Condemnation by settlement

Now that the Obama administration has apparently chosen to disregard the Bush administration’s commitments to Israel about so-called “settlements, ” Rick Richman reminds us (after recalling a number of forgotten points about UN resolution 242):

The more important point, however, is that the major settlement blocs are located on strategic high ground, or in other militarily significant locations, which are undoubtedly part of the “defensible borders” promised to Israel in the 2004 Bush Letter — as part of an agreement relating to the Gaza disengagement that should be deemed “enforceable.” There is no definition of “defensible borders” in the letter, but the one thing everyone knows it does not mean is the 1967 borders.

It is ludicrous for the U.S. to be negotiating with Israel on the number of births that can be permitted in areas already effectively promised to Israel as part of the borders necessary to defend itself — unless the Obama administration plans to break that promise as well.

(h/t Israel Matzav)

Fresno Zionism, after giving a history lesson about the Etzion Bloc, asks:

How can it be that it is — in Obama’s view — illegal for Jews to live in the ancient Jewish Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem?

In general, how is it that the 19-year Jordanian and Egyptian occupation managed to transform parts of Mandatory Palestine into places like Saudi Arabia, where Jews are forbidden to live?

Explain this, Mr. Obama. And while you’re at it, explain the significance — since it is obviously not an accident — of your strange and ungrammatical way of talking about settlements.

The terms “settlements” and “occupation” are tossed around with reckless abandon when it comes to Israel. They aren’t so much descriptions as accusations. (Israel’s presence in Lebanon, though defensive in nature, was called “occupation,” precious few accounts referred to Syria’s brutal presence in Lebanon as an “occupation.”

This isn’t accidental.

Phyllis Chesler quotes a commenter on a recent essay:

“One needn’t be right wing, nor a Zionist, or even Jewish to understand what animates those who fulminate over Jewish ‘settlements’. One only has to ask the right (no pun intended) questions to understand what their agenda really is. For instance – since there are many, many more illegal Arab buildings/settlements in E. Jerusalem and ALL over Israel, are the people who are clamoring for Jewish ‘settlement’ to cease, also calling for Arab demolitions? Further, while 20% of Israel’s population are Arabs with full citizenship, why is the PA allowed to demand that Judea & Samaria become Judenrein, all in the name of ‘peace’?

These type of questions to a fair minded person would be answered in a fair minded manner. However, when the agenda is fueled by anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic nuances, these same (righteous) questions become nothing more than a hindrance to ‘peace’ efforts.

There is nothing more important within this framework than to expose the hidden prejudices of the (in)human rights brigade.

In his Cairo speech President Obama took care not to mention the word “terror,” lest he offend the Muslim world he sought to address. Instead he adopted their language and used terms that are used to condemn Israel. He did not care how offensive his use of those words were.

UPDATE: Please see (or maybe don’t see) Tony Judt’s op-ed in the New York Times, Fictions on the ground for an offensive use of “settlement.”

Thus the distinction so often made in Israeli pronouncements between “authorized” and “unauthorized” settlements is specious — all are illegal, whether or not they have been officially approved and whether or not their expansion has been “frozen” or continues apace. (It is a matter of note that Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, belongs to the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, established in 1982 and illegally expanded since.)

To declare all “settlements,” as Judt does, is to ignore the history of 242 and of the Etzion Bloc. Judt is condemning Israel not criticizing it.

UPDATE: Jonathan Tobin gets to the point:

For all of his attempts to treat Jewish communities over the green line as illegal (including the Jerusalem suburbs where most “settlers” live), anyone who’s read Judt’s previous writings about the country knows very well that he considers the existence of the entire state to be immoral if not illegal. That’s right. As he explained in an even lengthier essay in The New York Review of Books in October 2003, he’s not a Zionist of any sort but someone who believes Israel needs to be dismantled and replaced by a “binational” state in which Zionism will be extirpated.

or alternatively as My Right Word concludes:

Did he write to Obama to use the Cairo speech to condemn the state of democracy in Egypt? Did he suggest the President cut off funding to Mubarak the Dictator whose son will take over soon, establishing a new dynasty in the Arab Middle East? No, that he wouldn’t do. He’s just Judt the Jew, descendent of Lithuanian Rabbis, doing his best to fulfill his fantasy of dissolving the Jewish state of Israel.

Not surprisingly, Stephen Walt, agrees with Judt’s analysis (via memeorandum). Here’s Walt pretending that he’s a friend of Israel:

The result of all this, as Judt makes clear, has been to “create facts” that make a two-state solution increasingly difficult — and maybe impossible — to achieve. But don’t forget former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s warning: “If the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a South African style struggle for political rights.” If Israel continues on its present trajectory, in other words, it will become an apartheid state. And once that happens, Olmert said, “The state of Israel is finished.” By turning a blind eye towards the settlement project for decades, in short, Israel’s so-called “friends” helped pave the road to a very bleak future.

People like Walt, find Olmert’s quote useful, but, of course, they don’t believe that Israel will become an apartheid state, they believe that it already is. (Why, for example, Israel would be illegitimate while granting minority rights, while a hypothetical Palestine which insists on ethnic cleansing would be legitimate, is one of those inconsistencies that Walt, Judt and others never bother to explore or explain.)

Judt, Walt and their ilk are not friends of Israel. They accept every claim made by those who would deny the Jewish state and impose impossible conditions for Israel to meet their standards of legitimacy. Alas they are all too much part of the mainstream political discourse.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.