This article was written before we learned of What Obama demanded of Israel for the veto and speech.
Israel has nothing to lose, everything to gain from going on the offensive. Our friends in US Congress have shown us a path that lays open to us to follow.
[..]
Rather than wash its hands of this loser’s game and move its policies to a diplomatic battlefield where it has a chance of actually winning, the Netanyahu government is playing out its losing hand as if what Israel does makes a difference. Even worse, the government is refusing to consider crafting a strategy for victory that it can advance outside the hostile confines of the UN.
This is not simply a failure of imagination. It is a failure of cognition. It is a failure to notice the significance of what is already happening.
Israel’s friends in the US Congress have put forward two measures that pave the way for just such a strategy for victory. By failing to recognize the opportunity they represent for Israel, the government is showing a distressing lack of competence.
The government’s behavior is probably due to force of habit. Since the initiation of the phony peace process with the PLO 18 years ago, at their best, Israel’s governments have justified the Jewish state’s control over territories it won control over in the 1967 Six Day War on the basis of our security needs. Without the Jordan Valley, Israel is vulnerable to foreign invasion from the east. Without Gush Etzion to Jerusalem’s south and Gush Adumim to its north, the capital is vulnerable to attack. Without overall Israeli security control over Judea and Samaria, Israel’s population centers are vulnerable to terrorist attacks. And so on and so forth.
All of these statements are accurate. But they are also defensive. While Israel has been defending its right to security, the Palestinians have been on the offensive, arguing that all the land that Israel took control over from Jordan in 1967 belongs to them by ancestral right. And so for the past 18 years, the conflict has been framed as a dispute between the Palestinians’ rights and Israel’s security requirements.
Like its willingness to place itself at the UN’s mercy, Israel’s willingness to accept this characterization of the Palestinian conflict with Israel has doomed its cause to repeated and ever-escalating failure. For if the land belongs to the Palestinians, then whether or not their control of the land endangers Israel is irrelevant.
This is the reason the US’s support for Israel’s right to defensible borders has been reduced from support for perpetual Israeli control over unified Jerusalem and some 50 percent of Judea and Samaria in 1993, to US support for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines – including the partition of Jerusalem – in 2011. You can define “defensive needs” down. Defining rights down is a more difficult undertaking.
The irony here is that Israel’s sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria are ironclad while the Palestinians’ are flimsy. As the legal heir to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, Israel is the legal sovereign of Judea and Samaria.
Moreover, Israel’s historic rights to the cradle of Jewish civilization are incontrovertible.
And yet, because Israel has not wanted to impede on the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians, for the past 18 years it has avoided mentioning its rights and instead focused solely on its security requirements. Consequently, outside of Bible-literate Christian communities, today most people are comfortable parroting the totally false Palestinian claim that Jews have no rights to Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem. They further insist that rights to these areas belong exclusively to the Palestinians who did not even exist as a distinct national community in 1967.
As for Israel’s allies in the US Congress, they have responded to the PLO’s UN statehood gambit with two important legislative initiatives. First Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a bill calling for the US to end its financial support for the Palestinian Authority and drastically scale-back its financial support for the UN if the UN upgrades the PLO’s membership status in any way. Ros- Lehtinen’s bill shows Israel that there is powerful support for an Israeli offensive that will make the Palestinians pay a price for their diplomatic aggression.
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill is constructive for two reasons. First, it makes the Palestinians pay for their adversarial behavior. This will make them think twice before again escalating their diplomatic warfare against Israel. Second, it begins an overdue process of delegitimizing the Palestinian cause, which as is now clear is inseparable from the cause of Israel’s destruction.
Were Israel to follow Ros-Lehtinen’s lead and cut off its transfer of tax revenues to the PA, and indeed, stop collecting taxes on the PA’s behalf, it would be advancing Israel’s interests in several ways.
It would remind the Palestinians that they need Israel far more than Israel needs them.
Israel would make them pay a price for their diplomatic aggression.
Israel would end its counterproductive policy of giving the openly hostile PA an automatic seal of approval regardless of its treatment of Israel.
Israel would diminish the financial resources at the PA’s disposal for the advance of its war against Israel.
