Bush: Spinning us to death

Yuval Brandstetter MD is taken aback by by Michel Oren’s The Bush Doctrine,

Dear Dr Oren

I am in awe of your benevolent interpretation of the Bush Doctrine as expressed in the July 16th speech in the white-house. If truth be told, you say, the President has placed the onus of proof of state-worthiness upon the Palestinians and their sponsors in the Arab world, while couching his remarks with useful suggestions that will assuage Israeli anxieties of being forced into the hot-seat of the Auschwitz borders as defined by Abba Eban.

Reading into the Bush doctrine is a complex affair. So many conflicting emotions and considerations are interwoven into the fabric prepared by a bevy of speech writers and experts, it is hard to tease out the fine titanium line that makes a bunch of pearls into a necklace. In this case, a noose, for this is what the Bush doctrine really is. So let us read into those some of those excerpts and lend them a dose of reality,

“extremists have responded with acts of aggression and terror. In Gaza.”

The president has a fervent wish to create the impression that Hamas is some minority extremist faction that has taken a surprised peaceful population and parliament by storm. In fact, the opposite is true. Hamas is the duly elected Majority in the Palestinian government, while the Fatah faction headed by the chairman (President? Of what?) nom- du- guerre Abu-Mazen, is actually the Minority who refused to give up power though it was voted out of office. What President Bush term Extremism is the popular choice of the Arabs residing in the Holy Land and vested with voting powers. Hamas responded with aggression against the renegade former regime which was voted out of office and held on to powers illegally. Hamas therefore is the legal government whereas Fatah are the insurgents. This misrepresentation is intentional, letting the renegade leadership, that is Abbass and Fayyad, off the democratic hook. Further, he President is denying the Arabs in the Holy Land their democratic choice, which is Hamas, thereby nullifying his own professed pro-democracy policies.

Along with this death-defying piece of political jugglery the President places his trust in two neighboring states, Jordan and Egypt. Interestingly both are ruled by despotic regimes which have never held true democratic elections. Both have denied the very same Arabs the President terms “Palestinians” any National Rights upon the very same territories they previously occupied. Again, demanding the Israel endorse that which their Arab brethren denied is political crassness at its worst.

The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank today is a struggle between extremists and moderates.
This view is probably the most fecklessly mendacious statement of the whole speech. Everything in political speeches and actions of the leaders of both factions, the so-called “extremists” and the so-called “moderates”, shows they are of the same mind when it comes to the Jewish State. Liquidation by murder. Detection of the differences between them requires a fine-tuned microscope, amounting to terms of hatred and genocidal ideation, not to substance. Like the difference between the SS and the SD. By making this differentiation The president takes what little credibility he has with persons of reason, and jettisons it away.

The vision of a peaceful state called Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people

Two obfuscations are inherent to this sentence. One, a Palestinian State, one that is comprised of a majority of Palestinians is already in existence. It is called TransJordan, or Jordan for short, and draws its legitimacy from the same source as does the Jewish State Israel, the British mandate. Overlooking this reality is disingenuous at best, and politically crass at worst. Moreover, the existence of a Palestinian People as a national entity is an open question since the only definition of Palestinian is Jewish, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of Jewish Palestinian ID cards issued by his Britannic Majesty King George. Therefore, creating a second Palestinian homeland in the West bank is tantamount to the denial of The Jewish Homeland’s right to exist, since the West Bank of the River Jordan ends only in the Mediterranean shoreline. Moreover, if a second Palestinian state is created west of the Jordan, fairness requires that a second Jewish state be formed East of the Jordan.

In reality, the Palestinians already have a second Palestinian state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, in Gaza, as pointed out by the President himself. Requiring a third Palestinian state in the heartland of Israel is patently ridiculous. And then again it may not be.

They (Israel) should be confident that the United States will never abandon its commitment to the security of Israel as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people.

This remark requires some careful thinking. It is hard to remember an instant post the Korean war, that the United States did not abandon a friend unable to fend for himself. All American interventions have culminated in ignominious, sometimes hurried withdrawals, especially in the Middle East. American ability to protect their own forces in Iraq is in serious doubt and democratic congress would rather withdraw from Iraq now than later. American inability to halt the inexorably belligerent path of the Islamic republic of Iran towards Nuclear weapons is telling. Further, the President does not specify where this Jewish State is that he is willing to commit the security of is located. For if this State is not in its own heartland, nor able to hold on to its own Capital Jerusalem, then its viability, according to CIA documents, is in serious jeopardy. If Jerusalem, Hevron, Beth-Lehem, Shechem are not the Jewish Homeland then what is? Washington DC? Ashkelon?

