Our fearless leader!
===
;
You decide if: "You can tell which of these rattler will not bite?
Sure some won't, but tell me which ones so we can bring them into the house."
===
Yesterday,Obama challenged those who keep "popping off" to come up with a better strategy than the failed one he is pursuing halfheartedly. So retired General Bob Scales did just that on FOX this afternoon.
Scales said you create a coalition of a few willing Western and Middle Eastern nations, form a 5 battalion force of 25,000 troops of which the U.S would constitute half. Before you attack Raqqa , which is ISIS's stronghold, with this force, you bomb the city and cut off supply lines, water, destroy infrastructure and then after you wipe them out with the ground forces you leave a few Arab troops to police the area.
I have not heard Obama's 'pop off' response and doubt I will because he has none. He would rather keep setting up those false straw men sarcastic retorts ( I previously spoke about) leveled at those who challenge his incompetence and allow time to pass so he can blame others for the deterioration his impotence and purposeful timidity is causing by his pitiful pin prick air response.
Obama is a fraud. The retired general placed Obama on the "scales" and found him the wanting light weight he has proven to be and was all along for anyone who was not blind. (See 1 below.)
Obama has proven to be a urological president and Hillarious would follow suit. They both have a PP problem - they place politics over principle!
===
Sent to me by one of my dearest friend and fellow memo readers. Did not know he was currently smoking pot. (See 2 below.)
====
Glick on Abbas! (See 3 below.)
===
Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) U.S. Pilots Confirm: Obama Admin Blocks 75 Percent of Islamic State Strikes
‘We can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us’
U.S. military pilots who have returned from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq are confirming that they were blocked from dropping 75 percent of their ordnance on terror targets because they could not get clearance to launch a strike, according to a leading member of Congress.
Strikes against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) targets are often blocked due to an Obama administration policy to prevent civilian deaths and collateral damage, according to Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The policy is being blamed for allowing Islamic State militants to gain strength across Iraq and continue waging terrorist strikes throughout the region and beyond, according to Royce and former military leaders who spoke Wednesday about flaws in the U.S. campaign to combat the Islamic State.
“You went 12 full months while ISIS was on the march without the U.S. using that air power and now as the pilots come back to talk to us they say three-quarters of our ordnance we can’t drop, we can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us,” Royce said. “I don’t understand this strategy at all because this is what has allowed ISIS the advantage and ability to recruit.”
When asked to address Royce’s statement, a Pentagon official defended the Obama administration’s policy and said that the military is furiously working to prevent civilian casualties.
“The bottom line is that we will not stoop to the level of our enemy and put civilians more in harm’s way than absolutely necessary,” the official told the Washington Free Beacon, explaining that the military often conducts flights “and don’t strike anything.”
“The fact that aircraft go on missions and don’t strike anything is not out of the norm,” the official said. “Despite U.S. strikes being the most precise in the history of warfare, conducting strike operations in the heavily populated areas where ISIL hides certainly presents challenges. We are fighting an enemy who goes out of their way to put civilians at risk. However, our pilots understand the need for the tactical patience in this environment. This fight against ISIL is not the kind of fight from previous decades.”
Jack Keane, a retired four-star U.S. general, agreed with Royce’s assessment of the administration’s policy and blamed President Barack Obama for issuing orders that severely constrain the U.S. military from combatting terror forces.
“This has been an absurdity from the beginning,” Keane said in response to questions from Royce. “The president personally made a statement that has driven air power from the inception.”
“When we agreed we were going to do airpower and the military said, this is how it would work, he [Obama] said, ‘No, I do not want any civilian casualties,’” Keane explained. “And the response was, ‘But there’s always some civilian casualties. We have the best capability in the world to protect from civilians casualties.’”
However, Obama’s response was, “No, you don’t understand. I want no civilian casualties. Zero,’” Keane continued. “So that has driven our so-called rules of engagement to a degree we have never had in any previous air campaign from desert storm to the present.”
This is likely the reason that U.S. pilots are being told to back down when Islamic State targets are in site, Keane said, citing statistics published earlier this year by U.S. Central Command showing that pilots return from sorties in Iraq with about 75 percent of their ordnance unexpended.
“Believe me,” Keane added, “the French are in there not using the restrictions we have imposed on our pilots.”
And the same goes for Russians, he said, adding, “They don’t care at all about civilians.”