Finally, Israel would pave the way for the disbandment of the PA and its replacement by another authority in Judea and Samaria.
And this brings us to the second congressional initiative taken in anticipation of the PLO’s UN statehood gambit. Earlier this month, Rep. Joe Walsh and 30 co-sponsors issued a resolution supporting Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria.
While annexation sounds like a radical formula, the fact is that Israel already implemented a similar move twice when it applied Israeli law to Jerusalem and to the Golan Heights. And the heavens didn’t fall in either case. Indeed, the situation on the ground was stabilized.
Moreover, just as Israel remains willing to consider ceding these territories in the framework of a real peace with its neighbors, so the application of Israeli law to Judea and Samaria would not prevent these areas from being ceded to another sovereign in the framework of a peace deal.
And while not eliminating the prospects of a future peace, by applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria, Israel would reverse one of the most pernicious effects of the 18-year-old phony peace process: the continuous erosion of international recognition of Israel’s sovereign rights to these areas.
With each passing round of failed negotiations, offers that Israel made but were rejected were not forgotten. Rather they formed the starting point for the next round of failed negotiations. So while then-prime minister Ehud Barak for instance claimed that his offer to cede the Temple Mount was contingent on the signing of a peace treaty, when the so-called Middle East Quartet issued its road map plan for peace, Barak’s ostensibly canceled offer was the starting point of negotiations.
By applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria, Israel would change the baseline for future negotiations in a manner that enhances its bargaining position.
Perhaps most important, by applying its laws to the areas, Israel would demonstrate that it finally understands that rights need to be asserted by deeds, not just by words, if they are to be taken seriously.
On Thursday, The New York Times published a news story/analysis that essentially rewrote the history of the last two-and-a-half years. The paper ignored Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s open admission that US President Barack Obama compelled him to radicalize his own policies towards Israel when Obama demanded that Israel abrogate Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as a precondition for negotiations.
This was a precondition the Palestinians themselves had never demanded. And by making it a US demand, Obama ended any possibility of resuming negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
By the Times’ telling, Obama is a victim of the combined forces of an intransigent Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby that holds sway in Congress. These nefarious forces made it impossible for Obama to bring the sort of pressure to bear on Israel that would have placated the Arab world and paved the way for a peaceful settlement. And in the absence of such presidential power, Israel and its lobbyists wrecked Obama’s reputation in the Arab world.
The lesson that Israel should take from the Times’ borderline anti-Semitic historical revisionism and conspiracy theories is twofold. First, Israel will never be rewarded for its concessions. The Times and its fellow anti-Israel activists don’t care that since 2009 – and indeed since 1993 – Israel has made one concession after another only to be rewarded time after time with ever-escalating demands for more concessions. The Times and its fellow Israel-baiters have a story of Israeli conspiracies and bad faith to tell. And they will tell that tale regardless of objective facts and observable reality.
This brings us to the second lesson of the Times article, specifically, and the experience at the UN generally. Israel has nothing to lose and everything to gain from going on the offensive. Our friends in the US Congress have shown us a path that lays open to us to follow. And we must follow it. Since we’ll be blamed no matter what we do, we have no excuse for not doing what is best for us.
caroline@carolineglick.com
“Almost never“? — really?
Have you read his book? [A Durable Peace: Israel & Its Place Among the Nations]
Well of course. But that goes without saying
— always.
I still chuckle & snort every time I think about Samson Blinded being attributed to BB. Good thing I didn’t read it with a mouthful of coffee at the time. Computer screen would’ve wound up looking like a Jackson Pollock painting.
Irony? 🙂 hardly, I oppose BB on the merits according to what he has done in the past which is empirically measurable and what I suspect he will do in the future based upon his past and what he seems to be doing in the present. That said I give no politician or public personality any positive credit until they show the are deserving of my support.“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” “Cease ye from man, in whose nostrils is a breath; for how little is he to be accounted!”
Shoher changes his opinions like the weather but here and there he says what I agree with and like. BB almost never. Sharon, Olmert, Rabin, Peres and Begin almost never and if you think I am just anti BB my comments and the rest are archived.
Capdau veh Chashdau…
Hunh?
