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Israelis, ever creative because they have to be:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
and
Success and overcoming great odds causes Israel to be hated. (See 1 below.)
Why? Because Israelis live in a neighborhood where Muslims and Arabs spend their time hating rather than being creative and Europeans, among others, buy into their propaganda and swallow the bait.
Are all the world's problems because of GW and Israel? (See 1a below.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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Fascinating:
https://www.ted.com/talks/
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POGO was right, but did he have Israelis in mind? (See 1b below.)
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Are smoother relations between Obama and Israel likely?
"At a White House summit, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama agreed to increase military aid and create a joint task force on Iran’s military program.
According to reports, Netanyahu told the President he set a red line with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Iranian activities in Syria, insisted that any international agreements about Syria take Israeli interests into account, and reiterated support for a two-state solution. More at the Washington Post." (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
My friend Bret gets it! (See 2c below.)===
Going to black tie fund raiser this evening and hope to return in time for the later debate.
===
Dick
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1)
Why is the EU stigmatizing Israel?
Many Israelis — both on the right and left of the political spectrum — look in utter astonishment at EU plans to compel European importers and retailers to brand Israeli products from the settlements with newly minted, Israel-specific consumer labeling. And it seems these labels would apply only to Israel, not to other countries or territories embroiled in territorial disputes. It is a step that threatens to reshape our relations, and I fear not for the better.
Europe is Israel’s main partner in trade and business. We are an ally for Europe in the Middle East, a region that now poses some very hard questions for Europe. Most importantly, we share the same humanist aspirations for our countries. This makes us part of the same family, and I hope this allows me to speak openly and honestly.
Building on this kinship, recent months have seen a flourishing of diplomatic meetings between Israel and the EU. Before the summer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met High Representative Federica Mogherini in Jerusalem and once again in New York. Last month, the prime minister also hosted European Council President Donald Tusk in Jerusalem. I was there to witness it and the mood was professional and forward looking.
The prime minister was unequivocal about the direction of our country. Israel remains committed to a two-state solution. Two states for two peoples, this continues to be our end objective. He has since repeatedly expressed his desire to find concrete ways forward, in direct talks with the Palestinian leadership, which he said could take place in Brussels, Jerusalem or Ramallah itself.
In turn, EU leaders made clear their strong willingness to help advance the Middle East peace process. This is important. We welcome Europe’s aspiration and help to achieve this objective.
To make progress, however, the closest form of cooperation is necessary, and this needs to be based on trust, openness and impartiality.
* * *
The labeling of Israeli products will not contribute to this end. We are being told the economic impact of such labeling should be small. And the step is supposedly not meant as a boycott. But seeing European shops label Jewish products brings back some very painful memories for many Israelis. And it stings that we are being singled out for special treatment. While we fully respect that the EU needs to apply its own acquis, this makes it very hard to escape the conclusion that this is a political step, with the distinctly political message that Israel is to be blamed and punished for the stagnation of the peace process.
In Israel it is hard to explain how this could conceivably help kick-start peace talks. Nor does it appear to be a timely message. The Middle East is ablaze, with wars raging in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. These wars have become magnets for Daesh and Hezbollah Islamists, engaged in the random slaughter of civilians. We are facing an unprecedented refugee crisis. And in these times the EU sees fit, under the guise of consumer protection law, to slap quasi-sanctions on Israel, the only state in the region whose constitution embraces and defends Europe’s own values?
* * *
For Israel the key to a two-states-for-two-peoples solution lies in obtaining ironclad guarantees for its security. What we hope to receive from our partners abroad is some help in finding these. Security is and will always remain our Gold Standard. The problem we now face is that in a region awash with blood and rife with sectarianism, this is more difficult to achieve. Already, ISIL-affiliated terror cells are operating from within the Gaza Strip.
There are other challenges the EU could help tackle. The Palestinian leadership remains hesitant, divided and unwilling to come to the table. Netanyahu has now repeatedly offered to hold direct talks with President Abbas on a two-states-for-two-peoples solution, without setting preconditions. He did so as recently as the U.N. General Assembly in New York. But what has happened? Instead of engaging with us directly, what we are getting from President Abbas are bold flag-waving statements and other unilateral shenanigans.
