None of us are ever likely to be on the inside and be privileged, or should I say cursed, to know exactly what outside pressures Prime Minister Netanyahu has had to face while deciding what kind of government to form. To most of us it appeared so simple, gather over sixty seats with right leaning to far right wing parties and include a minimal number of parties who might go weak under pressure. That is the sad part, that if Israel chooses the governance best for her that we are assured that the world will come down on us heavy and hard demanding that we bend this way and that until we make a Philadelphia pretzel look like a piece of straight bread. But it is easy to suspect that things were somewhat different this time as one of the few friends Israel has depended upon has turned into her greatest threat in far too many ways. We can all assume that President Obama made it very clear that if Prime Minister Netanyahu went ahead and formed that sixty-one or sixty-seven or whatever number right-leaning government that he would face an adversarial Washington which would not guarantee support in all the usual places. We all know what that threat means and what usual place that President Obama references, the United Nations Security Council. What is left out of that formula is that thus far the United States has not faced the need to exercise their veto purely to protect Israel as the usual Arab state demands either never reached the Security Council or failed to attain the necessary nine votes in favor despite their belief that had it in spades when they presented their petition. We heard some of the caterwauling over the past week if we listened to the wind which carried with it demands that Netanyahu make a demonstrative demonstration of his dedications and whole-hearted support for the two state solution which the Europeans and President Obama and company hold so dear. What may have escaped us was the real meaning of those threats and demands emanating from Secretary of State Kerry, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, State Department spokespersons such as Jennifer Psaki, and President Obama who may have even pressured Netanyahu directly in a personal phone call made necessary due to the reason that it is within weeks, months, years, centuries or millennia to the Iran Agreement, Israeli elections, solar eclipse, arrival of Halley’s Comet or convergence of the planets with the center of the galaxy so President Obama must not appear to permit any public meetings between he and Bibi though he can call and berate him endlessly to toe the line and support the two-state-solution. All this pressure was around one single, but likely unspoken demand, as speaking its name would be uncomely, though why that might matter now is beyond me. That demand was for Prime Minister Netanyahu form a broad coalition and a unity government with Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni and reward these coequal partners with top cabinet spots such as Justice for Livni as she was so effective in carrying out the Obama principles in the last government, and Herzog to get Foreign Minister and their other highest members to get the Defense Minister and be granted complete control over any building to be approved for Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria. The people placed in that last position need only have one requirement, the ability to say ‘לא’ or ‘no’ in English. This was the real reason Prime Minister Netanyahu kept vacillating and putting off the natural right leaning parties and particularly Jewish Home as I can guarantee you that Naftali Bennett’s name figured prominently in President Obama’s demands for people he refused to find comfort should they be included in any coalition.
Even by American standards the interference by President Obama and his Administration in Israeli politics, at levels even exceeds those of President Clinton or anybody before him. The interference by providing election assistance had been done previously most notably by President Clinton and Democrat Party assistance for the Labor Party in Israel has gotten to the point I’m waiting for them to have joint conventions in the future, especially if an Israeli election can be scheduled to fit in relative close proximity to an American elections cycle, preferably a Presidential election. I can see it now, the newly nominated Democrat President with the newly chosen Vice Presidential candidate to his right and the selected Labor Party leader on his left with all three with their hands held together raised in a sign of might and unity of purpose. Why not, is that any sillier than an election group in Israel using the slogan ‘Change the Government’ and ‘Anybody but Bibi’? The only thing they were missing was the Hope for the Future so that could be abbreviated and they would have the proven formula, ‘Hope and Change’. Some slogans are too good to let die. First President Obama launched the campaign to unseat Bibi and the Israelis chose Netanyahu despite being informed what was good for them if they understood what the President of the United States demanded of them. Apparently President Obama missed the parts in the Bible when he learned all about Christianity from the Pastor Reverend Wright whose sermons he never heard, probably had snuck out for a smoke break and missed every last sermon, but he missed the part where the Jewish people were defined by their greatest of leaders, Moses, as well as the all-powerful One when they would discuss the difficulties and presented the main excuse that these were a stiff necked and stubborn people. If Moses and the L0rd found the Jews at their most timid to be frustratingly stubborn and stiff-necked, what did they expect of us today? Demand we vote as instructed by our what? Betters, was that the word? No, I don’t think so, we have our own ideas and will decide what is best for us and not somebody who had appeared all too ready to throw us under the bus for any reason and especially if it would grant him a second Nobel Peace Prize, as that is the only thing President Obama sees Israel as being good for, permitting herself to be splayed out before her enemies and lain low for easy conquest just so before the Middle East explodes into a thousand shards as everything is broken being cut by the jagged and sharp edges of the stone known as Jerusalem and the people who hold her as their only capital city for the last three thousand years and then some. The lesson President Obama missed was on Zechariah 12:2-3 where it is said, “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.” What might this have told President Obama about trying to influence the Israelis through word or threat? Oh, most likely that we as a people have been threatened by the worst and the best of them and somehow we always seemed to find our own path and walked merrily listening to our own drummer and dancing to our own beat come what consequences may come.
