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Relationship Status with Bibi: It’s Complicated
Hey, everybody. Greetings from King Bibi-Land. Troy suggested I drop in and offer a word or two about the Israeli election from ground zero, as it were. I’m happy to do so, although I confess to some slight hesitation, as my views on the result run somewhat counter to the general sentiment at Ricochet.
There appears to be much (forgive me) rather uninflected delight being expressed at Ricochet over Bibi’s victory — a victory that does offer obvious satisfaction to anyone who views it strictly in terms of the thumb in the eye it offers to President Obama. I understand this. I can see that the result has really energized some of you, who view it as evidence that a rhetorical, chest-thumping lunge for the throat can, under certain circumstances and when executed by a pro, be a productive strategy against Obama.
But from my perspective here in Israel, it’s hard to view Bibi’s dissing of the US president and subsequent electoral triumph with unalloyed joy. This is not because I have any problem in principle with this president being flipped a well-earned bird, but because the consequences could be precisely the opposite of what Bibi intended. They could, in fact, be horrendously costly to us.
Over the course of the run-up to this election and during the election itself, Bibi managed not only to worsen an already fraught relationship with the White House but to shift the rules of engagement with regard to the Palestinians in a direction that Americans cannot possibly follow — and to take this dramatic second step as an eleventh-hour electoral tactic, making it appear spectacularly cynical.
It is hard to imagine this remaining unanswered. I would not be at all surprised if, over the course of the interminable remainder of his term in office, Obama does something truly dramatic in retaliation.
I hate making specific predictions, but it’s entirely conceivable that he will withdraw the American veto of UN Security Council resolutions condemning settlement construction, which would plunge us even deeper into the pariah mire than we are already. Obama might even go so far as to back a UN resolution recognizing Palestine. Like so many hapless leaders before him, Obama has seized on Israel/Palestine as his ticket to a “legacy”, and Bibi appears to have put paid to any kind of negotiated settlement. If Obama can’t get the legacy with us, he may well try to get it without us.
But let me back up a little. Part of what has been so astonishing to me over the course of this campaign has been the failure of Bibi’s usually strong instincts. He is not a stupid man by any means, but his acceptance of John Boehner’s curiously timed invitation to speak before Congress was a truly boneheaded move from an international standpoint. I know that speech delighted many who relished the spectacle of Bibi getting his rockstar on at Obama’s expense. But over here, it horrified a lot of us, including those of us who find much to admire in Bibi and little to love in Obama.
I, for one, was absolutely floored by Bibi’s decision to flout basic diplomatic protocol and decorum for the sake of a domestic campaign strategy, a cynical move by anyone’s measure. Not because I’m so enamored of diplomatic protocol and decorum per se, but because Bibi’s choice did two highly unpalatable things: a) it disrespected the office of the presidency itself, which, as a passionate champion of US-style democracy, I find highly problematic; and b) it put many Democrats in Congress in the embarrassing, difficult, unnecessary, and self-defeating (from Israel’s perspective) position of having to take a public stand against our prime minister. Bibi’s swagger has its place and has served us well at other times in our long national relationship with him, but this time he really overstepped, and I — and many other Israelis, including some right-leaning ones like me — believe he did us harm.
In the wake of the election, a trope is making itself heard in right-wing American circles that any criticism of Bibi’s election night demagoguery is nothing more than empty, sour-grapes, liberal/progressive bilge. That just doesn’t wash. It was disgraceful of Bibi to attempt to drum up votes for Likud by condemning Arab Israelis for exercising their right to vote, no matter who was encouraging them to do so. Of course, it seems to have worked, insofar as it convinced late-voting right-wingers to back Likud itself rather than their own, smaller right-wing parties in the hope of being part of the coalition (the argument being that if Likud isn’t forming the government, those smaller parties are out on their tushes anyway). But that move was pure, unadulterated, hail Mary demagoguery, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. The fact that Democrats are saying it, or that they’re guilty of the same kind of thing when it suits them (takes one to know one), doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
As you can probably tell, I’m deeply torn about Bibi. I believe that his central premise is absolutely right: until things change a hell of a lot for the better around here, our number one concern has to remain security and defense above all else. Despite my issues with his sense of timing and the respect I believe is due the White House, I’m profoundly grateful to Bibi for insisting on shouting from the hilltops to anyone who will listen about the reality of the threat we face from Iran, no matter how much scorn or vilification he brings down on his own head. Frankly, it’s heroic.