What is needed is for the EU to help persuade Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to agree to direct talks. Without such talks there can be no progress at all, not even a beginning. What is needed is for the EU to use its clout to help end the spate of attacks against Israeli citizens of the last few weeks, amongst others by getting Palestinian leaders to tone down their divisive rhetoric. What is needed is for the EU to do more to help disarm Gaza, whilst aiding the Palestinian Authority in regaining control over the Strip.
While labeling legislation is a red herring, a painful distraction, the latter steps would enhance the prospects of success in tangible and practical ways. There is no doubt Europe is capable of making a significant contribution to the Middle East peace process. But we need to grasp the nettle, not start another smoke and mirrors game. Moving the stalled peace process forward will be difficult enough as it is.
David Walzer is Israel’s Ambassador to the EU and NATO.
1a)
Do the Palestinians Want Two States?
Is the Palestinian “popular uprising” in its current manifestations the preferred form of struggle for the Fatah leadership – as opposed to small-scale demonstrations at focal points of friction? When an interviewer on a prominent TV show on the official Palestinian channel directed this question to Tawfik Tirawi, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, Tirawi answered unequivocally in the affirmative.
Tawfik Tirawi, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee(Arab media)
The former head of Palestinian General Intelligence went on to boast of the young Palestinian generation’s awareness of the struggle, and, as an example, cited his son, who while not yet three years old, sings of the shahids [martyrs] and asks his father to bring him a rifle so that he can vanquish Israel and the Zionists. Noting that in another two years it will be 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, Tirawi asserted that the Palestinians have waged an ongoing struggle to liberate their land ever since.
This is the context in which to regard the current wave of terror attacks. As Tirawi explains, there is no single act that will achieve the long-awaited objective, just a “cumulative struggle.” In his view, Fatah has not ruled out any approach since its 2009 Sixth General Congress. At the moment, though, there is no point to negotiations since not only Benjamin Netanyahu and his “extremist government” but also the Israeli left and center are not prepared to give anything to the Palestinians. Hence, the need for an ongoing campaign that can return the Palestinian issue to the international and Arab stage and gain leverage for the renewal of the negotiations sometime in the future.
With that in mind, Tirawi explains, acts involving “hot weapons [firearms]” – as Hamas urges – should be avoided since they stir the world’s disapproval. The nature of the current struggle, however (even including the murder of Israelis with knives), is completely consistent with Palestinian aspirations.
Tirawi has complaints about the world: It shows understanding for Israel’s behavior, which, he says, involves terror, firearms, and the execution of Palestinians, yet accuses the Palestinians, who are resorting to the stone and the knife, of terrorism. As for the Americans, he has no expectations of them; they are biased in the Israelis’ favor and he has clear-cut proof of it: “John Kerry uses the term ‘Temple Mount,’ which testifies to the fact that he accepts Israel’s position on this issue.” (The Palestinians, of course, claim that there was never a Jewish Temple at the site.)
The Palestinian Leadership Encourages Terror
The Palestinian Leadership Encourages Terror
That, then, is the stance of the Palestinian leadership. Driven by a mix of hatred, frustration over continued Israeli control of the territories, an outlook that denies the existence of the Jewish people and its right to a democratic nation-state in its homeland, and a sense of victimhood that is fed by their national and religious leaders, the Palestinians are sustaining their onslaught of indiscriminate murder even though, seemingly, it is of no avail to them. Their leadership encourages the terror because, on the one hand, it fears that the Palestinian issue will be pushed to the margins and is no longer perceived as the root of the regional instability, while, on the other, there appears to be growing awareness that there is no solution in the foreseeable future and, thus, no reason that the international community should invest resources in the issue.
Meanwhile, neither the agreed arrangement on the Temple Mount, which is important in itself, nor the security measures, nor attempts to meet Palestinian demands in certain regards, nor the declining interest in the stabbings phenomenon in Israel and the world as it loses its initial shock value are persuading the Palestinian leadership to stop sending Palestinian young people to die and kill. The fervor that accompanies the official funerals of the terrorists indicates the depth of the sentiments involved.
