Love of the Land: Blaming America First for No Middle East Peace

Blaming America First for No Middle East Peace

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
20 April '10

Foreign Policy has posted a forum online on why we have failed to achieve Middle East peace. It’s an odd question, which reveals the foreign policy establishment’s predilection to see this as something we control. The real answer is, obviously, because the Palestinians and their enablers don’t want peace. But that’s not the answer from many of the participants who say the problem is — I know you’ll be shocked! — the U.S. just isn’t trying hard enough or we haven’t browbeaten Israel sufficiently. Zbigniew Brezinski says the U.S. is at fault because we just haven’t gotten “seriously engaged” and haven’t come out with a plan to impose on the parties. Daniel Kurtzer echoes this claptrap: “When we are active diplomatically, Arab states are more willing to cooperate with us on other problems; when we are not active, our diplomatic options shrink.” Some willfully distort history, as Robert Malley does when he insists that “Americans, Palestinians, and Israelis were all to blame for the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks.” Hmm. I thought it was Yasir Arafat who walked away from the deal and started killing Jews instead of accepting a Palestinian state.

Now there are some voices of sanity. Gen. Anthony Zinni: “By now, we should realize what doesn’t work: summits, agreements in principle, special envoys, U.S.-proposed plans, and just about every other part of our approach has failed. So why do we keep repeating it?” (You can see why he didn’t get an administration job — too much realism.) And then Michael Oren rightly challenges the entire premise of the discussion:

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Love of the Land: Blaming America First for No Middle East Peace

Love of the Land: What Is To Be Done About Nuclear Iran?

What Is To Be Done About Nuclear Iran?

Roger L Simon
Pajamamedia.com
11 February '10

Click here to watch the second part of Roger’s interview with Israeli ambassador to the United States. (View Part One here.)

A transcript of the entire interview appears below:

MR. SIMON: Ambassador Oren, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule for PJTV. And before we get into the real subject of this discussion on Iran, I can’t resist asking you to comment on the events yesterday at UC Irvine. Was it really as bad as Judean Ramallah or not as bad?

AMBASSADOR OREN: First of all, pleasure to be here, Roger. As to what happened yesterday in UC Irvine, I was giving a presentation on the state of US Israel and Israel-Middle Eastern relations, and a group of several hundred students kept on disturbing me, calling out rather, you know, various curses and expletives, none of them deleted, and basically, violating the most fundamental law on an American campus, indeed, outside of American campus in this country, and that’s the right of free speech. And from my perspective, it was a great squandered opportunity for them. Here, they had an opportunity to hear a different perspective, perhaps not a perspective they agreed with or like, but — and a chance to exchange ideas, and that, I think, is what universities are about, but they’ve blocked this. And unfortunately, this has happened at several campuses to several Israeli speakers, but not only to Israeli speakers. Last week, down at Georgetown campus, General Petraeus was subject to the same type of interference. So I think it’s the beginning of a trend that we have to watch very, very carefully, a trend to sort of bring the Middle East, where there is no freedom of expression, onto American campuses. And I think we have to be very vigilant, indeed, to prevent that from happening.

MR. SIMON: It’s not just American campuses, though, unfortunately. My nephew is a student at the London School of Economics, and the same thing happened there. And he wrote about it for Pajamas Media. But let’s move on to Iran, here.

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Love of the Land: What Is To Be Done About Nuclear Iran?

Love of the Land: Muslim students disrupt Israel Amb. Michael Oren's talk

Muslim students disrupt Israel Amb. Michael Oren's talk

Democast
09 February '10

Israel's U.S. Ambassador Oren withstands 10 antagonistic disruptions by Univ Calif Irvine Muslim Students Union to deliver speech about middle-east relations to capacity audience. Police Chief comments on arrest of 12 Muslim agitators. Palestinian and Zionist attendees comment on audacious conduct of alleged Muslim Brotherhood-linked, M.S.U. Full speech and interviews - 48 min.

(Quite a circus, but Amb. Oren handled it well. A very interesting interview at 39:44 of Ghazi Brighith, formerly of Beit Lechem, who now has refugee status in the U.S. and attended Oren's presentation. Very outspoken and well spoken. Y.)



Related article: Another wild night on campus reminds college adminstrators why they daren't displease their Islamist students

Love of the Land: Muslim students disrupt Israel Amb. Michael Oren's talk