By Ted Belman
In Caroline Glick’s recent column, which she sarcastically titles Salaam Fayyed, Hero of Israel, she points the obvious, namely, that Bush’s policy vis a vis the Palestinians is at odds with the US war on terror.
Finally, by supporting Rice’s policy of appeasing Palestinian terrorists, Olmert and Livni ignore the fact that both Israel and the US are treating the Palestinian jihad in a manner that completely contradicts the US’s strategy for contending with the forces of jihad everywhere else in the world. In stark contrast to the administration’s embrace of Fatah and Palestinian statehood, everywhere else in the world, the US works to defeat terrorists and deny them control of territory. The fact that the current US-Israeli policy toward Palestinian terrorists is antithetical to the Bush administration’s overall strategy for fighting terror is reason enough to expect that many Americans might not believe that Rice’s support for Fatah and Palestinian statehood advances US interests.
She contrasts this policy with what is currently being said in the Republican primaries,
Giuliani makes his call for consistency most clearly in his discussion of the Palestinians and Israel. In his words:
“Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians – negotiations that bring up the same issues again and again. It is not in the interest of the United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism.”
He added, “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is a permanent feature of our foreign policy.”
By so couching his argument, Giuliani made clear that, from his perspective, there is no difference between the jihad against Israel and the jihad throughout the world. As a result, in his view, the US should align its policy toward the Palestinians with its policy against jihad everywhere in the world.
While Giuliani has been the most candid in his critique of Bush’s policy toward the Palestinians, his views are not out of sync with the general tenor of the Republican presidential debate. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former senator Fred Thompson have similarly made clear that they believe the US must be more forthright and consistent in fighting the war.
She argues that Israel should recognize that Fatah will not always be the flavour of the month in Washington. With the upcoming elections in Israel she makes this point,
Since Barak owes his primary victory to Labor’s Arab voters, no one expects him to give up on his commitment to Palestinian statehood. But Netanyahu is a different story. It would make perfect sense for the Likud to base its electoral platform on recognizing that Fatah is Israel’s enemy, and by rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state. And Netanyahu is better qualified than any politician to convince Israeli voters to support such a reality-based platform.
Its good to see that Caroline has not given up on Bibi and holds forth the hope that he will seize the moment to reject the creation of a Palestinian state.
Yet after Netanyahu’s victory over Feiglin, JPOST begged to differ.
Netanyahu is right to resist and reject most of Feiglin’s ideas and keep the Likud near the political center. Yet the challenge of all the major parties is to mobilize its natural constituencies while attempting to include an ever broader swath of the public. Netanyahu should be trying to find a way to defend a centrist Likud while convincing voters to the Likud’s right and left that his party is their best vote among the alternatives. Indeed, the problem with the whole Netanyahu-Feiglin fight that the primary highlighted is that it distracted from the more pertinent question: where does the Likud, with Netanyahu at its head, propose to lead the nation?
From my observations, I found that Barak now stood to the right of Netanyahu.
Meron Benvinisti recently wrote in Haaretz, Party Pooper after Barak’s comments about no difference between Fatah and Hamas and five years needed to reach an agreement.
Poor Ehud Barak. All he did was repeat recently the “there’s no partner” formula he bequeathed to the Israeli discourse after his failure at Camp David and during the intifada – the formula that has become a consensus uniting right and left. And now he is discovering that the very same formula being explained as his attempt to “pass Benjamin Netanyahu on the right” is being described as a blow to the first signs of a diplomatic process. It is being condemned as interfering with the consolidation of new diplomatic programs. He is also accused of defying the leadership of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is suddenly being described as a responsible leader hoping for a two-state solution.
Barak has not changed his views; after all, the diplomatic-security situation has not changed. Some people even think it has worsened because severing the West Bank from the Gaza Strip makes the chances for an agreement less likely. In addition, the power and authority of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the PA in the West Bank have been undermined, Israel continues to control the West Bank, there is nothing new in the diplomatic plans and the ability to implement them, and the United States has lost the strength to use pressure to realize the plans. Barak will do everything he can to prove that “there is no partner.”
and in a moment of clarity, he explains,
In that case, why did his words provoke such a hostile reaction? Because commentators, experts and columnists adapted their response to their new mood. Until now they needed the “there is no partner” formula. Now, when they are becoming devoted to the illusion of the peace process, they have turned the formula and its inventor into party poopers.
It’s not Barak who has changed, and it’s not the situation that has changed. Only the pundits have changed.
Caroline began by writing
Cantor, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, had just returned from leading a Republican Congressional delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Authority where he met with Fayad in Ramallah. He wrote:
“Without further explanation from you, I will feel compelled… to forewarn my colleagues in the Congress that any visits with your government offer little value toward bringing peace and security to Palestinians and Israelis. Furthermore, I will help lead opposition in Congress to any proposed call for additional US taxpayer dollars being sent to the Palestinian Authority.”
As I have been writing, there is much support in the US for a different policy towards Israel so Israel must work to elicit it.
