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Tears don’t protect against murder, bullets do

by Mojambo ( 43 Comments › )
Filed under Fatah, Hamas, History, Islamic Terrorism, Israel, Palestinians, Terrorism at August 14th, 2012 - 8:00 am

The Knish reminds us that gnashing our teeth, pulling our hair, and appealing to an immoral worlds sense of morality will never stop murder.  Only ventilating the terrorists with lead (starting with their leaders) gives you a chance to live a life free of fear. Arafat (and his successors) should have been killed decades ago and very few Palestinian prisoners (only enough to interrogate) should be taken.

by Daniel Greenfield

After serving a few years in prison for his role in the Munich Massacre, Willi Pohl moved to Beirut. The brief sentence was a slap in the wrist, but Pohl had still served more time in prison than the Muslim gunmen who had murdered eleven Israeli athletes and coaches during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Mohammed Safady and the Al-Gashey cousins were released after a few months by the German authorities. They went back to Lebanon and so did he.

A decade after the attack, Willi Pohl had begun making a name for himself as a crime novelist. His first novel, written as Willi Woss, was Tränen Schützen Nicht vor Mord or Tears Do Not Protect Against Murder.

While Pohl was penning crime novels, Israeli operatives had already absorbed the lessons of his first title. Tears, whether in 1939 or 1972, had not done anything to prevent the murder of Jews. Bullets were another matter.

The head of Black September in Rome was the first to die, followed by a string of PLO leaders across Europe. Those attacks were followed by raids on the mansions and apartments of top Fatah officials in the same city where Pohl had found temporary refuge. By the time his first book was published,  hundreds of PLO terrorists and many of its top officials were dead.

Western law enforcement had failed to hold responsible even the actual perpetrators of the Munich Massacre, never mind the representatives of the PLO who openly mingled with red radicals in Europe’s capitals. Israeli operatives did what the German judicial system had failed to do, putting down Safady and one of the Al-Gasheys, while the other one hid out as a frightened guest of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.

The Israeli raid on the PLO terrorists in Beirut’s Muslim Quarter missed one important target. Arafat. And so, on another September day, some 19 years later, September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin shook hands with Arafat and proclaimed, “Enough of blood and tears! Enough!” But the blood and tears had only begun, as a PLO on its last legs was revived by that handshake and built its terrorist infrastructure inside Israel’s borders.

By 1993, the year of the infamous Rose Garden handshake, 45 Israelis had been killed and 34 injured in Muslim terrorist attacks. A year after the handshake, the toll stood at 109 Israelis dead and 456 wounded. By 2002, the year that Israel’s patience finally broke and Sharon sent forces storming into Arafat’s compound, the numbers for that year were a horrifying 451 dead and 2,348 wounded.

Today, some 40 years after that September in Munich and 19 years after the even worse tragedy of that September in Washington D.C., with over 1,500 dead since that fatal handshake, there have been rivers of blood and tears. And a shortage of bullets.

PLO officials these days are more likely to die of morbid obesity or, like Arafat, of AIDS, than of Israeli raids. They are nearly as likely to kill each other, like Arafat’s cousin, Moussa Arafat, the former head of the Palestinian Authority’s terrorist forces, who was dragged out of his home and shot by his own people. The murder of Mohammed Abu Shaaban, killed a week after the handshake, by his own people, was the first of a long string of Fatah on Fatah violence that is a far more likely cause of death for top terrorists than the jet planes and tanks of the hated Zionist regime.

[……..]

Terrorists are a renewable resource. Arrest them, plant them in jail, let them study for advanced degrees and post status updates to Facebook while collecting salaries from the Palestinian Authority, funded by the United States and Europe, then trade them for a soldier. Then when they’ve gone back to their old habits, arrest them and trade them again. But doing that with territory is much harder. Let Israel try offering Ramallah a second time in exchange for peace and see what kind of howls rise out of the State Department in Washington D.C. and the Foreign Office in London.

The terrorists can offer Israel peace in exchange for Jerusalem, even though they already offered it in exchange for Ramallah, but Israel isn’t allowed to meet farce with farce by seizing Ramallah and then offering it back in exchange for peace.

Instead, Israel keeps putting new lands on the table, which Washington and London proclaim to be insufficient because something is too low a price to pay for nothing. Peace is a priceless commodity. while half of Israel’s capital is a negotiable commodity. But after two decades of negotiations, Israel is running out of things to negotiate with.

[……..]

