Yesterday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received two significant mentions in the press. The first was from President Obama, who quoted Sharon in his speech to Israeli youth. “If we insist on fulfilling the dream in its entirety, we are liable to lose it all,” Obama said in Sharon’s name, telling the crowd to make peace with the Palestinians and warning against the quest for a Greater Israel. Quoting Sharon was a wise choice to express this sentiment. It isn’t just American presidents, Obama was saying, who believe in the necessity of the two-state solution; King Arik–once the architect of a sovereign Greater Israel–said so too.
But the other instance of Sharon’s name cropping up again yesterday was far less laudatory of the man still in a coma. The Times of Israel posted a video released by the Palestinians in Gaza, in which Palestinian women, under the proud, smiling gaze of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, used Sharon’s face as target practice on a public shooting range. This is relevant to Obama’s speech as well. The address, which was well written and well delivered, had passages everyone could agree with. But no paragraph was more observant or insightful than when Obama said this:
This truth is more pronounced given the changes sweeping the Arab World. I recognize that with the uncertainty in the region – people in the streets, changes in leadership, the rise of non-secular parties in politics –it is tempting to turn inward. But this is precisely the time to respond to the wave of revolution with a resolve for peace. As more governments respond to popular will, the days when Israel could seek peace with a handful of autocratic leaders are over. Peace must be made among peoples, not just governments. No one step can change overnight what lies in the hearts and minds of millions. But progress with the Palestinians is a powerful way to begin, while sidelining extremists who thrive on conflict and division.
I am not going to claim here that the president reads COMMENTARY, but I’m satisfied with rhetoric coming from Obama that even raises the possibility. Because this paragraph is something we have echoed here, repeatedly, in the wake of the Arab Spring. I don’t know if Obama fully appreciates, understands, or accepts the implications of that quote. But that quote is the key to understanding the challenge of Arab-Israeli peace and the failed legacy that Mahmoud Abbas is preparing to leave behind him.
The Arab Spring has changed the calculus for any peace negotiations. The mirage of stability has given way to the reality and realization of the populist power of the Arab street. Signing a treaty with an unpopular, undemocratic, unaccountable, and unrepresentative autocrat is, in the new Middle East, something close to worthless. And that is precisely why those who say that Israel must seize the opportunity to strike a deal with Abbas are missing the point. This crowd, which had the loudest voice in Ben Birnbaum’s piece on Abbas, says two things about the man: he is the best Palestinian partner for peace Israel has ever had, and he is the best Palestinian partner for peace Israel is likely to ever have. The first half of that statement is utterly meaningless. But the second contains the key to the conflict.
If Mahmoud Abbas, who rules the Palestinian people (at least in the West Bank) and represents Palestinian society to the international community (at least on paper), will be succeeded by more hateful and less peaceful Palestinian leaders in any plausible scenario, then he has presided over the seeding and sowing of that hatred. If the Palestinian people are ever to make peace with Israel, then the state-sponsored anti-Semitism has to stop. The incitement to violence has to stop. The state-sponsored celebration of murderers has to stop. The denial of Jewish history and connection to the land has to stop. Abbas rules over a vast bureaucracy that energetically poisons the minds of Palestinian children with a hatred that destroys everything it touches.
What will a future with such a generation look like? It will look like the Palestinian women in Gaza shooting bullets at the picture of a Jewish leader in a coma. That picture, you’ll note, is attached to one corner of a giant Jewish Star of David. The women may be shooting at Sharon (and the others pictured there), but the more important, and indelible, image is of them shooting at the representation of the Jewish people.
Abbas has shown that he has no desire to sign a peace deal with Israel. But even if he did, what would it accomplish? Obama is right: true peace must be made between the people. The lack of such a peace will be Abbas’s most distinct, and unforgivable, legacy.
But the Palestinian people don't want peace. He says "reach out to the Palestinians and sideline extremists" as if they're two separate sets of people; they are either one and the same, or one embraces the other to the point of being indistinguishable. That is why there will be no peace for the foreseeable future. So yeah, I'm pretty sure Obama doesn't understand the implications of what he said.
wow, what a horrible, immoral, hateful 'protest', using Ariel Sharon's face for target practice. nHow about sending Sen. Diane Feinstein to push for gun control in Gaza? n nfwiw, I watched the Obama-Abbas presser on BBCAmerica, and their bottom news banner said "preparing for post-Abbas…" nThe live coverage ended just before Obama answered the question about 'settlements', because, after all, why should Americans stuck with DirectTV be denied BBC's American programming, but Abbas DID look like he had been told his retirement villa would be somewhere in Rockland County, New York
"he is the best Palestinian partner for peace Israel has ever had," nMao was the most beloved leader Red China ever had. nAl Capone was the most honest Mafioso ever. n nNone of these statements inspire much confidence. See Rashi's observation on the fact that Noach was a righteous perfect man in his generation. n
Considering how totally inbred is the hatred in the Arab and Muslim people, it is vital for Israel to seriously consider and create alternatives to 'peace' treaties with such vile people (I know they are not 'all' that way, but 98% is pretty close). Expulsion should not be thrown out as one possibility. It can be done with a great deal more justice and compassion than the Europeans and Arabs and Muslims expelled the Jews from their lands.
Sometimes, the best thing to do is to keep your thoughts to yourself
if Meir Kahane had his wish for expulsion fulfilled, what in the world would be different today other than Israelis being more secure within their borders? nNothing, IMHO would be different nIsrael is called an "apartheid state" today anyway
If the Palestinian people are ever to make peace with Israel, then the state-sponsored anti-Semitism has to stop. n nWhat an absolute crock. You're telling one tribe of Semites to lay off its anti-Semitism against another? How about you rephrase that.