Apparently Bibi has finally chosen to fear the threats of the people of Israel above the threats from the ditherer in Washington who has grown so infatuated with his own voice that he still believes it can move mountains and control the minds of the weak and weary. For far too long the leadership of Israel has been too weary and acted too weak when facing this menace when the best route was to stand firm and let it rip and give as good as you got. The funny thing is despite the demands and pressures; President Obama only respects one thing, strength. As a community organizer he knows how to argue from a position of strength which has always meant his position when it was backed by a group ready to fight for what they desired. President Obama, as an effective community organizer would only take on the causes for which he had a ready and willing populace group which he could call out to do whatever was required to gain those demands which had been presented in their name. This is what was behind his threat that he “has a pen and a phone and knows how to use both.” The pen was the obvious reference to Executive Orders and the phone was presumably connected to a group in the society which he knew supported everything he does and would gladly show up wherever needed and provide the agitation required to put the correct measure of force behind the cause, whatever that cause might be. The pen does not work in Israel and who could President Obama call out to protest beyond those who are already out there protesting, thus his two biggest weapons are nullified. That leaves the only single threat which might appear to hold water and be a meaningful threat, the threat to no longer protect Israel before resolutions brought before the Security Council, so exactly how vulnerable and what are the probabilities and realities about the threat itself?
The first thing we must ascertain is exactly how far might President Obama go in leaving Israel vulnerable to United Nations whims and fancies? Whatever is going to happen in the General Assembly is going to happen and usually against Israel and there is little anybody is willing or even could do even if willing, that is a dead zone for Israel. Then there is the Human Rights Commission which as part of its own laws and procedures is required to denounce Israel at the start of every session whether there is anything Israel related even to review, it does not matter as the bylaws require the denunciation of Israel before the session is permitted to continue. To point out that the Human Rights Commission is probably the only place outside of UNRWA where Israel is held in such unpopular esteem, makes it another lost cause. The rest of the commissions, agencies and organizations attached or circulating the United Nations all have their preconceived levels of disdain for Israel and her people and the reverse is surprisingly not necessarily a given, most Israelis have little care about the numerous appendages of the United Nations. So, thus far the threat by the United States President to stop support for Israel has absolutely no effective change as these areas are already universally against Israel by a large majority. That leaves the Security Council which is the one place where the veto power of the United States matters just as do the veto powers of Great Britain, France, Russia and China. So, it is possible that Israel might find another benefactor to provide the veto coverage needed. But would that be necessary? It would if Israel was concerned with everything the Security Council produced. There are basically three classes of resolution which the Security Council can issue, the Chapter Seven binding resolutions, the Chapter Six nonbinding resolutions and referential resolution which carry advisory weight and will likely receive more weight once should the General Assembly also validate it but still it would not be binding. The nonbinding resolutions passed by the Security Council are still heavy weight resolution and often carry the threat of being voted on again as a Chapter Seven binding resolution, and that brings us to the crux of the matter, Chapter Seven Resolutions. We have to face it that even if the President instructs Ambassador Samantha Power not to veto everything else, Israel will survive even if we may suffer a slight rash. But would President Obama instruct Ambassador Power to not veto a Chapter Seven binding resolution? Such a move allowing such a resolution to take effect requiring Israel to comply or face potential military force from the United Nations, and do not weigh such lightly as it was just one such Chapter Seven resolution which led to the Korean War, would President Obama, the Ditherer in Chief, actually deploy United States military personnel against Israel in order to back a Chapter Seven edict? To quote President Obama, “I was elected to end wars, not to start them.” It is our contention that the threat of not protecting Israel from every vote in the United Nations Security Council will only apply to Chapter Six nonbinding resolutions and not Chapter Seven where the United States veto would be utilized as it would not be prudent to set up a situation where United States military would enter into a shooting war against Israel. So, once again we see that President Obama has made a threat which costs him nothing and in the instance where his words would also require action by the President and the armed services, then the likelihood is that he will crumble before the pressures. Yes, Bibi made the correct choice to call the President’s bluff and listen to the Israeli people and forge a right leaning coalition. Now let us hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu can muster the stomach for some real pushback and he can start actually building and not pretending to support additional residences in Judea and Samaria. Also, start every cabinet meeting with a reading of the San Remo Conference Treaty as it is fairly short and Israel needs to get the reality of how much land we have surrendered which the Sinai Peninsula was a coequal part compared with Jordan which was built on lands set aside for the State of the Jews. Below is a copy of the San Remo Conference Agreement. Read it and remember it as it is a great place to start in communicating to every corner of the world who claim that Israel and the land promised to the Jewish People after World War I which had nothing to do with the Holocaust which had yet to occur and had everything to do with reinstating the Jewish People in their homelands. The restitution of the Jewish homelands was seen as a good and necessary step to start to make amends for the evils perpetrated against the Jews throughout the world and it was reasoned that restoring them to their Biblical Lands would make a great start. Let us press for this start to be made good and end the perfidy perpetrated today by the same governments under presumably more civilized leadership than in all of history yet they will require great amounts of jolts from the past, a retelling of the worlds they themselves transcribed at San Remo and made a solemn oath which must be attended to before the past no longer has meaning as history is no longer a vestige within the curricula where history has been replaced with lessons in proper acceptance of the new tolerance and acceptance which has little time or regard for promises past. Those who care not for the past will soon find themselves in the midst of it as it has a way of sneaking up on us with great stealth followed by a roar as it swallows the present whole immersing all in the retelling of tales of history ignored.
Beyond the Cusp
San Remo Conference Agreement
It was agreed –
(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.
(b) That the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:
The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Beyond the Cusp 