The rivers of tears keep flowing and, while Israeli spokesmen can list in detail every single casualty, tears don’t protect against murder. Neither do peace treaties. No amount of tears stopped the murder of Six Million Jews, convinced the British Foreign Ministry to allow Jews fleeing the Nazis into Israel or the State Department to allow them into the United States. The St. Louis and the Struma are both reminders of the futility of tears.

No amount of tears has convinced the International Olympic Committee to respond decently to the Munich Massacre. And no amount of tears from the tens of thousands mutilated, tortured, crippled, wounded, orphaned and widowed by the PLO in all its front groups, splinter groups and incarnations, including its current incarnation as a phony government, has been enough to stop American and European governments from supporting, arming and funding the terrorists.

Tears don’t protect against murder. They don’t stop killers from killing. They don’t prevent the authorities from looking the other way when the killings happen because there is something in it for them. They don’t bring the terrorists to justice. They don’t even ensure that the truth will be told, rather than the lie that rationalizes the crimes.

Tears did not stop the operation of a single gas chamber. They did not save the life of a single Jewish refugee. They did not stop a single dollar from going to the PLO or Fatah or Black September or the Palestinian Authority or any of the other masks that the gang of Soviet-trained killers wore. They will not stop Iran from developing and detonating a nuclear weapon over Tel Aviv. They will not stop Israel from being carved up by terrorists whose demands are backed up by the diplomatic capital of every nation that bows its head in the direction of Mecca, Medina and Riyadh, and the old men who control the oil wells and the mosques.

In 1988, Willi Pohl published another book, Das Gesetz des Dschungels or The Law of the Jungle. That same year, PLO terrorists carried out the “Mother’s Bus Attack” taking the passengers of a bus, filled with women on board, hostage and demanding the release of all imprisoned terrorists. The terrorists killed two hostages and Israeli Special Forces moved in, killing the terrorists and saving the lives of all but one hostage.

In response, Israeli commandos stormed Tunis, killing Abu Jihad, a former Muslim Brotherhood member and the number two Fatah leader after Arafat . The United Nations Security Council met and passed Resolution 611, noting with concern the “loss of human life”, particularly that of Abu Jihad, and vigorously condemned the “act of aggression”, Not a single member of the Security Council voted against it. The United States abstained.

[……..]

In 1972, the year of the Munich Massacre, there were three Security Council resolutions condemning Israel

In 1972, the year of the Munich Massacre, there were three Security Council resolutions condemning Israel. Not a single one condemning the massacre of Olympic athletes at an international event. Not a single one condemning the countries which armed, trained, harbored and controlled the terrorists. The countries that had refused that their flags be lowered in response to the massacre.

This was the law of the jungle disguised as international law. Against the law of the jungle, tears are futile. Jungle law cannot be debated away, it cannot be disproven, it cannot be defeated with Hasbara, it cannot be subdued with the speechifying of an Abba Eban or a Benjamin Netanyahu. It cannot be moralized into decency or signed away with peace treaties. It can only be met with resistance.

Tears don’t protect against murder. Bullets do.

Read the rest – Tears don’t protect against murder

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Posted in Fatah, Hamas, History, Islamic Terrorism, Israel, Palestinians, Terrorism | 43 Comments »

The Victim Value Index

by Mojambo ( 116 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Free Speech, Hate Speech, Hillary Clinton, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Liberal Fascism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Politics, Progressives at August 9th, 2012 - 2:00 pm

According to the Knish, Muslims  despite their hatred of homosexuality and their oppression of women.  Right underneath them are Blacks and let’s face it, that is the only reason why an incompetent Cook County hack such as Barack Obama ever was elected (and very well might be re-elected president. Disruptiveness is what gets you the the top of the V.V.I., people are afraid of  Muslims because of their violent tendencies, they are not afraid of American Indians or Asians.

by Daniel Greenfield

Toward the end of Animal Farm when the formerly revolutionary seven commandments have been rewritten to “All Animals are Equal… But Some Animals are More Equal than Others”, what began with the promise of equality has reverted to an authoritarian caste system. America’s civil rights revolution similarly began with, “All Americans are Equal” and ended up with, “All Americans are Equal… But Some Americans are More Equal than Others.”

Liberals have seized the commanding heights of the moral high ground by presenting themselves as the protectors of minorities and vowing to replace one racist system with an equally racist, anti-racist system. But caste systems aren’t just black and white and the rainbow coalition has internal conflicts. What do liberals do when different groups within the rainbow coalition conflict and how do they make that determination?