They must guarantee that a Palestinian state is viable and contiguous. And they must lead to a territorial settlement, with mutually agreed borders reflecting previous lines and current realities

A Palestinian state that is viable and contiguous already exists, on the East Bank. But for the sake of argument let us consider that Second Palestinian State west of the Jordan which is to be contiguous, inclusive of Jerusalem, with Gaza. Surprise surprise, someone has already beaten President Bush to that vision for it is the Partition Plan of 1947. Essentially what the President demands of Israel, in exchange for his dubious commitment to the Jewish State is an adoption of that partition plan, with minor adjustments and territorial settlements, and current realities. Let us remember that in the last implementation of the Partition Plan Israel was placed under an arms embargo, and again after Israel defended itself from Iraqi Nukes.

Let us also consider other interesting realities. The majority of the Arabs living in the West Bank live in territories west of the Green Line demarcating the so-called West Bank. In fact, the 1947 partition plan addresses exactly that reality, and provides for it, by making Israel into a non-contiguous Luxembourg. In addition the Negev and the Galilee are 50 percent Palestinian-occupied, that too is a reality. Those realities infallibly lead to a previous partition plan, of the Peel Commission 1936, large enough for Andorra. Now, all those partition plans were rejected by the Arabs (no one called them Palestinians then) and led to severe protracted blood-shed. Now, which of theses “realities” does the President allude to in his speech? Obviously reality lies in the eye of the beholder, and interpretations abound.

A 16-year-old girl in Gaza City told a reporter, “The gunmen want to destroy the culture of our fathers and grandfathers. We will not allow them to do it.” She went on, “I’m saying it’s enough killing. Enough.”

Let me be a cynic and say that the girls did not specify which killing she had had enough of. The killing between the armed faction within the Arab terrorist organizations, or the killing of Jewish civilians living in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip. Experience shows Gazan women and children have always joyously participated in all designs of killing Jews at random, and have always exalted when the killing Jews exceeded a certain bench-mark. Or the killing of Americans for that matter. Therefore I find this quote more than slightly disingenuous, and its use by the American President populist and irrelevant to current realities.

Prime Minister Olmert has also made clear that Israel’s future lies in developing areas like the Negev and Galilee — not in continuing occupation of the West Bank

Israel has a clear path. Prime Minister Olmert must continue to release Palestinian tax revenues to the government of Prime Minster Fayyad This is a reality that Prime Minister Sharon recognized, as well

We now come to the most important excerpts of all. The president assures us that it is not the United States, or himself, that is placing these demands of suicidal self-liquidation upon the Jewish State, but rather Israel’s Prime Ministers make those commitments of their own cognizance. It is the Jews themselves who place the President in the unenviable position of calling for all the steps necessary for the liquidation of the Jewish State. Don’t blame me, says the President, blame yourself. Blame your elected leadership, both in Israel and organized Jewry inn the United States. Your own Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert force me to place the Onus of proving Israel is State-worthy upon you. Dear Jews, do not place the Onus for your misfortunes upon others, the United States, the Quartet, Quintet, or the Almighty. Place it squarely upon your own shoulders and bear the burden of self-inflicted disasters.

What then is the titanium string holding all those pearls of foreign policy together? Essentially each and every point the President made (except for the blame placed on Israeli leaders) is either mendacious or misrepresentative of truth. Israel is called upon to call a foe a friend, to concede its own crucially essential high-ground to its liquidators, to believe patent lies, to finance its own destruction, while the Palestinians are asked to comport themselves nicely until Israel’s preparations for self-destruct- in-sixty-seconds are firmly in place. Is the string composed of America beholden to the Saudi regime and its Wahabbistic ideation? Is it America beholden to its own oil addiction? Is it the inability to reach moral clarity and equate the incessant attacks upon the territorial integrity of United States with the constant attacks upon the territorial integrity of the only Jewish homeland, only 70 miles wide, smaller than Lake Michigan? Or is it acquiescence to the moral fog Israel has created around its own legitimacy? Probably all of the above. My cynic choice is the latter, since no American President prior to Bush has ever actually tried to force this ticking grenade, a terrorist Arab State, another Iraq, another Lebanon, another Somalia, down Israel’s willing throat.

Consequently, should another democratically elected government of Israel decide upon a different course, making it clear that no foreign sovereignty will be tolerated west of the Jordan River, then the United States will respect that policy as much as it respects the current one. Publicly, the United States may not endorse such positions. Publicly the Unite States will make statements regarding the right of the Palestinian People to a territory where thy can express their National aspirations. Israel’s response should be that those aspirations are laudable and must be respected, outside the Jewish Homeland. Perhaps in California, or Montana, or heaven-forbid in Jordan, but not inside the Holy Land.