The French have been selecting their own targets since beginning to launch strikes on the Islamic State earlier this week, according to a second Pentagon source who spoke to the Free Beaconearlier this week about the strikes.
France dropped at least 20 bombs on key Islamic State targets within two days after the terror attacks in Paris that killed 129. French strikes have killed at least 33 Islamic State militants in the past several days.
In the case of the initial French strikes, the “targets were nominated by the French whose strikes against them were supported by the coalition” fighting the Islamic State, the official explained.
Any coalition member can nominate a potential target.
“Once a target is validated, great care is taken—from analysis of available intelligence to selection of the appropriate weapon to meet mission requirements—to minimize the risk of collateral damage, particularly any potential harm to non-combatants,” the official said.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 22,000 munitions were dropped on Islamic State targets during more than 8,000 sorties, according to information provided to the Free Beacon by the Defense Department.
Some experts questioned whether the administration is handing off portions of the battle to other nations.
“The French airstrikes have been billed as a significant uptick in the battle against the Islamic State; preliminary data indicate that this is not the case,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism expert at the U.S. Treasury Department. “It appears that the U.S. is simply allowing France to strike many of the targets that would usually be reserved for the U.S. and some of its coalition allies. In other words, this appears to be a redistribution of daily targets in the ongoing campaign, and not a significant change.”
These strikes have forced the Islamic State to evacuate at least 20 to 25 percent of the territories it held one year ago in both Iraq and Syria, according to the Pentagon.
Attacks have focused on the Islamic State’s “staging areas, fighting position, and key leaders,” as well as its “oil distribution chain,” according to the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, a poll released Thursday found that at least 70 percent of American support an expanded fight against the Islamic State, including sending U.S. troops to the region.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)THE PERFECT DAY – January 20, 2017
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. President Marco Rubio and Vice President Carly Fiorina are sworn into office.
2. In a rare event on inauguration day, Congress convenes for an
emergency meeting to repeal the illegal and unconstitutional Socialist
healthcare farce known as Obamacare. The new Director of Health and Social Services Dr. Ben Carson announces that an independent group of healthcare management professionals is hired to handle healthcare services for poor and low income people. They are also assigned the duty of eliminating Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Government’s costs for public healthcare are reduced by 90%. Healthcare insurance premiums for working Americans are reduced by 50%. The move saves billions of taxpayer paid dollars. Healthcare service in the U.S improves 100%.
3. Newly appointed department of Homeland Security Chief Donald Trump announces the immediate deployment of Troops to the U.S. Mexico border to control illegal immigration and the immediate deportation of illegals with criminal records or links to terrorist groups. New bio-encrypted Social Security ID’s are required by every American citizen. Birthright is abolished. All immigration from countries that represent a threat to the safety of American citizens is terminated indefinitely. The move saves American taxpayers billions of dollars. Several prisons are closed.
4. Newly appointed Secretary of Business and Economic Development Ted Cruz eliminates more than half of the Government agencies operating under the Obama administration saving taxpayers billions of dollars. Stocks rise 100%.
5. Newly appointed Director of Government Finance Rand Paul announces the abolition of the IRS and displays a copy of the new Federal Tax Return form. It consists of one page. The instructions consist of two pages. The Federal Reserve is audited. The move saves American taxpayers billions of dollars and increases tax revenue.
6. Hillary Clinton is in jail, where she belongs. Her cell is directly
across from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who are serving time for ‘Hate Crimes." She bitches at them constantly from behind the bars of her cell in what some might call cruel and unusual punishment.
7. Bernie Sanders is in the nuthouse, where he belongs. His room is directly across from Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chris Matthews and Al Franken. They meet for tea every day at ten and discuss the success and benefits of Communism and Socialism throughout the world. They also wonder when the “Mothership” is going to pick them up and return them to their home planets.
8. Windows 12 is released. It is designed for humans, doesn’t try to
satisfy the needs of every person on the planet, doesn’t require a degree in nuclear physics to operate and looks just like Windows 7 except it is easier to use.
9. Barack Obama flees the United States under cover of darkness and returns to his homeland of Kenya before his trial for treason begins. He deplanes on a remote jungle airstrip. It was reported that he was last seen wandering through the jungle singing “Hakuna Matata” with a chimp named Commie.
10. Oscar Meyer announces the introduction of a new cholesterol and fat free pepperoni that tastes just like regular pepperoni.