His father didn’t want him
to marry a Jewish girl?
— or didn’t want him marrying an older woman?
— or didn’t want him to marry while imprisoned?
What, exactly, was it that was “[a]gainst his father’s desires”?
“Evasion” of what?
What “horrible consequences” do you anticipate?
What “subterfuge”?
What “trap”?
You don’t see, Felix, how annexation of [“extending Israeli law” into] the heartland provinces would concretely facilitate and expedite the very destruction of Fatah & Hamas that you urge?
You don’t see how annexation would constitute a necessary first step toward accomplishing that liquidation?
Apart from the fact that people typically use his name to give intellectual authority to the assertion? — while it makes Einstein himself sound like something of a dolt? — why, no, doesn’t matter at all. . . .
Normally I would have ignored it.
However, upon reflecting on how distrustful of BB you are:
while you are nonetheless inordinately fond of quoting Mr Shoher
— I just couldn’t suppress the giggle over the irony.
This was so hard to understand?
I can see what distubs you in Greenfields article. He bashes the left and the communists from his opening to his close.
That said, what do you disagree with?
It is related that the chief Rabbi of Moscow, Rabbi Jacob Maze, once appeared before Trotsky to plead on the behalf of the Russian Jews. Trotsky answered him, as he had done on various occasions, that he was a Communist and did not consider himself a Jew. To this Rabbi Maze replied: “Trotsky makes the revolutions, and the Bronsteins pay the bills.”
It is related that the chief Rabbi of Moscow, Rabbi Jacob Maze, once appeared before Trotsky to plead on the behalf of the Russian Jews. Trotsky answered him, as he had done on various occasions, that he was a Communist and did not consider himself a Jew.
To this Rabbi Maze replied: “Trotsky makes the revolutions, and the Bronsteins pay the bills.”
Stalin’s 1930’s purges. Of the 10 million killed in the purges approximately 500,000 were Jews and made up a majority of the politically prominent of those who were executed. Jews made up at that time 1.7% of the Soviet population.
Trotsky referred to himself not as a Jew, but as an Internationalist.
Trotsky fought with his father and his way of life. Against his father’s desires he married a Jewish girl, Alexandra Lvovna Sokolovskaya, who was six years his senior, while his was imprisoned for his activist activities. She bore him two daughters but later on he abandoned her and their children. He later took Natalia Sedova as his common-law wife in 1903. She gave him two sons who used her last name so they not be identified with him.
Trotsky’s relations with his parents remained hostile, but during his years of exile they would go to visit him. His mother died in 1910 at the age of sixty. When the October Revolution came, Trotsky’s father was a relatively wealthy man, only to be ruined by the revolution. Yet his son would not come to his aid, commenting that “my father has no shoes and with so many people around who have no shoes, how could I possible request shoes for my father?” Deserted by his son, he was forced to fend for himself in his old age. When his father died and requested to be buried with a Jewish burial, Trotsky refused to bury him in the Jewish cemetery, instead had him buried in the garden of his house. This has been widely regarded as a clear action by Trotsky to openly exhibit his disdain for his Jewish heritage.
Felix,Is there anything I have written here that is incorrect ? Do not expect Jews to embrace once again Communism, We bronsteins have already paid to high a price for the folly of another generation.
This elitish Israeli bankruptcy is showed very clearly in the attack of Daniel Greenfield on secularism in general, and secularism in Israel. Is it not time that somebody takes on Greenfield and opposes his transcendental deviance. Greenfield is totally divisive. rather than uniting the Israeli people behind a programme as 4international seeks to do, he embarks on this utter divisiveness, which reminds me of the Catholic Church and the Vatican!!!
Felix, Felix,
Reading specialized management scholastic presentations may help you a bit, but in all honesty, I doubt it. I am a fomer McGovern Democrat, not an “elitist” by any stretch of imagination. Non feverish imagination that is. After my 50’s I understood that Ortega & Gasset, on his “La Rebelion de las masas”, nook remart that “the false coin exists beacause the real one was there before”, had qyute an extended meaning. Your remarks seem to fit somewhere there. 🙂
Fellow. Yer mixing cocktails including “elite” juice, socialist revolution extract, floating on golem like perambulations and no matter what else you dump in that silly cauldron it will not help you.
