Bibi said the words that needed to be said. He called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. I haven’t yet found an English transcript of the speech, and would like very much to read it all before commenting thoroughly—but here are a few snippets.
This is the part getting the most flak from the left:
“Our right to form our sovereign state here in the land of Israel stems from one simple fact. The Land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people.”
That’s the part that Obama forgot in his Cairo speech, where he said:
America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.
Netanyahu’s version of history is the right one. The modern state of Israel may have happened in part due to the Holocaust, but that isn’t why the modern state of Israel was formed, and it isn’t when the modern state was proposed. Obama’s speech neglected the birth of Zionism and the waves of Jewish immigration to Israel starting in the nineteenth century. But then, recognizing Jews’ historical claim to Israel doesn’t fit the narrative.
The Palestinians, of course, have immediately rejected everything that Netanyahu said. Nothing will suffice, according to their spokespeople, than to allow millions of Palestinian refugees to flood Israel and overwhelm the Jewish state.
He said what I expected him to say, for the most part. Now I’d like to see both the details, and the response of the Obama administration.
All I heard so far was a Canadian Broadcasting Co. story on the hourly news report this evening and it was predictably slanted. Netanyahu has overturned the peace process by refusing to halt the settlements and isn’t offering the Palestinians any actual independence. It also claimed this was the first recognition of the right to a Palestinian state by any Israeli leader.
I realize it’s a brief story on a brief newscast, but of course Netanyahu is not the first Israeli leader to agree to the idea of a Palestinian state. And as everyone reading this blog knows, we are still waiting for an acknowledgment from a Palestinian leader about the idea of a Jewish state. And the settlements were according to the reporter the stumbling block; I don’t think many other reporters and commentators are going to mention in the next few days, oh, I don’t know, how about a Palestinian effort to stop the vicious hatred and calls to wipe out Israel which pour from every available source?
Israel “got rid of the settlements” in Gaza and handed the place over to the Palestinian Arabs. The result was that the Arabs set up a terrorist base for making war on Israel but have made no move towards setting up viable and functional governmental institutions there (nor have they in Judea and Samaria for that matter). Why should Israel expect any different result from handing over more territory to Arabs?
Obama and his “realist” advisors are fools if they think they can gain new allies and friends for the USA by betraying Israel. All that will gain the USA is a deserved contempt for being the kind of country which will betray our allies and friends out of opportunism and crass expediency, and not very foresighted opportunism and expediency at that.