On the other hand, I believe his approach to the Palestinian problem, which is, as ever, an immediate and perpetual security threat, is totally short-sighted and ultimately dangerous to the whole Israeli experiment.
There is a perception abroad that there are two options available in this country with regard to the Palestinians: the Bibi/Likud option — dig in your heels and don’t give an inch (or even discuss giving an inch) until the other side demonstrates that they are acting in good faith; and the left option, which will give away the whole country in a heartbeat if it’ll get the Arabs to at least pretend to like us for a few minutes.
This is a false dichotomy. The fact of the matter is that there is less daylight than most people think between Likud and Labor in terms of territorial concessions (or at least there was, until Bibi decided at the last second to cement his electoral victory by disavowing his commitment to an eventual Palestinian state, a statement he is now frantically backtracking). There are, however, two areas of critical difference between Bibi and Labor: the expansion of settlements and the willingness to negotiate.
Let’s start with the second one. It is generally assumed that the willingness of Labor simply to talk to the Palestinians implies an ipso facto willingness to make crazy concessions to them. The awful, tragic truth is this: we all know, left and right alike, that the Palestinians will blow it no matter what’s on the table. They always do. They are so hopelessly fractured and poorly led that they are practically guaranteed not to agree to anything we offer them, no matter how much it’s in their interest to accept.
Our center-left parties (I’m not speaking about the hard left, which is so decimated that it has no power to do anything anyway) are simply not so stupid as to make gigantic offers with no security guarantees, no international guarantees, no reciprocal concessions, no nothing. It is not what they want. It is not what the people want.
The Palestinians will not agree to give us any real guarantees in any case. They’re hamstrung by the maximalists in their camp who view any concession to us, no matter how trivial, as both a sign of weakness and an unacceptable grant of legitimacy. As a result, there is little to no danger of an agreement being hammered out in the first place. So, with Bibi, there’s no agreement but we’re the villains because we won’t even talk to them; with Labor, there would be no agreement either, and we’d still probably be blamed for the failure — but at least we wouldn’t be writing the Israel-bashers’ script for them. Sitting down with the enemy can be a strategy unto itself.
On the other distinction between Bibi and Labor — the building of settlements — we wade into very difficult territory. If you believe, as many evangelical Christians and religious Jews do, that God gave this land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean to the Jews and that’s all there is to it, then you’re probably (although not necessarily) going to favor Israeli settlement throughout the territories. But there is a demographic reality on the ground here that cannot be ignored.
Yes, it is a fiction that the West Bank and Gaza were “Palestinian” before Israel took them over in 1967, but that does not mean that they are, or should be, Israeli, particularly since they contain Muslim populations that, if incorporated into Israel, will quickly completely undermine the Jewish nature of the state. It’s extremely difficult to see what the desired endpoint is of all the settlement building other than to make a division into two states ultimately impossible. And then what? The Palestinians are never going to just throw up their hands and all move to Belgium. They’re not going anywhere, and their claims — flimsy and ahistorical though they may be — will become more and more cemented into an unshakeable reality the more time passes. We have wrought this; we must fix it. It’s in our best interests as well as theirs.
As to the physical advantage of holding a wider area: I am all for strategic depth (although it’s of much more limited value in this day and age than it was in 1948 or 1967), but I am even more for a healthy Israel living alongside a healthy Palestine. Yes, a healthy Palestine might be an impossible dream at this moment in history, but choking off the possibility that one might ever emerge doesn’t seem likely to end well for either party.
I hope you’ve stayed with me all the way through this long post. I know how profoundly so many of you care about Israel, and your concern has been a great comfort to me during very difficult times here. The situation in Israel is in some respects extremely complex — I haven’t even touched, for example, on the domestic issues that played into the election. But, in other respects, it’s awfully simple. We have a big problem — the Israeli-Palestinian problem — and if we don’t solve it, this country might not make it. We have to use our heads and figure out which of the myriad approaches to the problem is most likely to leave us not only alive, but stronger. King Bibi gives a hell of a speech, it’s true. But we are more isolated now than ever. A good deal of that is down to him.