The bankruptcy of the Israeli elite is really something to behold. And the bankruptcy of those who cover for this elite.
One thing I have learned about this Jewish elite over the recent some 30 years is the sophisticated bullshitters that the elite produces.
That this bankrupt elite “Quality decision Making Systems” well now I have heard it all from this sophisticated and TREACHEROUS elite who spew out their defeatist vomit on sites here there and everywhere.
let me put it bluntly to you
Number 1 necessity for jews is to establish their independence, int he first place to establish their independence from the US Government, with all of its treacherous Imperialist implications (See Libya)
without taking that step israel is toast and Jews unfortunately are too.
In essence the comparision between netanyahu and Glick is this
netanyahu is tying the interests of the Jews to the UN, to Powers, to Obama
Glick is tying the interests of the Jews TO THE US CONGRESS
the position of Glick to call for Israeli law to run into Judea and Samaria is an evasion with horrible consequences. Israel is in a war situation and the very first step is to destroy Fatah and Hamas and to establish the dictatorship of Israel and the Jews in all of that land, not weasel words about extending law, a subterfuge which is a trap set by Glick and by this Jewish elite for the Jewish people.
the second step which goes along with breaking from America is for Israel to throw everything into the destruction of the Iranian Nuclear Bomb facility and nothing else matters except these two things
I am speaking here from the traditions of Leon trotsky and the struggles which he fought. I am a socialist revolutionary and the urgency is to defend the Jews as a people
Read it and ignored it why haven’t you too?
Does it really matter whether Einstein authored the quote or not?
The record says otherwise, but don’t let yourself be deterred by that.
After all, what’s a few facts — between friends?
The operative word here is “attributed.”
Actually Einstein would never have been so illogical — let alone, sloppy — as to state the matter in the way that is so often ascribed to him on the subject; viz., as insanity’s very essence.
If indeed he made a remark containing those elements, he would be more likely to have said that doing the same thing over & over again while expecting different results is EVIDENCE of insanity:
since there are so many other — altogether different — evidences of insanity.
Compulsive repetition of the same behavior in expectation of a different outcome is only one such paradigm for insanity — not the effective (or exclusive) ‘definition’ of the phenomenon.
Are you reading this, Yamit?
Too funny. . . .
Ok, Thomas, let’s have your evidence, if you pease, that “Ovadyah Shoher” is in fact BB.
Glick is gutless. She parades as a patriot, except when push comes to shove, she suds up BB’s back and goes rub-a-dub-dub. She has no experience in the real world, no military service, never taken a risk in her life. She’s as phony as a $20 Rolex.
The probability, (a matematics subject), of inacuracies exist in all fields of endeavour yet, QUALITY DECISION MAKING SYSTEMS include formulations to reduce that to acceptable? levels.
The University of Houston in the 80’s but before them many other researchers going back to the 60’s and earlier, produced the basis for this DM tool.
My experience with it is very positive.
What happens when the DMP leads to errors? It leads to errors at a vastly lesser rate than undiciplined DM. But such is life.
Faulty (QD)M=
What is the result if the QD is inaccurate, faulty and totally wrong? What happens then if our political decision makers continues to base the M, on such QD, where the Q is questionable and unreliable?
Caroline is right on the money as usual. Push aside the big lie, that the Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the land, and the
truth of Israel’s claim shines through. It will take strong Jewish Leadership to pull this off, but when the world sees that the
Israelis are serious about their position they will give support. Oh yes, a good selection to lead is the Manhigut Yehudit faction
of the Likud party. For those reading this who may not be familiar I am talking about Moshe Feiglin, et. al.
QUALITY DECISION MAKING SYSTEMS have been utilized by the best trained strategists, planners and processors for about three decades. Please visit INTERNET SITES to read more detailed information or to select various scholastic presentations on the subject.
We had the privilege of being trained into the discipline while performing my work for the US DoD Military Avionics Programs as a Senior/Fellow Engineer.
Strategic QDM Boards included Senior and Fellow level Staff or Corporate Board Members.