Israel, along with its efforts to bring an end to the wave of terror, has been busying itself with a series of historiosophical questions such as: Will the war last forever? (Apparently for as long as the Palestinians cling to their far-reaching demands and to the above-described strategy of struggle.) What is the connection between the Palestinians and the Holocaust? What would Rabin have done had he not been assassinated? (He was very distant from the whims of Peres and the left and very suspicious of the Palestinians, especially after they hoodwinked Israel on the matter of the “Oslo Accords.” For him peace was a means to ensure the existence and security of the nation-state of the Jewish people, as his last speech to the Knesset also makes clear.) Does the Palestinian use of the term “the Israeli people” reflect their opposition to the establishment of a nation-state for the Jewish people? Mahmoud Abbas himself has again declared that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He provides a plethora of excuses and three real reasons as well: such recognition would nullify the “right of return,” make it harder for the Israeli Arabs to promote Palestinian interests within the Israeli political scene, and would require a change in the Palestinian narrative. Those are exactly the reasons why Israel insists that only such recognition, which the Palestinians refuse to grant, can guarantee real peace.
In his speech to Congress in May 2011, Netanyahu did not demand that Abbas become a Zionist and recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state in the land of its forefathers. It would be sufficient, he said, for Abbas to accept that Israel is the (democratic) nation-state of the Jewish people, without connection to the question of a right. Just as many Zionists now recognize the Palestinian people’s right to a nation-state in its land in the framework of the permanent settlement, so long as it does not constitute a threat to Israel’s security, so must the Palestinians be required to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a democratic nation-state in the land of its forefathers.
The notion of being rescued from this situation by a unilateral separation, which some on the Israeli left have been raising of late, is not feasible under the current circumstances for the same reason, namely, that the Palestinians will not agree to it (see the Gaza precedent). The idea of one state, too, lacks all logic and feasibility. The only possible solution is that of two states for two peoples with mutual recognition. It has not died; it simply has not yet been born because the Palestinians, and the Europeans who support them, refuse to allow its birth.
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser is Director of the Project on the Regional Implications of the Syrian Civil War at the Jerusalem Center. He was formerly Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and head of the Research and Analysis and Production Division of IDF Military Intelligence.
1b)
J STREET: A KNIFE INSIDE THE TENT
By Charles Jacobs
The daughter of our friends, a nurse at a major Jerusalem hospital, fears for her life every time she goes to work. Many of her colleagues are Israeli Arabs who have easy access to scalpels and sharp instruments all throughout the building. How can she, who dedicates herself to closing the wounds of both Arabs and Jews, escape the fear that at any moment during her day one of these people might pick up a scalpel and plunge it into her back?
Why? Because every Palestinian is told by their media and self-proclaimed leaders the lethal lie that Jews mean to destroy Al Aqsa mosque and are, in the words of Prime Minister Abbas, defiling it every day with their “dirty feet.”
This is “the knifing jihad.” Reader, you are three clicks away from video clips of Arabs stabbing Jews, running them over with cars, chopping at their necks with hatchets. Another click gets you to a Palestinian little girl stabbing her toy doll, demonstrating how she’d do it to any of our children. Click again to find an Imam, knife in hand, sermonizing on the supremely moral act of killing a Jew. Throughout the Muslim world these images evoke glee.
Much of world Jewry, though distanced from these immediate threats, now walks in a shadow of unease. Even here in America many Jews are worried. What of the arrival on our shores of John Kerry’s 10,000 Syrian refugees? What really are American mosques preaching about Jews? The tides seem to be turning against us, and worse: we sense we are being betrayed.
Betrayed by the Iran deal. The Democratic Party, political home of most American Jews, provided Iran with a clear and legal pathway to nuclear weapons after 10 or 15 years. Soon the agreement will grant billions to Iranian Mullahs, who will target Jews with smuggled weapons, hit squads, and terror proxies.
Betrayed by Europe. Waves of refugees from the Syrian war will besiege Europe’s Jewish communities with hundreds of thousands of Muslims – many of whom were raised on a diet of Jew-hatred. As Manfred Gerstenfeld reminds us: “In the current century all murders of Jews in Europe because they are Jews…have been committed by Muslims.
Even before this fresh onslaught, the Jews of Europe have sustained unrelenting political and physical assault by the growing Left/Islamist (or “Red/Green”) Alliance, which holds Israel, and its supporters in the West, responsible for all the world’s ills. Much of Jewry has concluded that Europe’s Jews should leave before it is too late. Europe will betray them — as it is betraying itself. Betrayed by the “international community.” The world is silent in the face of Jew-hunting. John Kerry feels no outrage. He is evenhanded. The UN, the NGOs, all those who lecture us on the importance of caring about humanity and acting virtuously are silent – or worse. The media, and its moralizing journalists who long ago gave up on truth to promote an ideological narrative “for a better world” – now seem to justify collective punishment for Jews. The NYT, BBC, CNN, MSNBC all produce morally perverted “reports,” with inverted headlines. The New York Times, in a paroxysm of “evenhandedness,” declared itself agnostic on the question of whether the Temple Mount itself is a false Jewish claim.
