One thing nearly all [anti-]Israel pundits have in common is the sheer inability to access reality. The only villain in the inability to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians is Israel, generally due to settlements, and as a result of the security fence. Just ask Roger Cohen, for instance.
But the deeper error was strategic: Obama’s assumption that he could resume where Clinton left off in 2000 and pursue the land-for-peace idea at the heart of the two-state solution.
This approach ignored the deep scars inflicted in the past decade: the killing of 992 Israelis and 3,399 Palestinians between the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 and 2006; the Israeli Army’s harsh reoccupation of most of the West Bank; Hamas’ violent rise to power in Gaza and the accompanying resurgence of annihilationist ideology; the spectacular spread of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; and the Israeli construction of over 250 miles of a separation barrier that has protected Israel from suicide bombers even as it has shattered Palestinian lives, grabbed land and become, in the words of Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer, “an integral part of the West Bank settlement plan.”
That’s a pretty awesome list of what went wrong. Think Roger will devote any space in the rest of his column to the Palestinian terror attacks? The rockets from Gaza? Hamas’ constant warring with Israel?
Of course not. The rest of the article is about the fence, and about how Israelis are psychologically scarred and can only see themselves as “victims” of the Palestinians. Victims. Really? I thought they saw the Palestinians for what they are—a people who celebrate the mass murder of Israeli schoolchildren, killed while they were studying Torah in the heart of Jerusalem.
Gaza’s streets filled with joyous crowds of thousands on Thursday evening following the terror attack at a Jerusalem rabbinical seminary in which eight people were killed.
In mosques in Gaza City and northern Gaza, many residents went to perform the prayers of thanksgiving.
Armed men fired in the air in celebration and others passed out sweets to passersby.
But it’s the settlements. And the fence. Oh, and racism.
As Ron Nachman, the founder of the sprawling Ariel settlement, comments in René Backmann’s superb new book, “A Wall in Palestine,†the wave of Palestinian suicide attacks before work on the barrier began in mid-2002 meant that: “Israelis wanted separation. They did not want to be mixed with the Arabs. They didn’t even want to see them. This may be seen as racist, but that’s how it is.â€
Really? Because I’m pretty sure there are well over a million Arab Israelis within Israel’s borders. But those “Palestinians” don’t count in any census except for the one where the rest of the world warns Israel that if they don’t negotiate a peace soon, the one-state solution will be forced upon them because Jews will make up a minority in the land formerly known as Palestine. Oh, and they mention them when they accuse Israelis of racism.
There’s one more bit of fantasy that all [anti-]Israel pundits like to promote. The fantasy that Mahmoud Abbas truly wants peace. (Plus, please… touting the Nobel given for nothing? We really are in Fantasyland here.)
Obama, who has his Nobel already, should ratchet expectations downward. Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the end point of Netanyahu’s evasions.
It’s not what Abbas wants but he’s powerless. Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist, told me, “A nonviolent status quo is far from satisfactory but it’s not bad. Cyprus is not bad.â€
Mahmoud Abbas pays lip service, in English to peace. But when he speaks to his fellow terrorists at the Fatah convention, it’s a whole different story.
“Although peace is our choice, we reserve the right to resistance, legitimate under international law,” Abbas said in a policy speech, using a term that encompasses armed confrontation with Israel and non-violent protests.
“Resistance” also encompasses suicide attacks. And when he’s not talking about “resistance,” he’s sending condolences to the family of dead Hizbullah fighters, and congratulating mass murderers like Samir Kuntar.
But these things never pop up on the radar of the anti-[Israel] pundits. They don’t exist. There is no Palestinian intransigence, only Israeli intransigence, and Palestinian intransigence caused by Israeli settlements—which is Israel’s fault, of course. The [anti-]Israel pundits simply refuse to acknowledge the facts of the matter, unless those facts damn Israel and praise Palestinians.
But if you’re a regular reader of this, or any other pro-Israel blog, well, you’re aware of that. Preaching to the choir here. But sometimes, someone else reads my posts and starts thinking.
I seriously doubt the Roger Cohens of the world will. But hey, he’s great post fodder.
Not that this surprises you or me, Meryl. A lot of people out there, including ones named “Cohen,” seem to be able to deal equitably with the sacrifice of Jewish lives towards some end. It’s not just the willful refusal of reality, but also the refusal to engage with evidence. Notice neither he nor many other pundits deal with what happened when Israel did withdraw from an area and gave the Palestinians a chance to show what they could do–and they showed what they could do.
I still see this blamed on the supposed Israeli blockade and few, if any, people who do this mention the fact that Gaza shares a border with Egypt and Israel has little influence on what could come across that border.
“I agree with the Israeli author David Grossman when he writes: ‘We have dozens of atomic bombs, tanks and planes. We confront people possessing none of these arms. And yet, in our minds, we remain victims…'”
This is the kind of thing people can only believe when they have blinkered themselves so thouroughly to see everything in terms of black vs. white, “oppressor” vs. “victim,” that they literally cannot comprehend that anybody else can see themselves or the world around them in any other way.
Israelis see themselves as victims? Why, because they refuse to see themselves as oppressors? Maybe Israelis see themselves as something that cannot exist in such a simple two-color world view: resolute defenders of their own right to exist.
Actually, Grossman might be correct if he ended his sentence “because we do not want to use our weapons against anyone.” It is similar to the explanation of Yaakov’s reaction before meeting Esav in Parshat Vayishlach, “He was afraid and distressed”. He was afraid that Esav would attempt to kill him and he was distressed that he might be forced to kill Esav. That is the fact that the “Cohens” of the world refuse to see. They have internalized the statements of their enemies so that they are upset that they are not allowed to melt into the background and disappear. They resent the fact that there are those who refuse to surrender. It is the guilt that they refuse to admit.
One would think that if the Palestinians were so desperate for peace and autonomy than they would negotiate. One would think that they might have accepted one of the many previous offers for state-hood.
Yet, somehow we are supposed to believe that construction in settlement blocs near the green line, or in Jewish neighbors in E Jerusalem, areas that will become part of Israel under a negotiated settlement, represents an impediment to negotiations.
Why is it that on so many domestic issues liberals are fairly on the money, yet when it comes to I-P they have their heads entirely up their asses?
And to think that I voted for Obama.
Not next time.
By the way, I especially like that line about the Israelis wanting to be separate from the Palestinians even though it may seem racist.
I mean, golly, those stiff-necked and intransigent Israelis, wanting to be apart from a people who, when they are brought close, blow up as many Israelis as they can get to. Somehow I see that woman whose name I forget as symbolic…she had received treatment at a hospital in Beer Sheva which was by all accounts kind and effective, and repaid that by returning with a bomb under her coat.
Yet again I recall Golda Meir’s remark, which I paraphrase, that what the world wants is a progressive, humane, liberal, dead Jewish people.
Another of Golda Meir’s remarks: “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Alas, it does not seem that such a change in the Arab mindset will be forthcoming in our lifetime.