United States Secretary of State John F. Kerry recently gave another incendiary speech at the Saban Forum organized by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and held on December 2, 2016, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. where he added insult to injury declaring Israel, his pet target, when he declared it guilty of the usual presumed evils and contradicted every statement made earlier by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Some might have thought he used the same outline as Netanyahu and simply negated every statement. As is so usual for Secretary Kerry, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before as both served the tune set by President Barack Obama, he spat out accusation against Israel making the same tired false charges as have become his stock in trade. Amongst the falsehoods were the “the settlements” for supposedly “blocking peace,” that “can’t be both democratic and Jewish,” blaming this on the disputed statistic that “there are more Arabs than Jews living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River,” adding to his October Harvard University claim that “there’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.” Every single one of these claims are contestable or just outright false with the claim that Israel has been founding new settlements as Israel has not declared or built a new settlement since Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin froze the creation of new communities there in 1992. Further, the claim of the existence of more Arabs than Jews between the Jordan River Kerry includes the citizens of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the equation which would be similar as claiming that there are more Hispanics in the United States throughout the Americas and including all Hispanics from the southern tip to the northern tip of the American continents. Then again, perhaps John Kerry is another leftist who also believes that all citizens on planet Earth should vote in the United States elections as the United States culture, military, economic and other influences have effects throughout the world and might also wish to claim that the all Arabs should be permitted the vote in Israel by the same malfunctioning logic.
What has been so absolutely incredible about the majority of critics of Israel blaming her for the lack of success in negotiating a two state solution is their completely ignoring any blame being presented on Mahmoud Abbas and the PA or even Hamas for the lack of a solution. Israel has made offers which met or exceeded the original demands set by Yassir Arafat when he set his demands when speaking with President Clinton during the desperate and critical negotiations during the last half of 2000 and into January 2001 and the end of the Clinton Presidency in the extended Camp David Accords. What was amazing was after President Clinton spent most of an afternoon and into the evening talking and cajoling Yasser Arafat in Paris, Clinton received his acceptable demands which Arafat thought the Israelis would balk and never accept. To his surprise, Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed without altering a single demand and the next morning when Arafat was presented with papers to sign which fit exactly his demands, Arafat balked stalking from the talks getting into his waiting vehicle and left flying back to Nablus where he soon executed the Second Intifada which had been planned to be the response to Israeli denial to meet his demands. Even though it took Arafat refusing blatantly to sign an agreement which matched his demands, the PA leadership, European media and much of the leftist mainstream media blamed Israel going along with Arafat’s lies word for word. These conditions were also met, actually exceeded, with another offer made in 2008 at the end of the Bush Administration which was refused this time by Mahmoud Abbas. New leader but same old intransigence yet Kerry’s blame falls only on Israel for the lack of progress. Kerry ignored the fact that Abbas has declared all the lands from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as a sacred Islamic Waqf thus declaring all the land as holy and unable to be surrendered to Israel or any entity which is not Islamic.
Camp David Talks on a Break as President Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ehud Barak Stroll the Grounds of the Complex Located Ten Miles North of Frederick, Maryland
With Christmas and Chanukah beginning on the same evening, we can claim that Jews and Christians the world over could pray for peace to come to Jerusalem and all of the Holy Lands bringing safety with that peace so all can celebrate a real resolution of the threats which have plagued the Holy Lands and Holy City of Jerusalem since over a century with overt anti-Jewish rioting starting in the 1920s. There have been numerous opportunities for there to be a declared peace between the Jews and the Arabs. The first came when the British Mandate lands which were set aside by the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Serves for the establishment of the Jewish homelands were cut with the seventy-eight percent of the lands east of the Jordan River set aside for the Palestinian Arab state which became modern day Jordan and the remaining twenty-two percent of the lands west of the Jordan River reserved for the Jewish State intended to become Israel. The Arabs refused this patrician demanding the remaining lands, the same twenty-two percent they still demand today, not just Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Then on November 29, 1947 the United General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution, General Assembly Resolution 181 proposing dividing the remaining lands west of the Jordan River, the mere twenty-two percent, evenly between the Jews and the Arabs with the Jews receiving mostly Negev Desert lands but the Arabs refused this proposition, making it null and void, and instead invaded the Jewish State on May 15, 1948 on the first day of existence with over a half-dozen armies and militias with genocidal intents. The Mufti of Jerusalem had demanded that all Arabs residing west of the Jordan River cross into Arab held lands of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Lebanon to allow the Arab invading forces to simply murder every human being they came upon. Not all Arabs obeyed the Mufti’s demands and they and their descendants are today Israeli citizens with full equality and rights including the vote and every other right of a citizen. One has to wonder how many times Israel and the Jewish People must agree to make peace and the Arabs to refuse demanding instead all the land and the extermination, the cleansing of the lands of all Jews before the world awakens? That is one question which will never be broached as such would also require recognition that the Israelis have made honest sacrifices for peace repeatedly through recent history.
Left UN Partition Plan Resolution 181 Rejected by Arabs
Making Original British Partition Arab and Jewish Lands
as Only Standing Agreement Supported in 1921 Arab League
and Zionist Congress Backed by British Crown as Valid
Had the Arabs accepted any of these offers over the past century there would be peace today but apparently that little fact has escaped observation in the rush to follow the historic practice, blaming the Jews? Looking back over history the Jews were blamed for plagues, loss at war, famine, drought, flooding, economic downturns, locusts, spoiled food stores or any other difficulty or threat to a ruler such as kings, dictators, emperors, or even Pharos (other than Egypt where many of these may have occurred in Biblical times during something often referred to as the Ten Plagues). During the Holocaust one of the accusations was that the Jews refused to fight for Germany during World War I despite the actuality that the Jews were more represented than other religions when it came to volunteers for the Great War. During the Crusades the knights and other fighters would often attack Jewish villages in order to get used to drawing blood and killing people as many of the fighters had no such experience and their officers knew they could not wait until first combat to train them to fight forcefully and effectively. Also during World War I the Germans claimed the Jews were responsible for the Communist enemies while the Russians claimed the Jews were responsible for the Kaiser German enemies. History is full of such examples throughout the past three thousand year history of the Israelite/Jewish People and the canard that Israel is an impediment to peace is just the latest. When Israel and Egypt made their peace treaty Israel evacuated over twenty communities which had been built within the Sinai Peninsula before returning it as agreed with Egypt, just one more proof that the “settlements” are no honest impediment to peace. Demanding the complete destruction of Israel and the eradication of her Jewish citizens is the real impediment to peace but as there are more than one and a half billion Muslims and under fifteen million Jews the world is siding with the numbers as well as the oil.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 