Yet perhaps what is most painful is the behavior of two groups of American Jews – our confused leaders and our Jewish “progressives.” Knowing the growing Islamist threats faced by Europe’s Jews, no group has been more vociferous than American Jewish leaders, rabbinic and secular, about the absolute need for Jews here to assist Muslim refugees to enter Europe – no matter what. Locally and nationally, rabbis have – with much emotion – insisted that we see ourselves in the faces of these refugees, but somehow not in the faces of our besieged brothers and sisters in Europe who will reap the whirlwind.
Most disheartening are the actions of “progressive” Jewish groups — J Street (launched by funding from billionaire hater of Israel, George Soros) and the New Israel Fund (with so many dollars of Israel’s European enemies), who “contextualize” the murders, who “understand” the stabbers and who come just inches away from justifying the murder of Jews. After all, if Israel doesn’t cede the West Bank “for peace” they tell us, then we all just can expect this to continue. The Palestinians’ rage, after all, is understandable. No, they should not stick a knife into a Jewish woman, but, but, but. Progressives must signal their universalism by publicly renouncing their old tribal identity. If a progressive’s apartment building were on fire, he might feel guilty about racing past his neighbor’s door to save his own child. Aligning themselves with “the other” provides Jewish progressives with feel-good moral superiority. In many cities, these organizations were invited into the communal Jewish tent for the sake of unity. What we got instead is an ideological knife in the back. It’s time to show them the door.
Charles Jacobs is the head of Americans for Peace & Tolerance.
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2)-
With Netanyahu's Visit, 4 Reasons to Expect Smoother U.S.-Israeli Relations
File photo of President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office in 2013.(Associated Press)
The mistrust and suspicions that have marked their relationship for seven years will not dissipate when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama meet on Monday. But for a few reasons, it’s likely that a smoother, steadier stretch in relations is coming.
1. For better or worse, Mr. Obama got what he wanted—and Mr. Netanyahu didn’t–from the deal on Iran’s nuclear program. The fight about what is or is not in the agreement is essentially over, though the Israelis will follow implementation closely while they steer clear of pushing Congress to undermine that process through additional sanctions. Iran’s own behavior—including jailing U.S. citizens, violating its citizens’ human rights, or offering support to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad–might prompt Congress to act without prompting. Right now, Mr. Netanyahu’s job is to make a virtue out of necessity and extract as much as he can in U.S. security and military assistance. It’s in his interest to show his constituents that while he lost the Iran fight, Israel will gain meaningfully all the same. What Mr. Netanyahu cannot afford is strained relations with the U.S. without a robust security package. That means accommodation, not confrontation.
2. Mr. Obama would like to slam Mr. Netanyahu hard on the peace process; the question is whether he can find an effective way to do so. Mr. Obama opposes Israeli settlement activity and believes that Mr. Netanyahu is playing him on the two-state solution. But he doesn’t have many levers to pull given the latest wave of Palestinian violence, Mahmoud Abbas’s campaign to gain international recognition by isolating Israel, and the long odds against agreement on the big issues such as Jerusalem and borders. Seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution that would lay out the basis of a deal would alienate Israel and Congress–and produce nothing on the ground. Mr. Obama may decide to air his ideas for a solution next year. But for now the smarter play is trying to work with Mr. Netanyahu rather than against him. Why fight if doing so produces only a breakdown with Israel and no breakthrough on the two-state standoff?
3. Mr. Obama has barely a year left in office and an eye on his legacy—and the Middle East looks a lot worse now than when he was inaugurated. Islamic State hasn’t been fundamentally degraded, much less defeated. Iran is behaving badly; Syria and Iraq are a mess; Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya don’t look much better. Relations with key Arab allies, particularly the Saudis and Egyptians, have been strained. Vladimir Putin’s actions in the region highlight Mr. Obama’s aversion to risk. The last thing the White House needs is a gratuitous fight with Israel. A sustained blow-up between Israelis and Palestinians—which is quite possible–would mark an ironic end for a president who set out to solve the problem. Here, too, working with Israel to calm matters makes more sense than riling things up with Mr. Netanyahu.