It is unfortunate that someone of Caroline Glick’s obvious intelligence, can’t seem to push the envelope in her analyses. Does Glick really underestimate the US (and ultimately, Globalist) Establishment so naively? Does Glick really believe she has some kind of divine insight which outclasses the ability of the US Establishment – with its multi-billion dollar intelligence infrastructure; its political analysts and scientists; its public relations experts; its covert operations specialists; its psychological warriors; its devastatingly powerful military resources; its enormously successful economic and industrial engines; its Global prop-agenda infrastructure (of which Hollywood is just one division), and all the other things which anyone with a grasp of Realpolitik would realise the Establishment of the World’s most successful superpower would have at its disposal – to protect and advance its own interests??
To believe such would require the utilisation of the sort of fallacious thinking similarly employed by those souls who believe they are endowed with divine wisdom when they claim that the US is run by “Communists” or “Zionists” and that only they realise it.
The only real difference is that Glick’s implied notion that the US is run by buffoons is strikingly common in “analyses” of US foreign policy from across the political spectrum.
There is no “war on terror”. Bush’s policy vis a vis the Palestinians is entirely consistent with that of an Establishment with a pro-Islamist (and general anti-freedom and anti-Sovereignty) agenda – the evidence of which has been presented many times.
https://www.israpundit.org/2006/?p=5566#comment-105396
Oh geeeez! Giuliani – who’s made millions of dollars from his bogus status as some kind of 9/11 hero. See and hear for yourselves what many firefighters say about him. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Giuliani+firefighters
Nice bit of Orwellian rhetoric. If someone had spiked his drink with Sodium Pentathol, he may have said, “War is peace, freedom is slavery and I can be taken at face value when I say I oppose assisting the creation of another terrorist state in the Middle East while the US assists already existing terrorist states in the Middle East……because we’re being threatened by Islamist terrorists……from already existing and yet to be created terrorist states in the Middle East.”
Giuliani’s being honest in a newspeak sort of way. Of course, we can’t expect him to define exactly what he means by “commitment” – suffice to say that that statement will lead to many Israel advocates cheering him, while other sectors will decry him as a “Zionist infiltraiter”. Nothing quite like getting one’s supporters and opponents to believe essentially the same nonsense when one’s running for President.
More evidence of Giuliani’s “honesty” continues:
Beautiful!
“War is peace, freedom is slavery and there is no difference between the jihad [which the US is sponsoring] against Israel and the jihad [which the US is sponsoring] throughout the world so in order to prevent terrorism, vote for the Big G and he’ll align the US’ policy toward the Palestinians with its policy against jihad [the US is sponsoring] everywhere in the world.
Confused yet? George Orwell’s smirking ghost isn’t…….
Too true!
Which is why it is essential that Israel’s advocates need to fearlessly go where few Israel advocates have gone before, and actually expose what the true nature of current US policy towards Israel actually is. Then – maybe, hopefully – common sense will prevail and a currently imminent disaster won’t become inevitable.
Someone should put Condoleezza Rice against the wall (figuratively speaking) and remind her of her speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace, back in August, 2004:
But it seems now that U.S. diplomacy not merely embraces terrorists but calls itself effective when truth is replaced by lies.
Bill,
It would be even better if Pres. Bush were in the same boat before it’s flipped. Though I am a conservative, he has stabbed both Israel and the US in the back om many issues in the name of oil.
Though Glick gives reason to hope that the mood in America and within the Republican party itself is turning away from supporting the Bush administration’s two state Israel-Palestinian conflict solution, the Bush administration, with the concurrence, forced or otherwise of the Olmert government, is firing on all cylinders to make that happen before the end of the Bush presidential term.
There is every reason to be concerned that the recently intensifying efforts of Olmert and Livni to make interim deals and take interim actions in furtherance of those deals with Abbas and Fatah with a view to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, Olmert and Livni will close the door on any subsequent Israeli administration from trying to chart a different course.
With the way things are going, if Netanyahu is going to demonstrate leadership to keep Olmert and Livni from selling Israel down the river any further, it is time for him to jump into the river and find a way to capsize the Olmert and Livni boat heading Israel towards a point of no return.
Wow, it’s a sad state of affairs when in light of the current push for Israeli unilateral concessions writers, pundits, and lobby groups rush to gush over a candidate who endorses the same old failed land-for-peace approach of the last few decades, and carefully ignore Giuliani’s saying he’s not against two states, just that there must be reciprocity, or abandonment of terror first–basically, Phase I of The Road Map! This is nothing new, this is old, it’s only better by contrast to the latest from Bush/Condi. Yeah, sure Giuliani has better #s right now, but his policy on Israel is exactly the same as that pushed by the Council of Foreign Relations for decades. Tancredo’s creative, has integrity, and the imperialistic, Wahaabi, mosque-indoctrinating, countries-infilitrating Saudis have publicly announced a problem with him–that should be a clue Tancredo’s onto something.