Love of the Land: Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Lenny Ben-David
I*Consult
22 February '10

Today’s Jerusalem Post carries an Op-Ed column by officials from J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

They defend the recent letter they sponsored with 54 Members of Congress to President Barack Obama which “express[ed] concern for Israel's security, for the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, and for the urgency of reaching a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

But that was not the reason for the letter. Read the letter here. The Members themselves state, “We write to you [Obama] with great concern about the ongoing crisis in Gaza.”

Note that for the Jerusalem Post, J Street and APN argue that first they were concerned for “Israel’s security,” but the text of the letter indicates that Israel’s security is of little concern.

Love of the Land: Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Israel Matzav: Israel's 'security fence' won't be completed?

Israel's 'security fence' won't be completed?

The Washington Post reports that it's unlikely that Israel's 'security fence' in Judea and Samaria will ever be completed due to cost overruns, Supreme Court rulings and a decline in terrorism.

The last substantial work on the barrier, a network of fences and concrete walls flanked by a military patrol road, was finished in 2007. The construction underway now largely involves moving parts of it off Palestinian land in response to a series of Israeli Supreme Court rulings that found that the barrier had in some cases isolated families and sealed off villages from farmland to a degree that security concerns did not warrant.

A portion of the barrier in the sparsely populated southern West Bank remains unfinished, and the Israeli Defense Ministry said in a recent memo that "for budgetary and other considerations" it did not plan to complete the barrier around Maale Adumim, a major Jewish settlement east of Jerusalem.

That will leave as much as 40 percent of the barrier's 420-mile planned route unfinished. Even with the substantial gaps, Israeli military officials and politicians credit the barrier -- one of Israel's more controversial undertakings -- with a decline in suicide and other bombings originating from the West Bank.

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Israel Matzav: Israel's 'security fence' won't be completed?

Israel Matzav: Obama's personal morality and Israel's security

Obama's personal morality and Israel's security

The most striking thing about the first 100 days of the Obama Presidency is the extent to which the new President has sought to impose his worldview on the United States - and by extension the world - through immediate and sometimes drastic policy initiatives. From the massive expansion in government, to the takeover of private businesses like banks and automobile manufacturers, and to his 'outing' of CIA interrogation techniques, Obama has represented a radical shift in the way the United States does business. No President - at least in my recollection - has so explicitly attempted to stamp the nation and the world with his personal worldview and 'moral compass.' It behooves Americans - and Israelis - to examine what we might be in for in the next three and a half years.

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Israel Matzav: Obama's personal morality and Israel's security