T. Belman. On the other hand read Marco Rubio: Our issue is not with Islam.
“The story you just told me is wrong. It’s immoral. We should not be doing that to people,” Rubio said. “The bottom line is there are millions of patriotic Muslim Americans.”
Rubio told the audience that patriotic Muslims had died defending the country in the Armed forces, separating them from the dangerous radical Islamists that were threatening America.
During Thursday night’s CNN-hosted Republican debate in Houston, Texas, candidate Marco Rubio finally took on leading contender Donald Trump, face-to-face, about Israel. Referring to Trump’s statements that he would be a “neutral broker” between Israel and the Palestinians, Rubio argued, “The Palestinians are not a real estate deal, Donald.”
“A deal is a deal,” Trump replied.
“A deal is not a deal when you’re dealing with terrorists,” Rubio said.
This is what Rubio knows in a nutshell — something the Obama administration has ignored for the past seven years, and not only in relation to the Palestinian Authority. It is a key reason, though by no means an exclusive one, for getting the Democrats out of the White House and State Department.
Rubio has been consistent about his grasp of why Israel and America are both the globe’s good guys and natural allies.
At a rally on Wednesday night, in the lead-up to the final debate before Super Tuesday on March 1, Rubio was inspired and inspiring on this point.
“We’re going to have a policy of moral clarity,” he said. “I’ll give you a perfect example — Israel. Israel is the only pro-American free-enterprise democracy in the entire Middle East. I’ll put it to you this way: If there were more Israels in the Middle East — more pro-American, free-enterprise democracies — the world would be so much safer.”
He also attacked the UN for being “obsessed” with the Jewish state. “Every week, they’ve got new resolutions condemning Israel,” he said, using this to illustrate the “new face of anti-Semitism in the world.”
As for the Palestinians, Rubio said, “They teach little kids — five-year-olds — that it’s a glorious thing to kill Jews.”
Indeed, he emphasized, “The Palestinians don’t want a deal, [and] they’ve already said, ‘We want to destroy Israel.’ So what are you going to negotiate? The rate of the destruction? The date of the destruction? We will not be an impartial advocate when it comes to the issue of Israel. When I’m president, we’re going to take sides. We are going to be on Israel’s side.”
Even before Rubio announced he would be running for America’s highest office, however, he made impassioned speeches on Israel’s behalf.
Two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected in March 2015 — nearly a year ago — Rubio delivered a 15-minute tribute to Israel on the floor of the Senate. Netanyahu had won by a surprise landslide, after polls predicted a very different outcome. Yet he was still under attack at home and abroad for asserting there would be no two-state solution on his watch.
“[Netanyahu’s] right,” Rubio stated unapologetically. “The conditions don’t exist. But first, let’s go through the history. In 2000 at Camp David, Israel offered the Palestinian Authority nearly all of the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and Gaza. And the Palestinians said no. In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. You know what that is today? A place [from] where they launch rockets against Israel. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza. You know what that is today? A place that they launch rockets against Israel from. In 2008, Israel offered the PA, again, nearly all of the West Bank — Judea and Samaria — and all of eastern Jerusalem. The PA said no. What about the Palestinian record? … About 6% of the Palestinian budget is diverted to pay the salaries of … terrorists, of people who have blown up centers and killed civilians, including Americans. And they are being paid salaries and benefits, including with money from donors, such as the U.S., Great Britain, Norway and Denmark.”
He then listed ways in which the PA envisions and educates its people to hope for a world without Israel, quoting blatant anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist passages from a Palestinian school book and the PA-run press.
“And these are the people that we’re pressuring [Israel] to cut a peace deal with,” he said, referring to people who say “that there is no such thing as the Jewish people; that any method of destroying them is valid.”
Rubio concluded: “No people on earth want peace more than Israel. No people have suffered more at the hands of terrorism than the people of Israel. … If America doesn’t stand with Israel, who would we stand with?”
Hearing Trump — whose consistently soaring popularity is due to Americans being rightly fed up with the totalitarianism of the left-wing “political correctness” that has been corroding American power, exceptionalism and free-market economics — assert even-handedness solely in relation to Israel is cause for serious concern.