4. An Israeli-U.S. meltdown is never smart politics or policy during a presidential election year. Mr. Obama presumably wants to pave the way for a Democratic successor. That’s no mean feat: A two-term U.S. president hasn’t been followed by a member of his party since Ronald Reagan was succeeded by George H.W. Bush. A row with Israel would give Republicans a hammer to beat up his administration and the Democratic nominee over any policy that appears to be picking on the Israelis. If the Democratic nominee is Hillary Clinton, it would be particularly awkward to see the former secretary of state attacking her old boss’s policies and questioning the administration’s handling of a close U.S. ally.
The bottom line: No breakdowns or breakthroughs in the U.S.-Israeli relationship are likely in the coming week. No transformational reset looms between these leaders. But Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu have more reasons to get along these days than not.
Aaron David Miller is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and most recently the author of “The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.”
2a)
2a)
Netanyahu calls meeting with Obama ‘one of best’ they’ve had
PM says he was not asked to freeze settlements, only focused on how to move forward; will meet Kerry while in DC; US team heads to Israel soon on security package
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves the West Wing following meetings with US President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, DC, November 9, 2015. (AFP/Saul Loeb)
WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his sit-down on Monday with US President Barack Obama was “one of the best meetings I’ve had with him.”
Speaking to reporters moments after his two-and-half hour powwow with Obama, Netanyahu said the discussion focused mainly on Israel’s security needs and American military aid to Israel, and steps on the ground Jerusalem intends to take to stabilize relations with the Palestinians. Netanyahu is to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday to discuss such steps.
The president did not ask Netanyahu to freeze settlements, Netanyahu said. His controversial appointment of Ran Baratz as his new communications director did not come up during the meeting, the prime minister added, reiterating that he will “deal with the matter” upon his return to Israel.
“What you saw from the outside is also what transpired on the inside. It was one of the best meetings I’ve had with Obama,” Netanyahu said.
“The conversation was in very good spirits and very honest; no one hid the disagreements between us. Rather, we focused on how to go forward,” he added.
The two leaders discussed ways to ensure Iran doesn’t violate the agreement and possible means to counter the regime’s aggressive behavior, the prime minister said.
The description ran counter to what many analysts expected to be a tense meeting after a year in which ties between the two have become frayed over the Iranian nuclear issue and settlement building.
But Netanyahu said that, as opposed to past meetings, this one was not confrontational.
US President Barack Obama, right, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, November 9, 2015. (AFP/Saul Loeb)
“I did not feel any tension,” he added. “Both the tone and the substance of the meeting were in a spirit of being productive — let’s see what we can do, not let’s see how we can argue.”
The meeting did not have the feeling of a “debating society,” as it had in the past, he said. “It simply wasn’t like this. And it’s not as if there haven’t been any meetings like that. There have been. But this wasn’t one of them.”
The prime minister refused, however, to address reporters’ questions about possible resolutions on the peace process in the United Nations Security Council and whether he and President Obama discussed the administration’s position of any such resolution.
A US delegation led by senior White House official Yael Lempert will visit Jerusalem in early December to start the negotiations about the new memorandum, said National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen. The current MOU lapses in two years’ time, but negotiations for the upcoming one will be concluded way ahead of 2017, Netanyahu said.
Obama and Netanyahu also talked at length about the current situation in Syria. The prime minister indicated that Israel will oppose any agreement that would allow Iran or its proxies to launch missiles at Israel. He also reiterated his “red lines” vis-à-vis Syria, saying that he will not allow the smuggling of advanced weapons systems from Syria to Lebanon.
2b)
2b)
New York Post Editorial BoardThe left’s all-too-telling attempt to silence Netanyahu
A gaggle of hard lefties and fellow travelers is out to stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking Tuesday to the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank with close White House ties.
Netanyahu is in DC mending fences after he fought hard against President Obama’s Iran nuke deal, hence the CAP event.But various hard-left activists, liberal church types and Arab groups don’t think anyone should be allowed to hear what Bibi has to say. Backed by thousands of online signatures, they complain the CAP event grants legitimacy to Netanyahu’s “ever more expansionist policies of occupation.”
This, when he’s not even giving a speech, just joining a dialogue with Neera Tanden, CAP’s CEO and a veteran of both Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns. And he’s taking audience questions, where critics can press him hard.
To its credit, CAP has rejected these “progressive” complaints, noting that “an open discourse on important topics” is a true “progressive value.”