Published in Foreign Policy
Thank you, Judith, for your insight and perspective. It must be very difficult to both live in such a state of siege, and to have to rely so much on the political tides in my country, which has proven to be a rather feckless ally recently.
For what it’s worth, I think Netanyahu (bless him) is playing a difficult hand quite well. Frankly, I believe that Obama’s personal views are fundamentally anti-Israel, but internal US politics seriously constrains his actions. The possible retaliatory actions that you discuss, such as reversal of US vetoes on anti-Israel Security Council resolutions, would probably have disastrous political consequences for Obama, splitting the Democratic party.
That’s it? That’s the “evidence”? The State Departments provides grants for lots of things.
How many organizations on the “other side” have received State Department funding?
My attitude is that the US should do what is in US’s favor. And when that contradicts what’s in Bibi’s favor, US trumps Bibi. Obviously, that’s not the opinion of some “conservatives”.
You’re welcome. Let me point it out to you:
See. I told you, this would get very confusing for some “conservatives” who need clear black hat or white hat wearing cowboys to know who is the bad guy and who is the good guy.
If everyone is wearing brown cowboy hats, how are we to know who to cheer and who to boo?
Earnest, eloquent, substantive — and unfortunately wrong in a number of key assertions.
Forgive me if I get a bit desultory in listing my counter-claims; I may not follow the order of your writeup, Judith, and I may go back and forth between Israeli and US matters here.
One of the first things that immediately struck me in your essay is the contention that Bibi wasn’t going to the negotiating table: The way I read you it was difficult to determine if you were saying that Bibi hadn’t seriously gone to the negotiating table and now has declared that henceforth he won’t, or if you were saying that Bibi *had* seriously gone to said table but now has declared that henceforth he won’t — either way you find his approach inadvisable to say the least.
But the problem is that it was Abu Mazen who first started running from the negotiating table, and he hasn’t stopped fleeing since 2009. It was at that point in time, at the outset of Obama’s initial term and the start of Bibi’s government, that Bibi gifted the Obama Administration with a 10-month settlements construction freeze (apparently a very strict one). I’m not the only one to point out that this actually put Abu Mazen in a very tough spot all of a sudden: He (Abu Mazen) hadn’t wrested the building freeze as a concession from Netanyahu, but rather Netanyahu had stepped forward towards Obama with the freeze pledge, unprompted by any interaction with the PA president. (The optics were that Netanyahu was making a good-faith placating gesture for the POTUS, even if behind the scenes there had actually been some mild arm-twisting of Jerusalem by Washington). The consequence is that Abu Mazen and his team felt that their necks would be on the line if they didn’t start dramatically ratcheting up their demands; a 10-month settlement freeze was a pretty plum concession, so the PA leadership was on the hook to obtain (i.e., pocket) considerably more than that. The rest is history. In fact, the stakes are upped now so much that it will be a wonder for the ages if Abu Mazen & Team ever bring themselves to sit down at the negotiating table at all for the foreseeable future — let alone reach or fail to reach an agreement.
Second, looking at the next 22 months, the fact of the matter is that Obama deliberately let it be known over Spring/Summer 2014 that he was thinking of going “full Bulworth” for the remainder of his second term. That surely included policy vis-a-vis Israel. And indeed, as I got to experience first-hand in late July 2014 when Obama cancelled my flight back from Israel to the US (I was in Tel Aviv from 06 through 29 July on a pre-Aliyah “recon” visit for job-search networking), “full Bulworth” was just getting started.
This is *not* something Bibi can control — he simply cannot. Obama is on auto-pilot now, and it’s just a question of what ack-ack draws the ATGM’s that he was barely restraining himself from loosing on Israel up until this point.
