In Israel America is Still That Gleaming Land of Greatness

 

The statements in this article are formed from the Israelis I have met and is hopefully something which continues to hold truthful as my experiences broaden. The vast majority of Israelis, particularly young Israelis, have an idealized view of the United States. They believe that in the United States opportunities exist like nowhere else on Earth. They see the United States as being capable of achieving just about anything they decide to put the efforts towards. This is not to say that they approve of everything the United States does or does not do that concerns the Israelis. Despite their love affair with the United States, that love affair sours rather rapidly when one takes stock in how Israeli feel about the United States governance. There many Israelis have more difficulty understanding as they see the United States as capable of doing unbelievable good if only the government would allow the people to take care of things themselves. You see, where one’s initial observation would be that the average Israeli has a view of the United States which is unrealistic, as you delve deeper you realize that they are not seeing the United States as perfect or they believe that things in the United States are perfect. What one sees is that the average Israeli loves Americans and their forms of governance and have just as jaundiced a view of the government as the most conservative Tea Party individual. Rumor says that this belief does not extend to much of one large city where their views match closer to Boston, New York, Los Angeles or most other large cities in the United States. Thus far I have avoided visiting this one city as I like the idealized view of the United States, well, more so the views of the average American citizen.

 

This view of America, as that is the real love, is that ideal America that went to the moon in less than a decade after deciding they were to meet that challenge. They love the concepts of full equality of opportunity and the spirit which made America great and is still there as a creative spark which is inside every human being but stifled more everywhere else outside America. The America most Israelis have experienced has been through the eyes of those who have visited the United States and seen the great potential which exists in the United States and these people have not stayed in the United States sufficiently long enough for the bad shortcomings to become just as easily witnessed thus bringing even the most devoted Israeli to see that there are places where the United States falls well short of the mark. Ask the average Israeli what they think of the United States and you get the feeling they believe that America can do no wrong. Dig a little deeper and you see a people whose idealized view is of the average American and their can do attitude becomes more of a could have been attitude which is more in line with reality.

 

One looks a little deeper and one begins to understand where the average Israeli gets their views on the United States and things begin to make sense. The average Israeli forms their views of the United States on the relatively small number of Americans they meet. Here in Israel most of the people get a small sample size and have only met Americans who have afforded not only trips to Israel but many have also an apartment that they own and plan on retiring and living in said apartment, so obviously the Americans they have met are the more wealthy and additionally their sampling consists solely of American Jews who are also Zionist and tend to be more conservative. Many of these Americans have completed college and are by and large physicians with many also being surgeons. So, their sample size is rather small and more indicative of the wealthier Americans and often include other than those in the medical fields, Americans who have some form of engineering or other scientific degrees and again often post graduate work with many having gotten their doctoral degree. So, again their sampling is skewed to successful Zionists which mean that they have again met mostly conservative people who have often also formed their own companies and many also hold a MBA degree to go along with their doctoral degree. To point out these are highly motivated people who would have succeeded in almost every nation in the Western world would be an understatement. If one speaks with the Americans who reside now in Israel after holding a successful career in the United States, many also fulfilled their required service in Israel as well. The sample size keeps being refined down to a very motivated and brilliant people who are driven and who meet very high criteria in education and accomplishments to their credit. These people tend to be conservative but still often voted as a good social liberal though they often had a very simple and basic filter which was dependent on one issue. Would their preferred candidate support Israel with almost a blind zeal bordering on fanaticism.