It’s not a new question. Black men got the vote before white women did, and that very issue led to a heated debate over universal suffrage in the Fourteenth Amendment, which was written to include black men, but exclude women. Suffragists were told in Fredrick Douglass’ words, “This is the Negro’s hour.” To explain why that was the hour on the clock, Douglass brought out what would become the Victim Value Index.

“When women because they are women are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts… then they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own,” Douglass sneered. Women had been dragged out of their homes and subjected to horrors because they were women for far longer than the brief few centuries of African slavery in America, but Douglass’ real point was, “My suffering beats your suffering, so my rights beat your rights.” In contemporary progressivism this is expressed in the sneering “White Women’s Tears” meme.

Suffering is the central ideological component of the Victim Value Index

Suffering is the central ideological component of the Victim Value Index. “He Who Suffers Most Wins.” But suffering, as in the Douglass debate, is relative. Ego means that people feel their own pain first. And even when they feel someone else’s pain more than that of their own group, this is a personal egotistical identification, a selective empathy that derives from their own background and psychological makeup.

Historical suffering transmuted into guilt is the gold standard of liberalism, but suffering is relative. In our wonderful multi-everything society, there are so many groups with so many claims to pain. Everyone agrees that the Heteronormative Caucasian Patriarchy of Doom is to blame for all of it, but that still leaves the question of dividing up the spoils of the system and all the privileges to be gained from denouncing privilege. A caste system doesn’t work without priority, and calculating the priority of privilege claims by the perpetually underprivileged is complicated.

[……..]

Dirty little secret of the Victim Value Index

The first thing to understand is the dirty little secret of the Victim Value Index. While loud vocal assertions of suffering are very important, the substance of such suffering is unimportant when moving up the ladder of the Victim Value Index.

If historical justice for suffering were the barometer, American Indians would be at the head of the line. While conceptually they are, progressives respond to praises of America by bringing them up, in practice they are somewhere near the back end of the middle. The group currently at the head of the line, Muslims, have the least claim on historical justice, but are at the center of civil rights activism.

[……….]

The Victim Value Index is calculated based on one overriding factor: Disruptiveness. Those who are most disruptive go to the head of the line. This can be mistaken for a “Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease” phenomenon, and occasionally in the micro it is, but in the macro it goes to the question of why progressives value minorities and for what purpose.

To be a progressive is to be committed to perpetual reform in the name of perpetual grievance for perpetual power

To be a progressive is to be committed to perpetual reform in the name of perpetual grievance for perpetual power. Grievance is to their government feudalism what the Divine Right of Kings was to feudal rulers. It justifies their right to agitate and undermine, to seize power by any means necessary and to implement their programs legally or extra-legally.

Reformers need their bleeding sores, their cries of outrage and their muck to rake. Those who give them that often go to the head of the line acting as their secular clergy, blessing their rule and anointing them as the protectors of their faith in hope and change. But that’s just part of it.

Progressivism is a revolution in slow motion, and revolutions need revolutionaries. Disruption is more than just grievance, it’s violence. Those who are willing to attack the system head to overthrow it are the ones who go to the head of the line and the dais of honor on top. A little murder and mayhem, and progressives will trot out “moderate” versions of the murderers and mayhemists, usually linked to them, and offer to represent them and tamp down the violence in exchange for meeting their demands.

[………]

If you think that’s farfetched, what do you think happened in 2008 when a completely inept hack blew through Hillary Clinton and John McCain on a pledge to end the wars and repair our relations with the Muslim world? Why exactly do you think the Democrats chose a man with no experience except a few books about growing up in a Muslim country and Hussein as his middle name? Why was that man then awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for no discernible accomplishment?

September 11 and its aftermath is why Muslims have gone to the top of the Victim Value Index. The left may swear up and down that they are interested in Muslim civil rights, but if the Muslims were Sikhs, they would merit a place somewhere in the back. Before Muslims began prominently blowing things up in the United States, the left barely paid any attention to them. Once they did, they began outweighing every other group in the country because killing 3,000 people is the gold standard of revolutionary mayhem.

The Victim Value Index places the most disruptive groups at the front, the somewhat disruptive groups in the middle and the least disruptive groups at the back. The status of groups within the Index can change with their behavior. Muslims used to be shelved in the back with Asians, Indians and Jews. The War on Terror dramatically upgraded their status. The other groups are stuck there because they are relatively successful and aren’t rioting or blowing things up.