11. Not to be outdone, Kraft Foods announces the introduction of several varieties of cholesterol and fat free cheeses that taste just like regular cheese.
12. A committee is not established to determine what is causing global cooling. Billions of taxpayer dollars are saved.
14. Dead people are no longer allowed to vote in Chicago, a huge blow for the Democrat Party in the State of Illinois.
15. I receive a call from an attorney in Ireland. He explains that I have inherited a brewery and coastal estate in Ireland from a distant relative and that I need to be in Dublin as soon as possible to sign the papers. Ten hours later we tour our new vacation home. There is a red Ferrari in the garage, also part of the inheritance.
3) Who Is being Delusional
By Caroline Glick
On Tuesday night, Channel 10 broadcast an interview with PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in which Abbas admitted publicly for the first time that he rejected the peace plan then prime minister Ehud Olmert offered him in 2008.
Olmert’s plan called for Israel to withdraw from the entire Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, and from 93.7 percent of Judea and Samaria. Olmert also offered sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians to compensate for the areas Israel would retain in Judea and Samaria.
Abbas said his rejection was unequivocal. “I didn’t agree. I rejected it out of hand.”
For years, the story of Abbas’s rejection of Olmert’s 2008 offer has been underplayed. Many commentators have insisted Abbas didn’t really reject it, but just failed to respond.
But now the truth is clear. Abbas is not interested either in peace or in Palestinian statehood.
Abbas’s many apologists in the Israeli Left insist that he didn’t reject the plan on its merits. Rather, they argue, Abbas rejected Olmert’s offer because, by the time Olmert made it, he was involved in criminal investigations that forced him to resign from office eight months later.
Hogwash, says former AP reporter Mark Lavie.
Following the interview’s broadcast, Lavie countered that if Abbas were truly interested in establishing an independent Palestinian state, he wouldn’t have cared about the political fortunes of the Israeli prime minister. He would have taken the offer and run, knowing that, as Olmert said, the likelihood that he’d get a similar offer in the next 50 years was nonexistent.
The most notable reaction to Abbas’s admission was the reaction that never came. The Israeli Left had no reaction to his interview.
Abbas is the hero of the Left.
He is their partner. He is their moderate. He is their man of peace. Abbas is the Palestinian leader to whom every leftist politician worth his snuff, from opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog to the Meretz Knesset faction make regular pilgrimages to prove their devotion to peace.
Their man in Ramallah received the most radical offer ever to see the light of day. And rather than accept it, he rejected it out of hand and refused to meet with Olmert ever again, and he openly admits it.
The Left’s non-response is not surprising. Abbas’s decision to end all speculation about whether or not he is a man of peace is merely the latest blow reality has cast on their two-state formula.
The Left’s policy of land for peace failed more than 15 years ago when Abbas’s boss, Yasser Arafat, preferred war to peace and initiated the worst campaign of terrorism that Israel had ever experienced.
Yet for the last 15 years, the Israeli “peace camp” has never wavered in its view that, despite it all, Israel must rid itself of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.
Rather it members has grown angrier and angrier at their own people for abandoning them and less and less willing to agree that there is anything – including Israeli statehood itself – that is more important than giving up Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.
The Left’s reactionary position was on full display last Thursday at the annual “peace conference” hosted by the far left Haaretz newspaper.
Last year, the conference’s audience attacked Bayit Yehudi Party leader Naftali Bennett both verbally and physically when he presented his plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria. This year it was Tourism Minister Yariv Levin’s turn to be assaulted.
Levin was subjected to constant catcalls from the audience, whose members called him “Goebbels” for arguing that the two-state formula has no chance of bringing peace and that the time has come to consider other options.
But Levin’s claims were simply common sense.
This week the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion published its most recent survey. The results were no surprise. Indeed, they were more or less consistent with historical survey results.
According to the PCPO data, 63 percent of Palestinians oppose holding peace talks with Israel.
58 percent think Mahmoud Abbas, whose term of office ended in 2009, should resign. A majority of Palestinians support a new assault or “intifada” against Israel and 42 percent of Palestinians support the use of terrorism against Israel.
Also this week, ahead of the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference on Wednesday The Jerusalem Post published a new poll of Israeli public opinion.
According to the data, 46 percent of Israelis support a policy of separating from the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state. 35 percent of Israelis support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. For Israelis under 45, the numbers are reversed.