 

If one would make a list answering the question, ‘What is right about America?’ you would probably get a definition of the attitude of many of the Americans one meets in Israel. Giving even more validity to the assessment of the average American Jew who at some point after quite an impressive career decided to live in Israel and sufficient numbers of these people also gave half of their career time to working in Israel, there is an overwhelming number of the American Jews residing or regularly visiting Israel that have a less than admirable view of the current holder of the White House. As many of these people have what is called dual citizenship and are eligible to vote in the State they last resided in and do cast absentee ballots, their choices are easily researched and the story is quite telling; where in the United States President Obama won over seventy percent of the Jewish vote in both of his election victories, the Israeli Americans voted in the opposite direction with the 2008 votes exceeded three-quarters voting against President Obama and in 2012 an even higher percentage voted against his return to the White House. The consensus amongst the Americans here was obviously that President Obama was bad for Israel and the overt actions during the last Gaza war on Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They viewed President Obama directly for the closing off of Ben Gurion International Airport due to the terror threat which could have resulted in downed aircraft, something the United States had not done in Syria during the five year war continuing to rage nor have done in Lebanon, Libya or any of the nations struck by violence as a result of the Arab Spring turned into an Arab Winter despite some of the most vicious threats to flights in or out of their countries. In some of these cases the airlines themselves refused to provide service to these nations. Then there was the channeling the resupply of arms which the United States was obliged to automatically approve with the military itself charged with authorizing and supplying replacements keeping Israel provided with the means for her defense through the State Department with their withholding approval until Israel had presumably buckled to the demand to cease their hostilities in Gaza and returned control of Gaza to its ‘duly elected government’ which is the same as saying Hamas as it is their people who rule in Gaza. The White House was fully aware of this situation and the obligation of the United States which they modified so as to make their obligation into a wanted dead or dead poster on Israel, and that is not a Freudian slip, dead or dead was exactly what the White House was aiming to produce by withholding the resupply which was an agreement included in a defense treaty making it the law to make such resupply in a timely manner.

 

 

Israel and America Stronger Together Enforcing Similar Ethos

 

 

This treaty was entered into for the Nixon Administration doing exactly the same withholding of the resupply to force Israel to comply with their demands that they simply cease fighting in defense against the invading forces of Syria and Egypt during the Yom Kippur War which caught Israel at her most vulnerable time with three-quarters of her military personnel in synagogues across Israel and not carrying any electronics and thus forcing the IDF to send personnel to as many Synagogues as possible and to send vehicles announcing the emergency call-up using loudspeakers and driving through one city after another. This withholding of resupply was advised by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a Jew but apparently only by birth. The reasoning Secretary Kissinger gave for refusing to meet the Israeli request for resupply was that by refusing to send the arms Israel would be more vulnerable and thus far more easily forced to meet the demands which the State Department was pushing for President Nixon to demand of the Israelis. Fortunately the resupply was held a dangerous two to three days and Israel had begun to run low on some vital armaments which would have threatened their ability to defend their country had resupply not reached them in time. This was the reason a treaty was signed by the Nixon Administration after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the agreement. If one has seen a potential viewpoint against all things Israel coming from the State Department, please allow us to also point out that the State Department very strenuously objected to the decision by President Truman to recognize Israel as a new nation in May of 1948, May 15th to be exact. The State Department has been more stridently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist from their objection to the aims of forming the British Mandate in order to form a homeland for the Jews after World War I as part of the San Remo Conference which set up the French and British Mandates.

 

Fortunately most young Israelis know very little about the dastardly designs of the State Department which by their actions have proven to desire the death of the Jewish State by any and all means available. Fortunate for Israel that this is beyond the ability for the State Department to pull-off but they will apparently continue to try. The love affair which Israelis appear to have with the United States is actually more with America and the American People and independent of the government of the United States. What makes this all the more rewarding a relationship is the fact that large majorities of Americans love the Israelis as well, as has been proven in poll after poll. This is likely due to a love of freedom and a shared morality in many ways. The Israeli government often appears to take their cues from the Constitution of the United States or at least the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments required by a number of the signatory states as a condition for their signing onto the Constitution. That is most likely the glue holding these two peoples in mutual support and admiration and it would be wonderful if their relationship continues and those values prove to be the perfect glue which both societies use as their moral guide throughout their histories. It would be quite sad should they not remain as the constant rock mooring both ships of state.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Are These Two Demands From Israel in Peace Negotiations That Extreme?