Latinos are still somewhere in the middle. Native Americans are in the back along with most unclassified minorities. Homosexuals are somewhere near the front, but behind African-Americans. Their status tends to drift wildly depending on current events, but they cannot overtake African-Americans or fall behind Latinos. Not unless some drastic events take place that change their status. Women are, and have always been, in the back.

The practical value of the Victim Value Index is that it mediates internal conflicts

The practical value of the Victim Value Index is that it mediates internal conflicts. For example, a bias attack by a member of a high-value group on a member of a low-value group is much less likely to be treated as a hate crime. However, an ordinary attack by a member of a low-value group on a member of a high-value group is more likely to be treated as a bias attack even when it isn’t.

[……….]

White men have the lowest VVI status imaginable, and are fair game for racist jokes and bias attacks, but Asians, who have a fairly low VVI status, are also fair game. VVI status is group based but can be forfeited by an individual who engages in counterrevolutionary behavior, thereby forfeiting a status awarded to his group for its revolutionary disruptiveness. Any minority group member who aligns with conservatives is immediately assigned the same VVI status as a white male. A low-status VVI who offends a high-status VVI group may be treated the same way.

Speech codes are an easy way to determine VVI status

Speech codes are an easy way to determine VVI status. As a black man, Juan Williams was a high-status VVI, allowing him to make otherwise politically incorrect observations. He was only purged for offending Muslims, a group with a higher status VVI.  But black sportscasters who make jokes about Asian men are rarely reprimanded because Asians have a lower VVI status. Jokes and politically incorrect remarks about lower-status VVI’s such as Asians, Jews or women are permitted within liberal circles. Making those same remarks about middle-status VVI’s is dangerous and generally frowned on. High-status VVI’s are completely off limits to anyone who is not a member of that same group.

This is more than just a guide on how to safely be politically incorrect, it’s a map of the caste system under which we live. The caste system determines what jobs we get, what things we can say and what is expected of us in everything from job performance to conspicuous displays of social justice. It is how we live now, and it is vitally important to understand that it really is this way in every place that falls under the shadow of government mandates and the progressive Kulturkampf against equality.

In the grip of the left, we have become a culture that rewards destruction and disruption, that feeds the worst behaviors and then blames their repetition on society’s failings, rather than their own calculated tactical assault on the country. We can be a country where all Americans are equal or we can be a country where all Americans are equal… but some Americans are more equal than others in the name of remedying inequality.

Read the rest – The Minority Victim Value Index

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Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Free Speech, Hate Speech, Hillary Clinton, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Liberal Fascism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Politics, Progressives | 116 Comments »

Progressivism means chaos

by Mojambo ( 38 Comments › )
Filed under Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Liberal Fascism, Marxism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Progressives at August 7th, 2012 - 8:00 am

The Knish reminds us of the Democratic Party’s racist roots as well as the inherent anarchy of progressivism itself. Progressivism is the philosophy of the people coming from upper class backgrounds  such as The Weathermen (to take one example) who built a bomb that blew up prematurely on March 6, 1970 at a chic Greenwich Village  townhouse killing three of them in the process. This whole Chick-Fil-A nonsense is just one more  attempt by them to take an institution (Chick Fil-A) that most of them as Daniel writes, never even heard of and make them a symbol of evil – the same thing they did to Halliburton and Bain Capital. Ultimately  the goal of demonizing capitalism and business  is Socialism.

by Daniel Greenfield

The transformation of Chick Fil A from a fast food place that most liberals had never even heard of into the “Enemy of the People” is a reminder of the speed at which progressivism travels forward and backward in time. A few months ago the CEO of Chick Fil A would have done nothing worse than echo a consensus so mainstream that it was adopted as a campaign position by the leftiest Democrat to sit in the White House.

A few months later that same position is so outrageous that it leads to mass boycotts, threats of violence and mayors of dysfunctional urban centers threatening to drive the reactionary chicken franchise out of their cities.

One of the wonderful things about progressivism is that it defies the laws of physics and history. When the Democratic Party, a once notable national party that has been turned into a red shill for the sort of people who used to hang out in cafes and plot to blow things up in between free verse recitals, adopts a progressive position, that position instantly travels backward in time to alter history and create an entirely new past.

For example when the Democratic Party decided that its future lay not with racist white gerrymandered districts but racist black gerrymandered districts, its adoption of civil rights, formerly a Republican position that good Democrats had fought tooth and nail, actually traveled back in time transforming our nation’s history.