Today a majority of Likud Knesset members and all members of the Bayit Yehudi’s Knesset faction oppose Palestinian statehood and support applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria.
Rather than deal with the fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis support their two-state model, the Left has decided to ignore both.
The Haaretz conference last week hosted a panel discussing whether the two state paradigm remains viable. In his remarks, Prof. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who served as foreign minister in 2000 during the failed Camp David peace summit, explained that given the Israeli and Palestinian publics’ rejection of the two-state formula, (but especially the Israeli rejection of it), the UN Security Council determine Israel’s final borders. In other words, from Ben-Ami’s perspective, withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is more important than maintaining Israel’s independence and governing in accordance with the will of the people.
When the panel’s moderator expressed concern that the mass expulsion of Israelis from their communities in Judea and Samaria which the two-state formula requires would cause a civil war within Israeli society, Ben-Ami just shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t delude myself. I never deluded myself that this would be a boy scout trip,” he said. “You can’t do this through consensus….Consensus is the great enemy of leadership.”
Ben-Ami continued, “War unites, peace divides…A leader who wants to make peace will always have a split nation behind him.”
MK Meirav Michaeli, who serves as the Zionist Union’s Knesset faction head, said for her part that the greatest obstacle to peace is Israel. Ever since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Israel hasn’t had a leader willing to do what it takes to make peace.
In Michaeli’s view, when the Left next forms a government, it will need to adopt – as is opening position in negotiations – the position that Israel shares responsibility for the fate of the so-called “Palestinian refugees.”
Michaeli explained, “Israel needs to be part of a coalition that will find a solution,” for the descendants of the Arabs that left Israel during the 1948- 1949 pan-Arab invasion of the nascent state of Israel.
Michaeli also insisted that Israel needs to stop demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist. Israel should suffice instead with a Palestinian acknowledgment that it does indeed exist.
It goes without saying that there has never been, and there never will be a majority of support in Israel either for Ben-Ami’s position or for Michaeli’s position. This is the reason that they prefer to ignore the Israeli people and wait for “the world” to save “the peace” for them.
This brings us to the 46 percent of Israelis who would like to separate from the Palestinians and let them have a state.
The only reason that a plurality of Israelis still supports a policy that has failed continuously for the past 15 years is because the Israeli Left has blocked all discussion of alternative policies.
Over the past 20 years, the Left has implemented three policy initiatives: the peace process with the PLO from 1993 to 2000, the unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. These policies never enjoyed the sustained support of the majority of the public.
To the extent they ever mobilized the temporary support of bare majorities of public, they did so only because the media campaigned continuously on behalf of these initiatives. Not only did key all the mass circulation newspapers and all major broadcast media outlets support these plans, they blocked all debate about them. Opponents were demonized as extremists.
And this brings us to the 35 percent of Israelis who support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.
It is this virtual blackout on coverage of opposing views that makes the results of the Post’s opinion poll remarkable. In the absence of almost any public discussion of the possibility of applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria aside from the self-generated publicity of advocates of the position, more than a third of Israelis overall, and a plurality of young Israelis supports it.
Over the past week, Netanyahu has been asked his opinion of the prospects for unilateral Israeli actions toward the Palestinians three times, once in Washington and twice in Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s responses have been enigmatic. But collectively they lend the clear impression that the premier does not support unilateral Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria and at least in principle, does not oppose the sovereignty model.
In his remarks at the Post’s conference Wednesday, Netanyahu said cagily, “There are all sorts of unilateral moves in all sorts of directions. Wait and see. And they are not necessarily in the direction you think.”
Speaking to the Likud’s Knesset faction on Monday Netanyahu clarified his remarks on the subject last week in Washington saying, “I didn’t say unilateral withdrawals. I said unilateral steps. You can imagine what I mean – states are disintegrating and we will protect our interests.”
Sitting next to Ben-Ami at the Haaretz conference was the lone non-leftist on the panel. Halachic expert Malka Puterkovsky said that, in her view, Israel should apply its sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria. Doing so, she argued, will not risk Israel’s future as a Jewish state.
Both the audience and her fellow panelists reacted to her statements with a the same extreme hostility with which they responded to Bennet and Levin.