Everybody claims that the Palestinians are the side which is ready and desirous of making peace. Their demands are well known or at least everybody claims to understand and believe that their demands are justified. The problem claimed by so many around the world, especially throughout the Western nations. They believe that the Israeli demands are the problem and that Israel is being too demanding and are occupiers of lands which actually belong to Arab Palestinians. I am aware that almost nobody who believes these assumed truths would accept any evidence I could provide proving their beliefs are incorrect and based on propaganda issued by the Palestinian leadership and repeated by the sycophantic leftist media which has condemned Israel as being colonialist occupiers who unfairly conquered the land of Israel and forced out indigenous Arab Palestinians. Another canard is that Israeli Jews are European refugees who arrived solely after World War II and Israel was only founded and that idea arose from guilt over the Holocaust. Never mind trying to persuade you by presenting truths such as the Balfour Declaration of 1917 or the San Remo Conference of 1920 were the most important documents, votes and treaties made through negotiations which included the victorious allied powers which defeated the Ottoman Empire or that these debates included King Faisal, the leader of the Arab and Islamic world, who attended many of the negotiations and conferences after World War I and who accepted the return of the Jewish people to their natural homelands even quoting the references in the Quran that stated that the Jews had been granted the lands between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea by Allah as nobody will accept such. So, why do we not discuss the two most important of Israeli claims which are as basic and simple of demands one could ask that the Palestinians refuse to accept.

One demand Israel makes of the Palestinians is equivalent to the Palestinian demand that the Israelis recognize the Palestinian Arabs existence as a people deserving of their own state, the Israelis demand the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Mahmoud Abbas and every other Palestinian leader responds exactly the same, there will never come the day when they will ever recognize Israel as anything other than occupied Palestine and that the Jewish people should return from where they came, Germany, America or wherever in Europe they came from. The big lie behind this rebuttal is well known and recognized by the Arabs as it was their leaders who caused half of the Jewish population in Israel by the middle of the 1950s as they chased, persecuted or otherwise forced the vast majority of their Jewish populations to flee often with one suitcase each forfeiting the remainder of their property and their homes and businesses. There were approximately eight-hundred-thousand Jews who sought refuge in Israel between 1948 and 1958 from Arab nations across the Middle East and North Africa which resulted in equal representation of Sephardic Jews from Arab nations and Ashkenazi Jews from Europe by 1960 and the two populations still share a near even percentage of Israeli Jews in the modern era. Should the Jews be forced to return to the nations from whence they came into Israel, the question is will those Arab nations not only allow the Jews to return but also provide them with their previous homes and also return their businesses and other forfeited property? Such is not only unlikely but an absurdity to even consider as they would be more likely to simply murder the Jews rather than accept them back as citizens. What is odd is there are those Jews who actually long to return to their former Arab homes and regret the fact they can never return.

