Klavan's One-State Solution: Give the Middle East to the Jews
Yeah, sure, it sounds silly, and it may even generate a few laughs. But if you think about it, Klavan's plan makes more sense than Obama's plan to effectively eradicate the Jewish state slowly while claiming to be a friend of Israel.
OK, so it really is silly and impractical. But it still faces the reality of the situation better than Obama.
Netanyahu Schools Obama - and Lord Knows Obama Needs to Learn Something About How the World Works
Obama gave a speech. Here is an analysis of one of Obama's unnoticed bone-headed errors, not one of the big bold ones, but a tiny, telling one, that passed under most people's radars.
In doing his balancing act on Israeli and Palestinian fears and hostility, he says this:
“I'm convinced that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians would rather look to the future than be trapped in the past….We see it in the actions of a Palestinian who lost three daughters to Israeli shells in Gaza. `I have the right to feel angry,’ he said. `So many people were expecting me to hate. My answer to them is I shall not hate. Let us hope,’ he said, `for tomorrow.’"
That’s genuinely touching. But in the specific case Obama cites—that of Izzedin Abuelaish on January 16, 2009-- there is strong reason to believe that the three girls were killed because of Hamas, that is Palestinian, actions.
But what's a bit of misrepresentation of the truth when "evenhandedness" is at stake? Truth be damned in the name of moral equivalence, a favorite tactic of Israel bashers and enemies of Western Civilization. Netanyahu begins talking about 7 minutes in, and he politely fills Obama in on some relevant facts surrounding Israel and its neighbors.
But there's more. Obama either doesn't understand, or doesn't want to understand what the Israelis and by proxy, we in the United States, are facing. The Muslim world suffers from an "inner Nakba", a hatred so deep and so all consuming that it's the focus of their lives. We see it in the behavior of Hamas and Fatah in their refusal to stop the violence and the incitement, and we see it in the rest of the Islamic world in their war against Israel, in their overt Jew-hatred, and in their covert (or maybe not so covert, just not as pronounced as their Jew-hatred) hatred of Christians. For video evidence of the inner Nakba, watch this:
The lady is being honest, and a lot of people accept the fact that Muslims around the world are taught to hate Jews. When not accepted, it's rationalized. But if anyone even questions the claim that Islam is a religion of peace there are charges of racism and islamophobia. It's also accepted that Palestinians should get their Jew-free state. Ask for an Islamic-free state, and again, get ready for the name calling. Anyway, I'm rambling. The fact remains that when it comes to Israel, Obama is guided by ideology rather than facts. Israel should make no more concessions. Netanyahu needs to continue standing up to Obama. He needs to demonstrate loudly and clearly that the survival of the Jewish people is not open to compromise or concessions.
I usually post links I like over at the Garbanzo Annex on Tumblr, but today I thought I'd post them here too.
This one by Melanie Phillips is worth reading and so is the commenter who challenges the Israel bashers with this challenge,
How do you explain the whole Arab world raising against dictators, sacrificing lives in thousands.. everywhere except PA and Israeli Arab sector? - ..these ones are supposed to be first victims of "Zionist genocide".
Here it is, an awful secret. Netanyahu doesn't need to make peace with Arabs because de-facto peace is already established. Israel is not at war with those, even yesterday enemies, who have stopped hostility.
Taking into account the schizophrenic nature of "Arab street" there, and meagre prespectives for political stability, the factual peace is the best available option. And Arabs quietly accept this.
Of course, you should read what Phillips wrote. She is one of the best commentators writing today. And here is more proof of that.
The Times (£) reports that half the board of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics, which has received money from Libya among other Arab dictatorships, has called for a boycott of Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East.
It figures.
Now, apparently, there are some red faces:
The university has already been urged by its own dons to give up the £300,000 it received from a foundation headed by the son of Colonel Gaddafi. Howard Davies, the LSE director, is said to have told academics this week that he was ashamed of the institution’s links to the dictatorship.
Questions have been emerging about the LSE’s wider reliance on finance from authoritarian regimes. One of its lecture halls has been named in honour of a sheikh reputed to have promoted anti-Semitic material.
Hypocrisy on the Left? Who could have imagined that? I've always been assured that hypocrisy is an exclusive failure of conservatives, as are all failures.
As long as were talking about Progressives' willful blindness on Israel and the Middle East, here's a good one by Nick Cohen.
The Arab revolution is consigning skip-loads of articles, books and speeches about the Middle East to the dustbin of history. In a few months, readers will go through libraries or newspaper archives and wonder how so many who claimed expert knowledge could have turned their eyes from tyranny and its consequences.
To a generation of politically active if not morally consistent campaigners, the Middle East has meant Israel and only Israel. In theory, they should have been able to stick by universal principles and support a just settlement for the Palestinians while opposing the dictators who kept Arabs subjugated. Few, however, have been able to oppose oppression in all its forms consistently. The right has been no better than the liberal-left in its Jew obsessions. The briefest reading of Conservative newspapers shows that at all times their first concern about political changes in the Middle East is how they affect Israel. For both sides, the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs, Berbers and Kurds who were not involved in the conflict could be forgotten.
If you doubt me, consider the stories that the Middle Eastern bureau chiefs missed until revolutions that had nothing to do with Palestine forced them to take notice.
What's really surprising is that this is from a British newspaper. I wonder how Cohen got away with this.
Next up is this piece by Alan Dershowitz, a member of that rare species of pro-Israel liberal, in which he exposes the ACLU's attempt at censorship.
The international campaign to prevent speakers from delivering pro-Israel talks at universities has been assisted by leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union—an organization that is supposed to protect freedom of speech for all. The method used to silence these speakers and preclude their audiences from hearing their message is exemplified by a now infamous event at the University of California at Irvine.
Michael Oren—a distinguished scholar and writer, a moderate supporter of the two-state solution, and now Israel's Ambassador to the United States—was invited to speak. The Muslim Student Union set out to prevent him from delivering his talk Here is the way Erwin Chemerinksy, Dean of the law school, described what the students did:
"The Muslim Student Union orchestrated a concerted effort to disrupt the speech. One student after another stood and shouted so that the ambassador could not be heard. Each student was taken away only to be replaced by another doing the same thing."
Oh well, since they're only censoring pro-Israel speech, maybe it's not really censorship. We'll have to await the ACLU ruling.
And now for something completely different, a disturbing video showing another reason why support for education is not the same as support for the MEA.
And teachers in the audience really cheered this speech? Is that what really what they believe? They'd better hope this video doesn't get the attention it deserves.
"No one can find a safe way out for himself if socety is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result." -- Ludwig von Mises
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
