Monday, March 29, 2010

JOE BIDEN AND THE HORSE HE RODE IN ON

So Joe Biden lands in Israel and he is shocked---SHOCKED---to learn that those crazy Jews are going to put a housing development in East Jerusalem. The area has been full of Jews for centuries, except for a period from 1948 to 1967 when it was controlled by Jordan, and nobody had ever said they were NOT going to build there, but hey, it’s a “settlement,” so Biden gets all huffy and flies away and then Hillary drills Bibi a new one over the phone and the usual outraged people are even more outrageously outraged than before.

My initial reaction to this kerfluffle was that it takes a lot of damn gall for Biden or anybody else to tell Israelis where, in the sovereign state of Israel, Jews can live or where they can build new developments. Whatever alleged interest the US may claim to have in this largely-mythical “peace process,” it can hardly excuse this sort of brow-beating.

What makes it worse is that when the US lodges an objection like this, it is acting merely as a mouthpiece for the Palestinian Authority. And what, exactly, is the nature of their objection? Is it not that these settlements are being built on land that may someday be part of a Palestinian state? They apparently want East Jerusalem to be their future capital. Well, what is it about having Jews on a particular piece of land that makes the land unsuitable for a Palestinian state? If, in some unlikely future, a Palestinian state comes into being, WHY CAN’T THERE BE A FEW JEWS IN IT?

Objections to these settlements by the PA or their surrogates in the Obama administration, or anybody else, are pure anti-Semitism. Who the hell do these people think they are that they can demand a total exclusion of Jews from a nation that doesn’t even exist yet? Israel itself has more than a million Arabs living in it, and they are represented in the Knesset. Canada has Indians. Italy has Belgians and Moroccans and Asians and Turks. America has every race and religion and ethnic group you can name, and many you never heard of. Some tolerance of other people is a minimal requirement for a modern civilized state, so what gives Palestinians the right, among all the nations of the world, to declare (even before their country exists) that it will contain no Jews?

The demand alone means that “Palestine” should NEVER be a state, at least so long as they maintain this attitude. Even apart from the immorality of sanctioning the creation of a nation borne out of such hatred, it’s simply impractical. How could the Israelis possibly consent to a new nation in their midst so utterly racist that Jews cannot reside in it?

Anyway, that was my initial reaction. It’s usually my reaction when I hear some complaint about “settlements”---that it’s absurd to tell a sovereign people where they can build houses in their own damn country. Part of the problem might be the term “settlements,” because it makes them sound like Fort Apache in the Wyoming Territory instead of apartment blocks you might see in the Bronx, but there’s still no excuse for it. It’s fine if Israelis want to argue about this, and they do, but if anybody else does it, I assume it’s because they hate Jews.

Looking beyond the obvious, however, Biden’s reaction seemed so outlandish that I began to look for another reason. Even if the Obama administration really felt the settlement issue was important, it couldn’t very well have believed that these particular settlements mattered at all. They were not in the West Bank, for one thing, and these building plans had been in place for several years. And though Israel had promised not to build in certain areas, this was not one of the areas they had promised not to build in. So what, really, was this all about?

Well, a major purpose of Biden’s visit (the most important purpose, in Israel’s point of view) was to discuss Iran and what the US might be willing to do about it. Israel, for example, wants the US to set up a naval blockade or take other rather serious and provocative steps. Obama’s idea of sanctions, on the other hand, appears to be denying Tehran a major league baseball franchise.

Thus, it was extremely convenient for the Obama administration that this dispute over settlements erupted when it did, and cut Biden’s visit short. Now, instead of dealing with the Iran question, the US can be so diplomatically outraged at Israel that the issue of what to do about Iran gets pushed aside. Biden’s rage, in other words, might have been a way to avoid putting Obama in the embarrassing position of admitting we won’t do anything about Iran.

But now, it would appear, that’s not the explanation either. I’m afraid it’s worse than that. This was never about settlements, or even about Iran.

Netanyahu has agreed to past US demands and the result is now---more demands, this time of the sort that no responsible prime minister of Israel can accept. With his non-negotiable edicts, Obama has put Netanyahu in an impossible situation politically, and has treated him personally with contempt. The message is that Netanyahu will have to accede to a Palestinian state on terms largely dictated by the Palestinian Authority, or to step down and be replaced by a different Israeli government that will do so. Iran is no longer the only threat to the existence of Israel.

And thus, the fangs are bared. Those of us who didn’t vote for Obama knew this was possible. When a man’s spiritual advisor is Jeremiah Wright and his primary advisors on the Middle East are Rashid Khalidi, Samantha Power and Robert Malley, it cannot be a surprise when we learn that the survival of Israel is not his fondest wish. I had hoped this day would not come, and that Obama would never feel powerful enough politically to act upon his beliefs. But now he does.

Copyright2010MichaelKubacki

No comments:

Post a Comment