The second demand made by the Israelis is that any agreement reached with the Palestinians result in an end to hostilities and an end to claims issuing in a permanent peace. This may seem to be an obvious result of any agreement except part of the continuous endeavors to incite violence against Israelis in general and the Jews in particular is the theme that the Palestinian leadership will never ever agree to an end to the violence and terror war against the Israelis until all of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea has been liberated and cleansed of its Jewish population. This insistence that any peace treaty not represent an end to their terrorist war against Israel is part of what Yasser Arafat defined as the liberation of Palestine in stages. Arafat defined the first stage as a long term series of negotiations where he would demand from Israel concessions whenever the Europeans and/or the United States react to enticements and Palestinian demands to restart the peace talks. Once Arafat and the Palestinians gained these concessions they never returned them nor permitted Israel to take them back even as it was Arafat who always forced the negotiations to break down. During the negotiation the Palestinians would make offers to entice Israel to make return offers and once the Palestinians broke off the negotiations they would insist that the next round begin with everything Israel had offered in the last round be the starting point for the next round plus demand that the Western powers force even more concessions from Israel. This lesson was learned well by Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s protégé and second in command since the founding of the PLO in 1964 where there cause was the elimination of Israel replacing it with Palestine as there were no occupied Palestinian areas since the Six Day War had yet to occur, where Israel gained possession of the Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula as well as the West Bank, historically referred to as Judea and Samaria, integral parts of ancient Israel lands. Mahmoud Abbas has continued this tactic and it has been used to the point where Israel has been pressed into concession after concession by supposed allies, even those United States Presidents who were awarded the title of Israel’s best friend ever in the White House falling in line with the round after round of forcing Israel into ever deeper compromises and surrendering bargaining chip after bargaining chip. The result is Israel has been left with no bargaining chips other than her survival and still the Palestinians demand concessions or no peace talks. The Palestinians have never been held to a single promise or concession as they simply insist they never made any such offer and threaten to walk out of any talks which back the Western sponsors away from holding them responsible for any act or promise they have ever committed and then backed away from fulfilling. Much of this has been further facilitated by the leftist media which blames Israel for every breakdown in the negotiations and carries the Palestinian’s water for them in every situation as they are threatened with no longer being granted access to Palestinian areas to gather news and pictures and are always mindful that they are dealing with terrorists who might turn against their reporters. Whatever the reason, the Israelis have reached a point where even the moderate leftists have realized that the game has been fixed and they are tiring of the constant hounding and hatred from European backers of the Palestinians and are noticing the United States starting to rival the Europeans in their political lack of will to side with Israel and even the loss of any fairness on university campuses where often Jewish students are attacked simply for their wearing anything which displays their Judaism and thus they are accused of supporting Israel making them legitimate for assaults. This is all part of why the Palestinians can never make a lasting peace, their promises to their people that the revolution against the Jews will never end until all of the lands are freed and the Jews destroyed and the spoils being split amongst the Palestinian people. Is there any wonder why Israel has reached the point that they are not all that anxious to return to the peace talks and refuse to make any new concession as what can they give now, Tel Aviv, the Negev, Haifa or what?

Beyond the Cusp

Even Abbas Snubs Obama Flat Refusing All Offers

United States President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu just over two weeks ago and they discussed everything from the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians under the mediation of Secretary of State Kerry as well as the steps which could be taken to assure that Iran does not produce nuclear weapons. Where their meeting may not have produced complete agreement, both leaders found their discussions to have been fruitful and promised to work together to further the peace talks and keep each other updated regarding the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program as well as other Middle East situations such as Syria and the Arab Spring. Just a week ago President Obama had the second meeting on the peace talks, this time with Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas. Leading up to their meeting, the White House had spoken of high expectations predicting that the Israeli Palestinian negotiations were likely to make great strides after the two leaders had met with President Obama. Somehow I get the feeling that either President Obama did not bother to talk with Secretary of State Kerry to be brought up to speed or they spoke and President Obama paid as close attention as he reputedly has shown his security briefings, at least, that is, the briefings he has bothered to attend.

 

So President Obama sat down with Mahmoud Abbas expecting a cordial exchange of ideas and reaching agreement on what the Palestinians needed to do in order for the President to coerce the Israelis to make even greater sacrifices and concessions in order to reward the Palestinians for agreeing to finally reach a comprehensive peace agreement. A friendly and receptive Abbas was not in the cards. I picture President Obama starting his conversation with Abbas expecting to be discussing subjects concerning the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians with somebody who was on the same page and of similar mind as to what was necessary to reach an agreement. After all, it was Mahmoud Abbas who President Obama made his very first call to a foreign leader from the Oval Office after his first inauguration ceremony in January of 2009 and the President has treated and thought of Abbas as a like-minded and close friend. One can only imagine the shock to President Obama when Chairman Abbas simply refused to agree on anything which President Obama thought were necessary and obvious steps necessary in order to attain a lasting peace agreement. Where the order is known only to the two men and whatever aids were present, we can assume that President Obama breached the main three points which he believed both men recognized as necessary compromises the Palestinians would have to offer to attain peace with Israel expecting Abbas would readily agree and that would be that. But when President Obama breached the three main points, recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish People, abandon the Palestinian refugees right of return, and commit to the peace bringing a final end to the conflict, which he had expected Abbas and the Palestinians to agree with, Abbas instead gave a definitive “No!” to each and every point. It really is a shame that nobody filmed President Obama’s reactions as Abbas turned him down one point after the other. The progression of expressions on President Obama’s face might have proved to be amusing and possibly useful to the Republicans in some future ad campaign against Obamacare or any other subject where they and the Democrats have disagreements.