The counterarguments that some others have put forward here about the “protocol” breach aspect of Netanyahu’s 03 March address have — as of this point that I’m inputting this text — not made mention of the fact that Obama pulled essentially the same stunt on Netanyahu *first*, during his 2013 visit to Israel. (Judith you yourself don’t appear to have included consideration of this matter.) Obama ostentatiously and unprecedentedly snubbed the Knesset on this, his only trip to the Jewish State as POTUS, and incredibly attempted what he thought would be a “speaking truth to Israeli power” event — in his mind going over Netanyahu, the Cabinet, and the Knesset and somehow reaching out to a benighted Israeli public.
I don’t for a minute believe that Netanyahu was ever-alert for the opportunity to get back at Obama for this profound insult (not simply to him but also to Israel’s very national sovereignty) — but I also don’t for a minute believe that he didn’t bear that episode in mind when the Boehner invitation materialized and he, Netanyahu, upon its receipt (and not before) cleared all the other protocol with the Executive Branch.
The Scylla and Charybdis plight of Congressional Democrats that you point to really only constituted a problem for about 55 or so of them — more than a few of them true-believer J Street regulars.
For instance, the so-called senior US Senator for my state, the esteemed Elizabeth Warren, absented herself, claiming that the ADL’s Abe Foxman had come out against Bibi’s giving the speech; in the event, Foxman turned up as a spectator in the gallery on day-of (I saw him applauding, on C-Span) — so Warren’s excuse was exposed for the transparent anti-Israel/anti-Semitic lie that it was. (Warren recently responded, on video, in the affirmative at a Tufts University colloquium to a question from an audience member [a very well-known Boston-area self-hating Jewish activist] contending that Israeli is doing now to Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews.) The US Representative for my home district (MA 5th), the feeble-minded progressive opportunist Katherine Clark, also finked out, citing the “disrespect for the presidency” trope. Zay gesundt, babe.
On the other hand, at the back of the chamber (i.e., in the vicinity of the seats closest to the main entry/exit into the House chamber), as Bibi was making his way out amidst the delighted cheers of some 370-odd tribunes of the American people (minus of course Nancy P.), lo and behold whom did I espy but Alan Grayson. Yep — *that* Alan Grayson, Mr. “Republicans Want The Elderly and Vulnerable To Die.” He’s still probably an unrepentant scoundrel, but he was on hand.
Getting back to the negotiations-with-the-Palestinians stuff, the way you framed your argument — about not even a Center-Left government (a la Bupi) being able ultimately to make outlandish concessions, or even moderately troubling concessions inducing a feeling of foreboding — you don’t seem to take into account the presence of the US in the room (should there be a room for the occasion). Israeli policymakers and the security apparatus will not being deliberating on anything that’s on the table in a vacuum that only features the PA. Hellatious US pressure can be brought to bear on the Jewish State in a scenario where Obama still has many months to go on his term and Herzog/Livni are at the helm in Israel. Don’t doubt for a second that they wouldn’t cave, even pre-emptively. (Think of Livni’s horrifying performance during and immediately after the 2006 war with Hizballah.)
And getting back to Obama being on “full Bulworth” auto-pilot vis-a-vis all this, his replacement the other week of NSC Middle East “coordinator” with Robert Malley tells you everything you need to know. Obama has been waiting for this moment since having to ask Malley to run and hide during the 2008 campaign.
The Palestinians like to brag about how they have “sumud,” which I understand to mean steadfastness (of a stubborn variety). They don’t employ the term in relation to the pursuit of peace. Bibi has long understood that this has to be Israel’s way as well, and on 17 March enough Israelis came around to his point of view at the ballot box — they owned up to themselves that Bibi is more right (in both senses) than he is wrong.
This outcome should work well on the economic front — yes, you explicitly didn’t get to covering that key attribute of the election — at least in terms of domestic policy. (I.e., who’s to say what kind of BDS crap Obama might start pulling again.)
Bibi is a Thatcherite, but six years of Obama have obviously taken their toll on his available activity-cycles; indeed, things like the above-mentioned building freeze didn’t help, and probably set the stage for Tommy Lapid’s son’s vault into the Knesset. We all know that Yair Lapid then proceeded to make a bad situation worse, almost making these latest elections a foregone thing.
