, and forecloses slim options for negotiation that may be present. Not likely but Israel collectively does not, by a majority, feel that it faces an existential crisis today should Palestinian revanchism be given some leash room even if the dog will prove to be fatally rabid. n nThe IDF and the Israeli political establishment, buttressed by Iron Dome and its successors, notwithstanding the disruption of rockets, bses its room for maneuver on several factors: n na) Israeli defense capability nb) Israeli retaliatory capability nc) Israeli uncontested command of Palestinian airspace. nd) Israel technological, intellectual, and economic superiority. n nThe last conflict harvested more wolves than deer, many by name. n nBy default the Israeli government has a de facto "conceptia" for dealing with the Palestinians in the short and mid-term: dysfunctional co-existence permitting on the ground direct and indirect contact and coordination with Hamas and Fatah, punctuated by war and girded with a strategic *defense* (alliances and relations with the US, the barrier, degrees of blockade, Iron Dome and its follow-ups). n nThey assume a strategic depth in time and geography to wait the Palestinians out out in more or less the status quo–without having to retake the Gazan and West Bank geographical and population heartlands or displace their populations, while inertially keeping on life-support the remaining institutions and mechanisms of Oslo and counting on diplomacy to keep Palestinian international mischef making and increase in potential lethality through alliances (UN, Iran, etc) within tolerable limits. n nI am respectful of Israel's collective decision to forbear from sweeping the board. And unlike many here I do not believe that a Palestinian identity is definitionally a mirage concealing a single-minded and all-consuming single-purpose of Jew extirpation. The choice to propagate Mexican Nazi enclaves on the Mediterranean may yet be undone. n nOr not. n nIf not I believe that Israeli citizens are closer to the shetach than I am in judging when and how to take the war to the Palestinians.
Good post, and at the end of the day, I agree with most of what you say, particularly the last paragraph and those similar to it. n nDefinitions are important, and until now, the 'Palestinians' have been winning the war of definitions. Gingrich gave us an official opening, and we (collectively) blew it.
" 'I am my own master, said the seft', and he cut off his leg." – Bertotl Brecht