I have been following the actions of Mr. Netanyahu Staff and his own.
The uncanny accuracy of his/their actions and the timing evidenced so far makes me believe that the small Cabinet at leas makes extensive use of such systems. One can easily identify solid Board members and those not part of that.
Having said that, it must be made perfectly clear that much as such systems provide guidelines to minimize biases, that is virtually impossible to prevent.
We may not “like” from the gut up some or all milestone decisions but the game plan developed must be adhered to and adjusted as the system provides for.
Certainly one may want to see certain actions not to take place, but the truth is that the QDM based Plans must take priority.
The QDM Board activities are not directed for anything but the decided upon effects.
Not necesarily evident as seen by the general public but quite telling to those able to discern what caused the decisions made.
Personaly, I do not like some of what I see, but in the other hand find it fascinating how Mr. Netanyahu and his small Cabinet is proceeding.
I sense victory being now possible and that is why Soros, Greenberg, Clinton, Barak, Beinish, the NIF and others are aiming straight to the core.
Glick served in the IDF. Anything she did there, she was ordered to do from higher up. When she was released, and free to speak her own mind, she did. I don’t think anyone can seriously accuse her of being pro-Arab.
Hi, Yam.
The most gleeful praise I’ve ever seen Glick give of Netanyahu, was,
“He’s the Prime Minister we have”
She’s no Bibi groupie, just pragmatic.
Did Caroline Glick have a hand in drafting the “OSLO” documents?
I think I read a rewference to this fact on debbie schussel.
I would wish to know what was her role and what she wrote. Anybody?
Bravo! Well said.
To understand this situation best one should read the book written by Netanyahu under the name “Obadiah Shoher” titled: Samson Blinded.
It is his blueprint to make Israel into the only superpower in the Middle East, mostly relying on (1) popular uprisings against the current regimes (2008)within the Arab world, and (2) increased brutality against non-Jews by Israeli Police and the IDF.
His plan to expand the borders of Israel to about five times its current size cannot be achieved by negotiation.
No one says it more clearly than CG.
While Israel has been defending its right to security, the Palestinians have been on the offensive, arguing that all the land that Israel took control over from Jordan in 1967 belongs to them by ancestral right. And so for the past 18 years, the conflict has been framed as a dispute between the Palestinians’ rights and Israel’s security
By avoiding the main issue, that of Israel’s LEGAL RIGHTS, Israel is distorting the real issue, thus affirming the Palestinian’s claim of their rights to the land.
The government’s silence is tantamount to confirming the lie.
It has nothing to do with my feelings towards BB and everything to do with Glick’s feelings towards BB. She never said in the past when she wanted to criticize Olmert or Sharon etc. She was specific in naming ea. She was in the past an advisor in BB’s government in 96′ and I assume she has certain personal feelings towards him which appears to protect him personally when she criticizes our government.
In Israel, foreign policy is made by the PM and relations with America and the peace process are not placed within the purview of the FM but retained under the sole purview of the PM. If anything the government is nothing more than a rubber stamp of the policy of the PM and this relates to all past PM’s not just BB. My point therefore is that she has a block when it comes to BB and will not give him the same critical analysis as she did with Sharon and Olmert and other past PM’s. Last year she came close to actual criticism of BB but never closed the circle as with other politicians.
Nobody for instance speaks of the Israeli government when we mean the PM.. We all call a spade a spade and you yourself are no different, so why challenge my contention when you know it to be true? (She meant BB but said Israeli government). We can argue over why she won’t name BB personally responsible but not her obvious obfuscation, or yours for that matter.
Yamit, you are being foolish. We all know your pathological hatred of Netanyahu. When Glick however, criticizes Israel or the government and calls on Israel to have the courage to take a path to victory, people who have common sense (which excludes you when it comes to Netanyahu) understand she includes Israel’s PM, Netsanyahu.
No Carolyn it is not the Netanyahu government it is BB and until you can say it in print and lay the blame where it belongs no matter how correct most of your analysis is, by giving BB personally a pass, none of your suggestions will be taken seriously especially by BB. The attack mode must first be directed against the enabler of our passivity and appeasement, Only BB. He only reacts to pressure and the threat of being brought down.