So, in my view Moshe Kahlon will help Bibi be Bibi. That will be fantastic.
I held off on starting the paperwork for my Aliyah until I could see whether Bibi would squeak through or not. Now I’m back in gear on that.
And I’m glad to see that the probable PM (pending coalition formation) is not some kind of Israeli equivalent of a country-club racist as Herzog is known to be — towards his own people.
B”H the State will be safe and prosperous, run by people who care about the welfare and security of all — all, that is, who would live in honest peace within its borders.
“The bad guys always say both sides are the same.” – John Durrill
Thank you, Judith. I went to a private Jewish day school for 12 years. One of the things that we were taught was that Israel was tolerant towards the Arabs, and a symbol of its tolerance was the enfranchisement of its Arab citizens. This was contrasted with other Arab states, particularly Syria. I even remember going on an 8th-grade school trip to Israel, where at one point our bus drove through an Arab village, and the tour guide emphasized how peaceful and friendly its inhabitants were. I can’t imagine any of this now.
And the times were more dangerous even then. This was just after the Second Lebanon War, and after many in the US media had criticized Israel for not engaging in a “proportional response” to attacks on its citizens, whatever that meant.
Furthermore, it seems that many of Israel’s inhabitants, though it is unclear if they are anywhere close to a majority of the population, seem to want Israel to just be an ethnostate, and to hell with any liberal democracy. If this loud, hopefully small minority were to get what they want, then the Israeli experiment has failed, and the West, which is really just the US, Canada, and Australia, would have no reason to support Israel. It becomes just another ehtnostate amid perhaps the most racist region on Earth, the Middle East.
Judith, I can understand your frustration with Netanyahu for his increased aggressiveness in dealing with Obama, but I think you come down to hard on him for that.
As you say, the Palestinian authorities are not going to accept a deal so the negotiations are just for show and all Israel has to do is agree to pointless talks. But that was never enough for Obama, and he had an ever increasing number of demands of Israel that it had to provide as a show of goodwill.
As EJHill pointed out, keeping in Obama’s good graces would have required Israel to keep giving while never gaining anything, and Netanyahu probably made the right decision by bringing the charade to an end so that the fight over whether to stand with Israel can be truly decided in the US.
This Commentary article seems to have a pretty good run down on the situation.
What was Netanyahu trying to do by messing in our elections in 2012?
This is what the US does, in every country’s elections.
What amazes me how people either have zero knowledge of this, or only have selective knowledge. (I suspect the former).
http://www.inss.org.il/uploadimages/Import/(FILE)1320658902.pdf
Get real people. The US funds lots of political groups around the world. It interferes in lots of elections around the world, precisely by funding particular groups, or by giving endorsement to particular candidates.
Much more so…in nations which are our “allies”, and which we have “nudge” to follow our interests.
The key word here being….our interests.
But hey, Obama. I know. None of this is going to matter. Because it’s Obama, and it doesn’t matter if every US president has done the same thing.
AIG,
Perhaps you might show us the way. Would you tell us what the properly nuanced position is?
Also, who cares if the UN declares Palestine an independent state. Such a declaration would be irrelevant. Foreign aid to Palestine would continue. Palestinian leaders would be just as two-faced and incapable of honest, respectful negotiation. What do you think would change?
Don’t even talk of peace while your enemies paint you as inhuman beasts to be wiped off the map. After the tunnel construction for the purposes of kidnapping and murder, it should be clear that Palestine’s current leadership, political and cultural, can only be endured or destroyed. Cooperative negotiation is impossible.
Considering that Israel was declared a state by the UN, then it is clear that what the UN does in such matters is highly relevant. I think that the move would give legitimacy to a Palestinian state and make the founding of such a state inevitable.
#29 David Knights
Actually sometimes what the so-called “moderate” Palestinians say is that they can accept Israel’s existence.
But what they mean, and as they make clear when pressed on it, is that they accept the existence of a country called Israel but do not, cannot, will not accept it definitionally as the Jewish State.
That’s a part of the reason why Abu Mazen has been perpetually fleeing the negotiating table. Coming to that table with the explicit recognition and acknowledgment that, as PA President and PLO head, he will be negotiating with the sovereign government of the Jewish State is Bibi’s sole precondition.