On the other hand, Foreign Policy reports that the CAP staff itself on Monday held a collective snit fit over the decision to invite Netanyahu.
But we’re glad to see the think tank’s leaders standing fast against lefties’ growing view that freedom of speech belongs only to those they agree with — and that anyone with an opposing view should be muzzled.It seems “shut up” is the best argument the left has left.
2c)
Palestinian State of Denial
You do not make peace with enemies. You make peace with former enemies.
By Bret Stephens
In the history of political clichés, has there ever been one quite so misjudged as the line—some version of which is attributed either to Israel’s martyred Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin or fabled Defense Minister Moshe Dayan—that “you make peace with your enemies, not with your friends”?
OK, “give peace a chance” and “nation building at home” are worse. But the Rabin-Dayan line is an expression of the higher mindlessness that passes for wisdom among people who think they are smart. After Monday’s make-nice session between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s time for a reconsideration.
To wit: You do not make peace with enemies. You make peace with former enemies—either because you have defeated them, as we defeated the Axis Powers in World War II; or because they collapse, as the Soviet Union did after the fall of the Berlin Wall; or because they have defeated you and you’re able to come to terms with the outcome from a safe distance. Witness Vietnam.
On rare precious occasions, both sides realize their interests are best served through a negotiated settlement they’re prepared to honor. That was the miracle of 1977, when Egypt’s Anwar Sadat flew to Israel to show he sincerely accepted the Jewish state’s right to exist. He paid for the gesture with his life.
Enemies, however, do not make peace. They may desist from open combat, as Pakistan and India have, even as Islamabad continues to support anti-Indian terrorist proxies. They may arrange a long-term armistice of the kind South Korea has with the North. But that’s a peace preserved by 700,000 active-duty South Korean and U.S. troops, plus a million land mines in the DMZ.
For the past 22 years—ever since Rabin signed the Oslo Accord with the PLO’s Yasser Arafat—Israel has been trying to achieve something historically unprecedented: To make peace with an enemy that shows no interest in becoming an ex-enemy.
Daniel Polisar, an Israeli political scientist, recently published a fascinating study in Mosaic magazine of Palestinian public opinion based on 330 polls conducted over many years. It makes for some bracing reading.
“When asked hypothetically if Israel’s use of chemical or biological weapons against Palestinians would constitute terror, 93 percent said yes,” notes Mr. Polisar. “But when the identical question was posed regarding the use of such weapons of mass destruction by Palestinians against Israelis, only 25 percent responded affirmatively.”
Other details: A 2011 poll found that 61% of Palestinians thought it was morally right to name Palestinian streets after suicide bombers. In December 2014, 78% of Palestinians expressed support for “attempts to stab or run over Israelis” in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Only 20% were opposed. Palestinians have also consistently supported terrorist attacks against Israelis within Israel’s original borders, “often by as much as six to one.”
Palestinians routinely blame Israel for problems over which it has no control, such as the bloody 2007 coup through which Hamas wrested power from Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Ninety-four percent of Palestinians report a “very unfavorable” opinion of Jews. A majority of Palestinians believe Israel will “destroy the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques and build a synagogue in their place.”
As for the idea of sharing the land, only 12% of Palestinians agreed that “both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land.” More than 80% felt “this is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it.” Most Palestinians also think Israel won’t be around in 30 or 40 years, either “because Arab or Muslim resistance will destroy it” or on account of its “internal contradictions.”
Where is the sense in agreeing to relinquish through negotiations what is yours by right today and will be yours in deed tomorrow?
None of this is helped by Palestinian leaders who, when not inciting violence or alleging Israeli conspiracies, are peddling the lie that Israel is creating an apartheid state. The only person standing in the way of Palestinian democracy is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who hasn’t held an election in a decade. The only force standing in the way of a Palestinian state are the Palestinian people, who think they can gain their rights by stabbing their neighbors.
Which brings us back to Monday’s Oval Office meeting. Along with the forced bonhomie, the administration has been sounding the usual two-minutes-to-midnight warnings about the supposed end of the two-state solution. “For Israel, the more there is settlement construction, the more it undermines the ability to achieve peace,” says Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, in an interview with Haaretz.
How sweet it would be if all Israel had to do to make peace was dismantle its settlements. How much sweeter if the American president would find less to fault with an Israeli government’s housing policies than a Palestinian political culture still so intent on killing Jews. If Mr. Obama wants to know why he’s so disliked by Israelis, there’s the reason.
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