If the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians were a real-estate problem, even the Democrats would have been able to solve it. In fact, if it were an issue of dividing up plots of land, the Arabs of Palestine would have had a state starting in 1947. Indeed, if killing or kicking the Jews out had not been the true bone of contention all along, the Palestinians today could and would be leading the kind of normal lives that Israelis take for granted.
Ruthie Blum is the web editor of The Algemeiner (algemeiner.com).
Bear Klein Said:
😛 😛 😛
How profound does one need to be to come up with results like these:
bernard ross Said:
all that great knowledge in Israel and what is the result: a schizophrenic, stockhom syndrome, suicidal inability to agree on the most basic of existential issues…. Jews in danger for decades who cannot even agree on what the danger is… It appears to me that knowledge is not the problem… unless it is the problem of too much knowledge obfuscating the forest from the trees. Trump knows enough to clearly express that the muslims are the problem….. the Israelis do not know that…… they cannot see how absurd it is to attempt to seek treaties with lunatics who teach their children, shamelessly, that Jews are sons of apes and pigs. Israel ignores that this is the prime cause of the problems proving that there can be no sustainable solution until that core issue is acknowledged and dealt with. Trump identified the problem and and much needed solution….. that is the same problem in Israel….. DUH?????????????????
“its the muslims, stupid”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Israel avoids the issue out of fear and patronization….. Israel needs to learn from Trump not to be afraid of upsetting the apple cart.
@ ArnoldHarris:Israel does need to speak for Israel that is well agreed!
@ Felix Quigley:
Felix, you are so correct about this point which you raised in your most recent comment, that you deserve acknowledgement for your concise and accurate discernment. I have been attempting to make the same point, but I never have been as clear as you in making the case for the imperative of self-generated independence for the State of Israel.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
BEST of TRUMP – Al Sharpton says he would leave the USA if Trump was President. Since it is safe to say he would not move to Israel that is a plus for Trump.
Trump must have jumped 5 to 10 points in the polls when Sharpton made this statement.
On the downside Jimmy Carter prefers Trump to Cruz because he is so malleable. Jimmy could live with Trump. How many similar positions have they had?
Trump made no challenge to the Jewish State he barely knows anything about it and the middle east.
Yes he certainly appeals to American Nationalism. To say he is talking about Jewish Nationalism, huh? He does not know who the players in the middle east are let alone have profound thoughts beyond we will bomb the hell out ISIS (good sentiment). Trump is closer to a Pat Buchanan (Nationalist who would prefer isolationism).
I maintain my position on Trump that I took a long time ago. He is the first politician to get to the heart of Islam. He identified it as a very violent religion/ideology.
Following the massacres on American soil he made the call to stop Muslim immigration into America. Cruz refused to support him on this using weasel words to avoid following Trump. The whole of the rest of the Establishment (Democratic and Republican) rounded on Trump. That basic collision remains to this very day.
But everybody on Israpundit has missed the importance of this event for Israel and Jews. Trump is speaking from the standpoint of being an American nationalist. He does not speak for Israel. He expects Israel to speak for itself.
But if Trump was banning Muslims from entering America what does that imply for Israeli leadership since 1920?
What does it also imply for British politics in the Mandate from 1920 to 1947 carried on in its deep Antisemitism to the present day?
This is the real division.
There are those Jews like Caroline Glick who despite masses of verbiage still at bottom sees Jews as the victims, the eternal victims.
Trump is saying the opposite which tends to infuriate Jews like Glick.
Trump says I will act against Islam. What are you the Jews going to do about Islam also?
Oh dear oh dear oh dearie me says the prim Ms Glick…this will never do. We have to be the victims. We cannot present to the world a platform of expelling Muslims which leads Glick into this crazy one-sate “solution” of a state with a huge Muslim minority.
That challenge thrown down by Trump to Jews to really start building their Jewish state leads this section of Jews like Glick into an otherwise inexplicable fury against Trump.
By asserting his American nationalism, which in this case and linked to the Constitution of September 17 1787 is entirely positive, Trump opens the door to the assertion of Jewish nationalism also.
But these useless and paralysed/redundant leaders cannot walk through that open door. It is lamentable.