When Ben-Ami – the man who thinks it is more important for Israel to expel some 100,000 Israelis from their homes than avert a civil war, and prefers borders forced on Israel by the UN to Israeli democracy and independence – was asked his opinion of Puterovsky’s position, he called the notion of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria “delusional.”
We need to take Netanyahu’s coy responses to questions about unilateralism as an invitation to begin a serious public discussion of the option.
The public wants this discussion and we need this discussion.
As for how the peace camp will respond, well, there are worse things than having reactionaries call you “delusional.”
Olmert’s plan called for Israel to withdraw from the entire Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, and from 93.7 percent of Judea and Samaria. Olmert also offered sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians to compensate for the areas Israel would retain in Judea and Samaria.
Abbas said his rejection was unequivocal. “I didn’t agree. I rejected it out of hand.”
For years, the story of Abbas’s rejection of Olmert’s 2008 offer has been underplayed. Many commentators have insisted Abbas didn’t really reject it, but just failed to respond.
But now the truth is clear. Abbas is not interested either in peace or in Palestinian statehood.
Abbas’s many apologists in the Israeli Left insist that he didn’t reject the plan on its merits. Rather, they argue, Abbas rejected Olmert’s offer because, by the time Olmert made it, he was involved in criminal investigations that forced him to resign from office eight months later.
Hogwash, says former AP reporter Mark Lavie.
Following the interview’s broadcast, Lavie countered that if Abbas were truly interested in establishing an independent Palestinian state, he wouldn’t have cared about the political fortunes of the Israeli prime minister. He would have taken the offer and run, knowing that, as Olmert said, the likelihood that he’d get a similar offer in the next 50 years was nonexistent.
The most notable reaction to Abbas’s admission was the reaction that never came. The Israeli Left had no reaction to his interview.
Abbas is the hero of the Left.
He is their partner. He is their moderate. He is their man of peace. Abbas is the Palestinian leader to whom every leftist politician worth his snuff, from opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog to the Meretz Knesset faction make regular pilgrimages to prove their devotion to peace.
Their man in Ramallah received the most radical offer ever to see the light of day. And rather than accept it, he rejected it out of hand and refused to meet with Olmert ever again, and he openly admits it.
The Left’s non-response is not surprising. Abbas’s decision to end all speculation about whether or not he is a man of peace is merely the latest blow reality has cast on their two-state formula.
The Left’s policy of land for peace failed more than 15 years ago when Abbas’s boss, Yasser Arafat, preferred war to peace and initiated the worst campaign of terrorism that Israel had ever experienced.
Yet for the last 15 years, the Israeli “peace camp” has never wavered in its view that, despite it all, Israel must rid itself of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.
Rather it members has grown angrier and angrier at their own people for abandoning them and less and less willing to agree that there is anything – including Israeli statehood itself – that is more important than giving up Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.
The Left’s reactionary position was on full display last Thursday at the annual “peace conference” hosted by the far left Haaretz newspaper.
Last year, the conference’s audience attacked Bayit Yehudi Party leader Naftali Bennett both verbally and physically when he presented his plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria. This year it was Tourism Minister Yariv Levin’s turn to be assaulted.
Levin was subjected to constant catcalls from the audience, whose members called him “Goebbels” for arguing that the two-state formula has no chance of bringing peace and that the time has come to consider other options.
But Levin’s claims were simply common sense.
This week the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion published its most recent survey. The results were no surprise. Indeed, they were more or less consistent with historical survey results.
According to the PCPO data, 63 percent of Palestinians oppose holding peace talks with Israel.
58 percent think Mahmoud Abbas, whose term of office ended in 2009, should resign. A majority of Palestinians support a new assault or “intifada” against Israel and 42 percent of Palestinians support the use of terrorism against Israel.
Also this week, ahead of the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference on Wednesday The Jerusalem Post published a new poll of Israeli public opinion.
According to the data, 46 percent of Israelis support a policy of separating from the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state. 35 percent of Israelis support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. For Israelis under 45, the numbers are reversed.
Today a majority of Likud Knesset members and all members of the Bayit Yehudi’s Knesset faction oppose Palestinian statehood and support applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria.
Rather than deal with the fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis support their two-state model, the Left has decided to ignore both.
