Love of the Land: A revolutionary proposal

A revolutionary proposal

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
19 March '10

Commenting on the Obama/Israel crisis, Ed Lasky concludes that the US President is deliberately trying to turn America against Israel – and he is succeeding.

I have written in today’s Jewish Chronicle that it is time for Israel to stop going along with the diplomatic lies told for so long by Britain, America and the west about the Arab war against Israel. Lies that have twisted so many people’s minds into the belief that Israel is the historic usurper and aggressor in the Middle East, whereas in fact the Jews and the Jews alone are the rightful heirs to the land, in historical, legal and moral terms, and a monstrous injustice has been and is still being done to them.

It is these lies, and the consequent appeasement of the Arabs who promulgate them and the rewarding of Arab aggression, which has caused the Middle East impasse to remain an unending conflict. And it is these lies and the new distortions supplied by Obama which now pose the greatest single danger to Israel’s security and existence by eroding public support – not just in Britain, which is already lost, as is to a lesser extent ‘old’ Europe, but among the people who are the staunchest supporters of Israel: the great mass of middle America.

Disastrously, Israel has gone along with these lies -- for a variety of reasons. First, Israel observes the rules of diplomacy which almost invariably involve compromise. Now compromise is in general a good thing; but in a war of extermination, if the victim compromises with its attackers it strengthens them and makes its defeat more likely. In no other conflict in the history of the planet has a country which is the victim of an eight-decade belligerency aimed at wiping it off the map been expected to make concessions to its attackers. In no other conflict has such a victimised people been bullied by onlookers into doing so. Yet the first pressure is what Britain, America and Europe have been applying for decades, and the second is what Obama is now applying, with the EU falling in behind him: bullying the prospective victim of extermination into submitting to measures which increase the risk of such an eventuality, and in the process almost forcing the Palestinians from their habitual pose of sullen obstructionism and sporadic terrorism into another spate of outright war.

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Love of the Land: A revolutionary proposal

Love of the Land: Mid-East Quartet raises the pressure against Israel as US policy confusion deepens over settlements

Mid-East Quartet raises the pressure against Israel as US policy confusion deepens over settlements

Robin Shepherd
Robinshepherdonline.com
19 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

While Russia continues with the de-facto annexation of the South Ossetian and Abkhazian provinces of its southern neighbour Georgia, Ban Ki-Moon, Hilary Clinton and the other members of the Mid-East Quartet met in Moscow this morning to reaffirm the international community’s refusal to recognise the annexation of east Jerusalem by Israel. I believe the word is “chutzpah”, though I could think of a few others — unprintable, unfortunately — that might be even more appropriate in the circumstances.

Clinton repeated America’s condemnation of the recent settlement announcement in east Jerusalem and sat impassively as Ban spoke on behalf of the US and the rest of the Quartet saying: “The Quartet urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth, dismantle outposts erected since March 2001 and to refrain from demolitions and evictions in east Jerusalem.” I’m confused.

Does this mean that the United States has gone back to the line that even natural growth — building bathrooms, adding an extension etc — in settlements is unacceptable? Close observers will remember that that is the line the Obama administration started to push last year but then backtracked when the absurdity of that position became clearer and when Israel (rightly) said it had no intention of complying.

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Love of the Land: Mid-East Quartet raises the pressure against Israel as US policy confusion deepens over settlements