If Abu Mazen meets that precondition, he creates an image of damaged Arab/Muslim honor (as relates theologically to Jews), and on the pragmatic level he dramatically weakens the Palestinian “right of return” demand. So he continually negates the precondition and stays away from discussions of a peaceful settlement.
Or, perhaps doing so would be the last straw in the UN’s illusion of relevancy?
Yeah, Netanyahu was clearly pandering pretty hard toward the end, causing him to immediately back-pedal a lot of stuff. Probably one of the poorest political performances I’ve seen.
In regards to Israel as an ethnostate, Aaron Miller’s #16 post brings up a good point for keeping Israel an intrinsically Jewish-state. There is a concern, made more prescient by the year, of an O’Sullivan’s First Law nature: Any country that is not officially Jewish will eventually become anti-Semitic.
Why I’d be delighted!
1) First, start off by actually reading Judith’s post. Seems like all the people congratulating her for it, didn’t actually read it.
2) Realize that Israel =/ Bibi. By the logic of some “conservatives” here, being anti-Bibi is equal to being anti-Israel. By that same logic, 60+% of Israelis are…anti-Israeli? Oops
3) The US doesn’t need to apologize to Israel for meddling in its politics. Or anyone else’s politics for that matter. We’ve always done it, and will continue to do it.
GHWB intervened in Israeli politics much more forcefully, and directly. And against Likud, no less. Wait, I thought he was a good guy? Now he’s a “bad guy”?
Well, you can never trust a man with stripped socks. (only black or white socks allowed. That way, we can tell the good guys from the bad guys. Of course, the color of socks in inversely related to the color of cowboy hats)
4) US interests trump everyone else’s interests. Period. Full stop. Everything needs to be measured, by us, in relation our interests. Seems obvious.
5) Respect the office, if not the man. I recall “conservatives” being very found of saying that pre-2009. Not anymore, apparently. Yet I don’t know why that stopped being true. It’s not a time-variate parameter.
Let me start with O’Sullivan first, and then get to comment 16.
O’Sullivan’s law suggests that all nations’ experiments in liberal democracy will fail, and the idea of a (classically) liberal world is really just an aberration. This suggests that America will end in failure, and that the world really has not risen above tribalism. What does that say about the ideals that many Conservatives hold on this website? Either many Conservatives do not believe in these ideals and just use them when convenient, or that Conservatives spout these ideals because they do not know what else to do. There is no evidence to suggest that all nations that are not officially Jewish will become anti-Semitic. If anyone believes in such a thing, then why bother to even talk about a love of America or Western ideals? It all then becomes just a lie that will end in misery for the world.
Now, Israel can be an open and a Jewish state, as it has done since its founding. The demographic challenges could end Israel as a Jewish state, and I understand that many of its people want to protect that. Then its people should, as Judith has done, encourage the founding of a neighboring Palestinian state, make it successful to the point that many non-Jews within Israel would want to live there, and reduce the cost of living in Israel so that many of its Jewish citizens can afford to have children. This is a much more peaceful, intelligent, and civilized way of preserving Israel as an intrinsically Jewish state.
Do you honestly believe that if such a thing happened, the majority of the world will simply ignore the declaration and refuse to acknowledge any authority of the UN? Will China, Russia, and all the nations of the Middle East and Arab League simply ignore such a giant declaration, especially when many of those nations would benefit in some way from the declaration? And lets not forget the impact that the declaration may have on certain minority populations in Europe. I doubt that the governments of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK could afford to ignore such a declaration. In fact, and I cannot say whether a Palestinian state by such a route would be a good thing, the declaration may end up making the UN the most relevant organization in the world.
It may be the case that some did not read it. It also may be the case that others simply read it differently than you do. Different backgrounds and histories bring different understandings. They also bring us to focus differently. What sticks out for Danny Alexander may not stick out for AIG, and vice versa. That doesn’t mean everyone else is stone wrong.