The Haaretz conference last week hosted a panel discussing whether the two state paradigm remains viable. In his remarks, Prof. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who served as foreign minister in 2000 during the failed Camp David peace summit, explained that given the Israeli and Palestinian publics’ rejection of the two-state formula, (but especially the Israeli rejection of it), the UN Security Council determine Israel’s final borders. In other words, from Ben-Ami’s perspective, withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is more important than maintaining Israel’s independence and governing in accordance with the will of the people.
When the panel’s moderator expressed concern that the mass expulsion of Israelis from their communities in Judea and Samaria which the two-state formula requires would cause a civil war within Israeli society, Ben-Ami just shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t delude myself. I never deluded myself that this would be a boy scout trip,” he said. “You can’t do this through consensus….Consensus is the great enemy of leadership.”
Ben-Ami continued, “War unites, peace divides…A leader who wants to make peace will always have a split nation behind him.”
MK Meirav Michaeli, who serves as the Zionist Union’s Knesset faction head, said for her part that the greatest obstacle to peace is Israel. Ever since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Israel hasn’t had a leader willing to do what it takes to make peace.
In Michaeli’s view, when the Left next forms a government, it will need to adopt – as is opening position in negotiations – the position that Israel shares responsibility for the fate of the so-called “Palestinian refugees.”
Michaeli explained, “Israel needs to be part of a coalition that will find a solution,” for the descendants of the Arabs that left Israel during the 1948- 1949 pan-Arab invasion of the nascent state of Israel.
Michaeli also insisted that Israel needs to stop demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist. Israel should suffice instead with a Palestinian acknowledgment that it does indeed exist.
It goes without saying that there has never been, and there never will be a majority of support in Israel either for Ben-Ami’s position or for Michaeli’s position. This is the reason that they prefer to ignore the Israeli people and wait for “the world” to save “the peace” for them.
This brings us to the 46 percent of Israelis who would like to separate from the Palestinians and let them have a state.
The only reason that a plurality of Israelis still supports a policy that has failed continuously for the past 15 years is because the Israeli Left has blocked all discussion of alternative policies.
Over the past 20 years, the Left has implemented three policy initiatives: the peace process with the PLO from 1993 to 2000, the unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. These policies never enjoyed the sustained support of the majority of the public.
To the extent they ever mobilized the temporary support of bare majorities of public, they did so only because the media campaigned continuously on behalf of these initiatives. Not only did key all the mass circulation newspapers and all major broadcast media outlets support these plans, they blocked all debate about them. Opponents were demonized as extremists.
And this brings us to the 35 percent of Israelis who support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.
It is this virtual blackout on coverage of opposing views that makes the results of the Post’s opinion poll remarkable. In the absence of almost any public discussion of the possibility of applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria aside from the self-generated publicity of advocates of the position, more than a third of Israelis overall, and a plurality of young Israelis supports it.
Over the past week, Netanyahu has been asked his opinion of the prospects for unilateral Israeli actions toward the Palestinians three times, once in Washington and twice in Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s responses have been enigmatic. But collectively they lend the clear impression that the premier does not support unilateral Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria and at least in principle, does not oppose the sovereignty model.
In his remarks at the Post’s conference Wednesday, Netanyahu said cagily, “There are all sorts of unilateral moves in all sorts of directions. Wait and see. And they are not necessarily in the direction you think.”
Speaking to the Likud’s Knesset faction on Monday Netanyahu clarified his remarks on the subject last week in Washington saying, “I didn’t say unilateral withdrawals. I said unilateral steps. You can imagine what I mean – states are disintegrating and we will protect our interests.”
Sitting next to Ben-Ami at the Haaretz conference was the lone non-leftist on the panel. Halachic expert Malka Puterkovsky said that, in her view, Israel should apply its sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria. Doing so, she argued, will not risk Israel’s future as a Jewish state.
Both the audience and her fellow panelists reacted to her statements with a the same extreme hostility with which they responded to Bennet and Levin.
When Ben-Ami – the man who thinks it is more important for Israel to expel some 100,000 Israelis from their homes than avert a civil war, and prefers borders forced on Israel by the UN to Israeli democracy and independence – was asked his opinion of Puterovsky’s position, he called the notion of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria “delusional.”
We need to take Netanyahu’s coy responses to questions about unilateralism as an invitation to begin a serious public discussion of the option.
The public wants this discussion and we need this discussion.
As for how the peace camp will respond, well, there are worse things than having reactionaries call you “delusional.”
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