Islamists are antisemitic. So no need to worry. They are several hundred millions brain dead.
Palestinian Islamists ARE Semitic, like all Arabs, whether or not they hate Jews.
Quitting school when you were 3 years old didn't help your brain power.
U know what the word "antisemitic" implies: "the apes & the pigs". The remarkable thing is that the other "Semites" are so ignorant and stupid that they do not even know how much the apes and pigs are and have been contributing to the humans. They are the MORONS & fanatics.
Contrary to Obama's baseless claim, Israel's only hope of surviving long term is to become "Greater Israel". They can not withdraw to pre-1967 borders, they can't leave West Bank, they can't let Gaza continue as it is. They should settle to the maximum extent, and that will solve the question of whose land it is. n nTough what the world thinks. The Chinese are brutally and unjustly occupying Tibet, a land millions of times bigger than West Bank, but no one dares to utter a peep against mighty China. Similarly for many other such injustices around the world. Israel, out of all these cases, has a legitimate claim to the land, and the Arabs are an artificial country funded and egged on by the Arab nations that want to see Israel destroyed. Israel should stick it out and ignore Obama and his ilk.
You're either arguing for apartheid or a unified, secular democratic state. Which is it?
Actually, I'm in favor of a unified economic region with separate governments. However, the Arabs have to evolve a little first, get rid of the Nazi propaganda in school textbooks and across their media, stop the shooting, and accept the hard fact that Israel is not going anywhere. n nJudea and Samaria are part of ancient Israel, as is Jerusalem. These areas should rightfully have been assigned to the Jews in 1948, but the U.N. couldn't bring itself to do something as radical as righting a historic wrong. n nAlmost all of the Arab states in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula are artificial constructs which have no particular legitimacy other than that they were mostly part of the Ottoman Empire. Even the Arabs who rule Egypt were not the true Egyptians; the Copts were the original ethnic Egyptians and they have become a small minority in their own land. n nAmid these vast and arbitrarily drawn borders, why begrudge one people a tiny slice of land that was theirs to begin with? The descendants of nomadic Beduin tribes who occupy historical Israel have no particular claim to that land, since most of them migrated to the area in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I don't think they can or should be removed from the land, but they should jolly well learn a little tolerance. n nThen there's the whole situation of hundreds of thousands of Jews being evicted from Arab lands, sans property and possessions and compensation, their homes and wealth confiscated, the old Jewish hospitals and schools renamed with Arabic nomenclature to erase any trace of Jewish contribution to Arab civilization. What a vast injustice, and no one even talks about that. Those people now live in Israel, and if you think they're going to magnanimously hand over yet more land to violent, Jew-hating Arabs, you've got another think coming.
The West refuses to see the truth. But does Obama starts to understand!
Remember all of the years Bill Clinton courted Yasir Arafat? There was a stretch of time when Arafat was in the White House so often you'd swear he was paying rent. All that time, people (particularly American Jews) would agonize over what was really in Arafat's mind. Did he really want peace with Israel, or was he just pretending? A lot of time and energy was wasted on that stupidity. When he finally walked away from Clinton and Ehud Barak at Camp David and got a hero's welcome on the West Bank for doing so, it became clear that what Arafat actually thought, for good or ill, mattered not a damn. What mattered to Arafat was the cold hard fact that if he actually made a real peace with Israel, his life wasn't worth a plugged nickel. That was true of Arafat then and it's equally true of Abbas today. So President Obama can preach to Israeli kids about a change of heart all he likes, but until he successfully works his charms on a great many Arabs, he'll get nowhere. Clinton learned that lesson the hard way, but I'm not quite convinced any lessons have actually penetrated the Obama White House yet. So far all I've seen is better marketing.
The U.S. State Dept. officially considers Israel an occupying state. They have 10 Arab desks and one Israel desk, so the Arabists tend to dominate the discussion, and they have a culture of pro-Arab policy. n nAlthough the U.S. population favors Israel, especially in times of war but always a majority, State and the President traditionally have tried to have a more "balanced" view, in order to extract some short-sighted, short term gain on paper, to try to claim the elusive mantle of peace maker, etc. n nThe fact is, the Arabs and Israelis are at peace, and only because the Israelis maintain their grip on their land and the buffer zones such as WB and Golan. The minute they loosen their grip, the Arabs will pour back in like Mongolian hordes, and Israel will be fighting for its existence yet again, and thousands on both sides will die. n nYet, this is precisely what Obama and his ilk advocate, because they don't mind a bloodbath especially if it scores them a few short term points in the U.S. polls and with the Arab dictatorships. It's as though the President is more concerned with how Arabs regard him than how Americans regard him. And there's probably good reasons for that.
It doesn't matter that Palestinian Arabs are Semites. The term "anti-Semitism" was coined by Wilhelm Marr in late 19th-century Germany specifically to mean Jew hatred. Look it up.
Precisely. The use of the term "Semites" was to distinguish Jews, and only Jews, from other Europeans.
Today very few of the Palestinians are of Semitic descent.r nThe Turks brought in many from the conquered European territories, from what is today Albania, Montenegro etc., to add manpower during the Ottoman rule of the region.r nMany came to Palestine from Egypt, as their family names attest to, when the Jews started creating opportunities after the first and second aliyas; and they were certainly not semitic.r nActually there is a tribe in Southern Africa, the Lumbas, who have a far stronger semitic linkage as DNA has shown.r nAs for “semitic” Arabic speaking people to not be anti-semitic, one need only look at those many American “Jews” who have no hesitation in trashing Jewish customs, culture and Jews who live in Israel.