I’d like to know more about these “some ‘conservatives'” people. For instance, those quotes, do they mean:
Also, could you be more specific? If you name names, they can defend themselves. But when you use this strange and ambiguous construction, people might not know that they are being addressed. Not everyone on this site self-identifies as a conservative. I tend to be an early-adopter and classical liberal. So, maybe the reason you don’t find them conservative enough, if that’s the reason for the quotes, is that they are not conservative at all.
While I agree, I would like to see more finesse than any of our recent Presidents have shown.
While GHW Bush was certainly a Republican, he was not a conservative. Now, if you can find where Cal Coolidge or George Washington did it, it might provide a better example to illustrate the error of the ways of the conservatives on the site who dare to criticize the way Mr. Obama’s administration goes about influencing foreign elections. Or perhaps not. There is still the subtlety factor, and I shall concede before you start that the elder Mr. Bush’s administration was no more subtle. Two wrongs do not make a right, and two bad diplomats don’t make a good one.
So, you’re saying that my white socks are a red flag for these “some ‘conservatives'” and may be like a cape waved in front of a bull? Do you think I am in any physical danger?
True, and this is where the exception to my call for subtlety comes in. Sometimes, it is in our best interests not to be subtle. But when we do it, we had better win. Obama did not. It was the Olympics in Chicago all over again.
Maybe we have different definitions of this respecting the office thing, but this is Ricochet. Do any of the violations you have seen also violate the Code of Conduct? I’m thinking the third or seventh bullet points might apply to anything I would call disrespecting the office. If they would not, could you cite some specific examples for me? Perhaps you could better define how you understand the term?
Yes, that could happen, too. I have not pulled out my scrying bowl to check the future. Or, we could just wait and see.
Hopefully, we won’t have to see. I don’t want to find out.
Judith,
I am afraid I must answer your post as you have presented yourself as a representative of Israeli opinion. I find nothing representative of Israeli opinion in what you say. Lets talk about real problems and realities.
Israel was surrounded by hostile states from the beginning. It attempted to accept a very small foot print as was written for it by Britain and the UN. Unfortunately, the surrounding states refused to allow this to happen. Israel fought a series of Wars to fend off this direct threat. Those who have studied these Wars closely and honestly rarely talk about Israel’s fabulous abilities. Often they will refer to almost miraculous results which gave the Israeli’s victory when then simply could not have expected it. I am not referring to analysts who are in any way religious.
Having won these Wars, Israel held onto certain territories that make her defense much easier. Given the proven aggressive nature of her neighbors this doesn’t seem surprising. In the last 25 years or so a new phenomena has occured. Taking all of Israel’s history for granted an illusion was created that Israel had expanded her boundary’s to conquer territory. This is laughable but those who are historically illiterate are easily led.
Next a political pattern developed which involved American left wing Jews destabilizing Israel for political gain in America. They were profiting from damaging Israel and still are. They pressured Israel to pull back from Lebanon. They pressured Israel to yield most of the West Bank. Finally, they pressured Israel to give up Gaza. All three resulted in the same thing. The areas became controlled by Jihadists bent on murder at all cost. The real Muslim inhabitants were decimated as they lived under constant fear as we see ISIS doing in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. No matter how bad the policy’s results the American left wing money came in and destabilized Israeli elections forcing Israel to continue with policies that simply weren’t in her interest.
What Bibi’s speech did was break this pattern. By turning the lights on to the never ending manipulation from abroad, the Israeli public became immune to the siren song of the left. Now the next meaningless concession-deal and the next meaningless-concession deal could not be forced down Israel’s throat. After all, Isreal as of now is only nine miles wide at its most population dense. Exactly how much more territory should she give up for phony assurances of peace. There are no partners, there never have been. Just a cavalcade of soulless peace hustlers making a profit out of strife in the Holy land. They care as much about Israel as Holder cares about Ferguson.
Was it a gamble? Yes, of course, it was a gamble. We must now ride out the next 18 months of Obamism and pray that someone who isn’t a Marxist-Jihadist sympathizer winds up in the White House. That’s a risk but in my judgement doing nothing was a much greater risk.
The proper Churchill quote is “Now we are masters of our fate.” The quote is from very early in the war. It simply means that overly complicated explanations like the one you have given are no longer useful. We now know what our task is and, whatever the difficulty, we must see our duty and do it.