 

The real loser here should be Mahmoud Abbas as he has removed any misconception about which side of the Israel Palestinian negotiations is the one refusing to move the discussion forward. Even further proof was soon to arrive when Abbas returned to Judea and Samaria (West Bank) where he spoke to the press promising that he planned to pocket the gains made and continue in future negotiation to pocket additional gains each time picking up where the last negotiation left off. He added an aside stating that those who needed would understand what he meant. I am sorry to inform Mr. Abbas but his words and actions are not so cryptic that the average man on the street would find understanding his presumably hidden meanings at all difficult to discern. He plans on continuing to do as his predecessor and mentor, arch terrorist Yasser Arafat, taught him; simply negotiate and push for as many concessions as one can force while tentatively making agreeable noises and then walk away denouncing any hint that might have been perceived that you had compromised on any point and then insist the next negotiations begin with Israel granting every point they offered from the precious negotiations. This has been the modus operandi of the Palestinians and has been the negotiation technique used by much of the Muslim world when negotiating with non-Muslims.

 

Abbas went further and also took the opportunity to inform President Obama what the Palestinians demanded Israel to comply with in order to extend the negotiations beyond their end date towards the end of April. Abbas iterated demands that Israel release the remaining terror prisoners including Marwan Barghouti and other terror planning masters responsible for numerous Israeli deaths and causing permanent disabling injuries directly from their acts of sending others to die as suicide homicidalists, complete return to the 1949 Armistice Lines with very minor land swaps with all the remaining Israeli Jews living in neighborhoods that are to be surrendered to the Palestinians along with every Israeli in East Jerusalem and all of the Old City, as well as the complete acceptance of over five-million Palestinian refugees being given the opportunity to live within Israel and all, whether receiving a new home in Israel or remaining outside of Israel, receiving compensation for hardships and the loss of properties. So what Mahmoud Abbas dropped into President Obama’s lap was a universal refusal to take any step towards making peace with Israel guaranteeing that the current peace negotiations must fail due to Palestinian intransigence coupled with demands of Israel just to continue negotiating beyond the April deadline which if granted would result in the end of Israel as a Jewish state and make the starting point into negotiations to establish two Palestinian states, one named Palestine and the other named Israel with the Jews of Israel to be allowed to live as Dhimmis for as long as they would be permitted and eventually to be given the choice of conversion to Islam or the sword. Despite the reality that has been displayed in absolute terms that the reason the negotiations are destined to fail is unreasonable Palestinian expectation and demand, yet I would be willing to bet that when the negotiations end without any agreement being produce that Europe and President Obama with Secretary of State Kerry blaming Israel for not being willing to meet the Palestinians at some agreeable midpoint. I truly hope I am wrong about this but somehow I have my doubts that it will turn out any different than Abbas acclaimed as a man of peace and Netanyahu being castigated as the obstruction to attaining a lasting peace. Some perceptions refuse to bow even when smacked full-on by reality; and blaming Israel while holding the Palestinians as the poor, wretched, distraught victims of Apartheid policies as totally innocent and being the only truly desirous people for peace is among the most insanely resistant to reality of all such beliefs.

 

Beyond the Cusp