When the Democrats belatedly decided that black people were human beings, or at least a better bet for votes than Southern white men who were in danger of deciding that they didn’t have much in common with a party of corrupt Northern elites being painted by a corrupt Northern media as saints, the energy from this decision transformed Lincoln into a Democrat, segregation into an idea that Ike and Dick came up with in between dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the Trail of Tears, and turned the Community Organizers who had been busy torching black orphanages and Republican newspapers in New York City and Boston as part of an organized wartime campaign to defeat the Union, into a lost page of history.

Governor George Wallace, three-time Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States, said, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” The real quote though it turns out is, “Progressivism now, progressivism tomorrow, progressivism forever.” History works and is revised so that the past agrees with the present.

[…….]

This however is only a projection. History is notoriously unstable. What was the progressive pose yesterday may be an unacceptably reactionary position tomorrow. The French Revolution and the Communist Revolution and the Cultural Revolution spent a lot of time purging comrades who had failed to recognize that the new progressive position had been adopted tomorrow and had become reality yesterday and was subject to a loyalty oath today. Like Chick A Fil many of them ended up being enemies of the people where they were subjected to worse things than the mayors of bankrupt cities declaring that anti-gay chicken was an unacceptable addition to the parts of their fair cities that aren’t on fire.

The Democrats borrowed their interest in black civil rights from the left, which was only working with urban minorities because it was hoping to include them in its revolutionary coalition of coal miners and lettuce pickers who would help overthrow the reactionary capitalist American Dream and replace it with a bunch of people shouting slogans and shooting each other. These days the NAACP does not look like a good bet for overthrowing America and the favorite progressive minority du jour actually keeps black slaves and hangs homosexuals.

The Muslim world is one of the few places that still has slaves and kills black people in large numbers

Muslims have currently trumped blacks and gays, not to mention every other group, on the crush list of the left. And the Muslim world is one of the few places that still has slaves and kills black people in large numbers, whether it’s in the Sudan or the newly liberated Muslim utopia of Libya. The day may come when the Democratic Party and its leftist hag riders decide that slavery was progressive after all and that all men should have the right to own slaves. And then this new policy position will immediately travel backward in time and loyal comrades will turn to the little red books of DailyKos, Think Progress, the Center for American Progress and ProgressProgressProgress to learn the new official position they are obligated to learn and abide by.

[……]

Progressivism is chaos

Progressivism is chaos. It is a force that is constantly destroying old things to make way for new things and with so much destruction, it can’t be expected to tell the new old things and the old new things apart. Progressivism is a contrary talker, a teenager who knows everything, it doesn’t know a whole lot, but it knows that everything you know is wrong. And then off it goes in its retro clothes to shock all the adults with gay marriage, euthanasia clinics and then maybe slavery.

Progressivism violates the laws of physics because it has no past, only an eternal future. It imagines that it is always moving forward in time, when it’s actually moving backward. Its past is its future and it can’t tell the two apart because it has eradicated any understanding of history that isn’t based on its own idiotic ideological posturings. To the left history cannot exist apart from its politically correct understanding of history.

History is bunk, said Henry Ford, a man who didn’t know who Benedict Arnold was, but did know that the Jews start all the wars because some European Socialists who were active in the Anti-War movement (Circa 1914) told him so. History is bunk to progressives too who are always throwing it out, tossing it away and writing long books on how all of history was a massive conspiracy to dominate the underclass or at least prevent the progressives from organizing and then dominating the underclass.

Henry Ford’s old bunk history about a Jewish War Conspiracy was picked up in 2003 by the left, polished up and shipped out again. The Guardian was reborn as the Dearborn Independent and the rewritten versions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion starring Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith. Who knows how long it will be before the Democratic Party goes back to its roots and begins explaining why slavery should be legalized to allow an inferior race to experience the civilizing influence of Islam?

Under the multicultural umbrella, Muslims terrorize Sikhs and Africans in London, and gays in New York, which like Boston and Chicago is too good for a Chick-A-Fil, but not too good for a Ground Zero Mosque or a sitdown with Calypso Louie Farrakhan and his Fruits of Islam. The burka has gone from a symbol of oppression to a symbol of liberation. Leftist activists smash Jewish stores and when the time comes will throw acid in the face of female teachers in solidarity with their Taliban brothers.

[……]

Sane people ask where the principles of the left have gone, but when has the left ever had principles? Its only principle is progressivism, its faith is in smashing things to build a better world that will also have to be smashed because it isn’t good enough. Its violent activists create anarchy and then tyranny and repeat the same cycle leading to greater barbarism each time until they have finally managed to destroy civilization and made the world safe for feudalism.

