Israel Matzav: Liberal Jews embrace reincarnation: The 'peace process' never dies

Liberal Jews embrace reincarnation: The 'peace process' never dies

I received this by email:

“As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall.”

---Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923

There is an interesting pattern (call it a leitmotif) that typically runs through the writing of Jewish liberals like Jeffrey Goldberg, who today provides us with a prime specimen right here.

Be it the murder of infants in their bed, or Abbas’s fabrication of history in the New York Times on Tuesday, every Arab assault on Israel is just another reason both sides need to try harder to reach an “agreement.” Goldberg adheres closely to this liberal protocol. He begins on a promising note by devoting about the first 65% of his essay gently exposing the “contradictions” in Abbas’s vicious lie. But that formality is just a tease in the run-up to the standard-issue liberal sales pitch, which in Goldberg’s iteration goes something like this:

“There is no particular reason to hope for a successful peace process when the leader of the Palestinians is selling a false history of Israel's independence... Mahmoud Abbas cannot bring himself to note that the Jews accepted the partition plan, while the Arabs rejected it, and went to war to extinguish the new Jewish state in the cradle, and then lost their offensive war.”

Yet:

“Mahmoud Abbas.... could be president of an independent state of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in Jerusalem. If only he -- and, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu -- could find a way to avoid rehearsing old grievances and instead work toward a future in which both parties don't get all that they want, but get enough to live.” (Sigh. If only.)

What cloying condescension! - especially to the proud Muslim Arab standing atop 1300 years of real history that commands him to hate and subjugate the Jews.

Sadly, this is the canned sound effect an obsessed (but sincere) Jewish peace processor produces in order to stay on the liberal kibbutz and still sound like a sane man. In the final analysis, though, the only thing separating the liberal Jeffrey Goldberg from the extremist Tony Kushner is the theatrics they employ before the curtain comes down on Israel in the last act.

Maybe that’s why the “peace process” is a perennial crowd pleaser. It’s the triumph of sweet fantasy over bitter experience.

Dan Friedman
NYC

Indeed. The picture at the top is Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky.

Israel Matzav: Liberal Jews embrace reincarnation: The 'peace process' never dies

Israel Matzav: Fisking Abu Bluff's New York Times op-ed

Fisking Abu Bluff's New York Times op-ed

One of the things I did not do on Tuesday was to fisk Abu Mazen's New York Times op-ed. (I did rewrite it to explain what he really wanted to say - you can find that here). Had I chosen to fisk it, here are some of the points I might have made that may not have come through in my rewrite.

1. Abu Mazen tries to create the false impression that the Palestinian refugee issue caused the Arab war against Israel in 1948. The Palestinian refugees were the result, not the cause, of that war.

2. Israel absorbed over 600,000 Jewish refugees who were thrown out of Arab countries in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 war. Another roughly 300,000 Jewish refugees were absorbed in other countries, including the United States, Canada and France.

In contrast, despite the Arab world’s vast territory and wealth, 600,000 Palestinian refugees have never been absorbed by the Arab countries to which they fled. Instead, the refugees and their descendants have been held hostage by the countries in which they live in an apartheid situation, and used by the Palestinian leadership for more than 60 years as pawns against Israel.

3. Abu Bluff’s strategy for the past two years has been to avoid a negotiated settlement with Israel. That’s why he avoided Netanyahu’s continued call for negotiations. That’s why he placed a settlement freeze as a precondition for negotiations, something he and his predecessor never did before in the 18 years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. That’s why he walked away from peace talks last September. And that’s why he had no qualms about forging a pact with Hamas, which refuses to recognize the existence of Israel and refuses to abandon terrorism (Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at Israel’s cities, and last month, a Hamas terrorist fired an anti-tank rocket at a school bus). Two weeks ago, the leader of Hamas even condemned the United States for killing Osama bin Laden, whom Hamas praised for being a Holy Warrior. For that matter, Fatah's 'military wing' (the 'al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades') agreed with Hamas.

4. Based on this article, one can only conclude that Abbas has abandoned even the pretense of embracing the path of peace and instead chosen a strategy to establish a Palestinian state and use the improved position of statehood to wage a diplomatic and legal war against Israel.

It sounds like the 'peace process' has reached the end of the line.

Israel Matzav: Fisking Abu Bluff's New York Times op-ed

Love of the Land: On Israel, Obama Playing the Mideast Game Wrong

On Israel, Obama Playing the Mideast Game Wrong

Mortimer B. Zuckerman
U.S. News and World
23 April '10

The Middle East peace process is stalled thanks to a second deadlock engineered by the United States government. President Obama began the process with his call for a settlement freeze in 2009 and escalates it now with a major change of American policy on Jerusalem.

The president seeks to prohibit Israel from any construction in its capital—in an exclusively Jewish suburb of East Jerusalem. This, despite the fact that all former administrations had unequivocally understood that the area in question would remain part of Israel in any final peace agreement. Objecting to this early phase of the planning process for housing in East Jerusalem is tantamount to getting the Israelis to agree to the division of Jerusalem in any settlement—even before the start of final status talks with the Palestinians. In 1995, it was by a substantial bipartisan majority that Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act calling for the movement of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—and equally importantly, stating that Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty.

But Obama has undermined the confidence of the Israelis in the United States from the start of his presidency. He uses the same term, "settlements," ambiguously for both massive neighborhoods that are the homes to tens of thousands of Jews and for illegal outposts, raising the question for the Israelis about whether the U.S. administration really understands the issue. The Palestinian Authority followed the president's lead and refused to proceed with planned proximity talks until Israel stops all settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem.

The president's attitude toward Jerusalem betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of the city. After Israel was recognized as a new state in 1948, it was immediately attacked by the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. The attacks were repelled, but the Jordanians, who were asked not to join the Egyptian war effort, conquered East Jerusalem and separated it from its western half. In 1967, the Arab armies again sought to destroy Israel, but it prevailed in the famous Six-Day War and reconquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: On Israel, Obama Playing the Mideast Game Wrong

Love of the Land: Hostility to Israel Plays out

Hostility to Israel Plays out

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
28 March '10

Given the Obami’s assault on Israel’s building in its eternal capital, this should come as no surprise:

The chief of the Arab League warned Saturday that Israel’s actions could bring about a final end to the Middle East peace process. Amr Moussa urged an Arab leadership summit in Libya on Saturday to forge a new strategy to pressure Israel, saying the peace process could not be “an open ended process.”

“We must prepare for the possibility that the peace process will be a complete failure,” Moussa said. “This is the time to stand up to Israel. We must find alternative options, because the situation appears to have reached a turning point.”

Speaking at the event, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said there would be no peace agreement without ending the occupation of Palestinian land, first and foremost east Jerusalem. He accused Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu’s government of trying to create a de facto situation in Jerusalem that would torpedo any future peace settlement.

Then the increasingly Islamic-tilting Turkish government gets into the act:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a guest at the summit, said in his speech that the Israeli “violation” of peace in Jerusalem and Muslim holy sites was unacceptable. Erdogan said that the Israeli position defining the whole of Jerusalem as its united capital was “madness.” Israeli construction in east Jerusalem was completely unjustified, he said

The UN, of course, can’t be left out of the Israel bash-a-thon. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pipes up:

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Hostility to Israel Plays out