Regards,
Jim
The Palestinian state already exists. They have a military. They have a political system with elected leaders. They have international recognition as an independent people. Their leaders are invited to the US – the true world authority. Other nations are de facto Palestinian allies diplomatically. They have internationally recognized borders, regardless of what label is given to the people within those borders. That they posses that land at the mercy of Israel is irrelevant (Taiwan is no different).
The only thing they lack is a productive economy. But they don’t need one, thanks to foreign (mostly American, via UN funding) aid. And they don’t want a functional economy.
The formality of declaring them a free nation would mean nothing.
Well, we can’t all be so nuanced. Some of us must remain chest-beating yay-hoos too stupid to appreciate a good friendly collegial relationship between our destroyers and our protectors. And when it comes time to sacrifice some innocents to the cause of harmony with evil, will you be first in line, as the most understanding of the process?
You have endorsed suicide as an healthy alternative to being murdered. It reduces violent crime, and avoids all that unseemly struggle. We are civilized, after all.
My support for Bibi and unalloyed joy at his victory flows from an appreciation of right and wrong, not from petty or stupid drivers such as domestic politics (what an insulting thing to say!) or a simple lack of intelligence.
I am sick to death of those too erudite, too educated, too useless to save themselves and too smug to allow others to look to their own affairs.
I’m not advising you to give up all hope of eventual peace, Judith, whatever the odds. But your’re trying to jump straight from “They want to exterminate us like cockroaches” to “Maybe we can negotiate a peaceful, mutually considerate peace treaty.”
Before negotiations can become possible, you must first get them to acknowledge the inherent equal worth of Jews and the reality that Israel (with Jerusalem) will continue to exist. There is a lot of ground to cover between open talk of genocide and true cooperation.
And I don’t know if AIG was in remission for a while or if this is a new thing, but that dude has gone full-on shark-jumping, bomb-tossing, pot-stirring troll. Thank you Zafar for posting links answering AIG’s ridiculous (I mean that literally, not as any sort of swipe) knee-jerk denial phrased as a question about our corrupt administration attempting to overthrow an ally. You know, like we just did in Egypt.
God Bless Sisi and God Bless Bibi.
I agree. Fully. If you can rigorously define US interests. Is it in our interest to trade, have allies, control sea lanes, attract talented immigrants and make them into US citizens? Or should we lose them after they finish their doctorates because it’s too hard to stay in the US, and let them take the intellectual capital back to the Pacific? Really? Even if it’s followed by the venture capital? Okay. Energy needs, do we have any? Strategic raw materials? Is there anything we shouldn’t do in our interest because it might be wrong? We’re all good on the rare earths front? Should we have a reputation for being a good place to invest? Might it be useful for Americans to be able physically to fly in and out of other countries for some reason? What about multinational corporations–are they in our interest? Might we have an interest in peace and stability in some parts of the world? Which ones? No interest in some parts, some in others–if so, on what basis? Let’s say Lord Palmerston was correct. What are our permanent interests? As of 2015?
Bring on the complexity, AIG, but bring it on right. Measure it all and make it obvious. Full stop.
Maybe I ain’t the goodest educated, but I take Israel to be the unbreakable bulwark for the survival and well-being of the Jews. Seems counterproductive to me to let that state be voted out of existence — no matter what. But hey, I see things in terms of good and evil, I know, not enough nuance.
I shudder to think what many of the modern critics of Israel would have had to say in 1939. Did they have it coming? Were the huffy bull-necked Jews simply too balky for Europe to exist in peace?
No I don’t misunderstand. I take these premises to be the same.
I’d say that meaningful negotiations are not possible with the so called Palestinians until their will to fight has been broken.
A few points:
If there was a party that advocated for explicitly anti-American values in the US, I don’t think it would be outside the bounds of political recourse to denounce this as a danger to the country if such a party gained traction. If this party was a faction consisting of solely one race, it matters little in terms of the politics, but greatly in terms of appearance.
What are these borders, specifically? If they’re already recognised what was the Oslo process supposed to deliver?