Progressivism is a destructive force of chaos opposed to the stable order of conservatism

Progressivism is a destructive force of chaos opposed to the stable order of conservatism. Its rhetoric is empty, its fury is mere posturing and its philosophies are justification and celebration of its violent impulses. Like all chaos it defines itself in opposition to the order that it would destroy. Its only identity derives from the face of the man it is punching in the face or lynching on a street corner.

[……]

Read the rest – The Speed of Progressivism

 

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Posted in Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Liberal Fascism, Marxism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Progressives | 38 Comments »

Regarding that special relationship

by Mojambo ( 73 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Israel, Mitt Romney, Palestinians at August 1st, 2012 - 8:30 am

As the Knish points out, America’s problems with the Arab world have little to do with Israel, but more to do with the perverse pathologies of the Arab world itself.  To demand that Israel make peace with its lunatic neighbors is the same as asking the Jews of Europe to try to  accommodate Adolf Hitler which is to appease the unappeasable.  Personally,  I would rather Obama not visit Israel if he wins a second term  because nothing good can come of it and the attitude will be “Alright, I held my nose and visited Israel, now you owe me something”.

by Daniel Greenfield

Romney has landed in Jerusalem and Obama is threatening to visit Israel in his second term. This seems like good news for Americans, but presidential and pre-presidential visits are often bad news for Israelis.

A presidential visit to most other countries is a formality, while a presidential visit to Israel is an unpleasantness. Presidents who visit Israel must also stop off for a visit with the terrorist leaders. Presidents don’t just stop by, have a pita, smell the flowers and do some handshakes. Instead they arrive tasked with peacemaking duties and then they task everyone else with their peacemaking.

There is something intriguing, though little good, about Vladimir Putin’s visit to Israel, because it at least has the air of unpredictability. Presidential visits to Israel, however, are painfully predictable. There is never anything new that comes out of those trips and nothing good either. They are a lot like family reunions, pleasant in theory, but uncomfortable in practice. Both have a special relationship that they can never quite define and the visits always carry with them an aura of disappointment.

A presidential visit has the air of a boss coming downstairs to check up on a lazy employee. On arrival, there are the customary expressions of a hope for peace. In private, whatever prime minister is in office will be upbraided for still not having achieved peace. At a joint press conference in a capital that the United States still doesn’t recognize, after the usual formalities about the special relationship and the commitment to Israel’s security, the president will tell reporters that more sacrifices are needed for peace.

[…….]

The pre-presidential visits are less of a chore, but no more significant. Candidates stop by Israel the way that they do any other state. They visit a few significant places, have their picture taken there, get a brief tour from local officials and fly over the narrowest point in Israel’s border as a demonstration of just how strategically precarious the situation is.

Like all practiced politicians, they are very understanding of the problems that their hosts have, whatever those problems might be. They emphasize that unlike the last guy from the other party, they will not pressure Israel to make more concessions. And then a few years later they are disembarking from an airplane and frowning at the lack of peace on the airport tarmac. “Where is that damn peace already? I ordered it last week. I thought it would be here by now.”

Israel would be best served if the next American president forgot that Israel even existed, or decided that it was a small country like Slovenia or Fiji that need not be bothered with. A great month would be a month that passed without any State Department statements on Israel or a single question or answer from the White House Press Secretary about that small country wedged in between much bigger countries where frankly more interesting things are going on right now.

There are high hopes that a new president will be different and that this time the cycle will be broken, but then a few years later we are right back where we started and usually worse off. After a while all the headlines run together in smears of ink, and the broadcasts full of earnest reporters standing against some dark background, somberly reporting about another blow to the hopes of peace, all seem the same, no matter how many fashions have changed and how many decades have passed.

The United States expects Israel to fix its problems with the Muslim world by completing the peace process. But the problem with this two-state Solution is that Israel isn’t the source of the problems in the Muslim world. America’s problems with Islam come from the same place as Russia’s problems with Islam and everyone else’s problems with Islam.

[……]

The thinking goes that when Israel finally builds its own special relationship with the Muslim world, the United States will be able to build its special relationship with the Muslim world too. And when every president sits down at the table and is given his briefings, those briefings place Muslim violence in the context of Israel. And Israel becomes the Jewish Gordian Knot that has to be cut to untangle the hostility of 1 billion Muslims.

Read the rest – Not another presidential visit

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Posted in Barack Obama, Israel, Mitt Romney, Palestinians | 73 Comments »

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