Demwits forgot certain political rules by which they now must play and live. What goes around comes around.
Decades ago, after the Bork nomination circus, I wrote a memo entitle" Bork and The Liberal Stork," in which I suggested the egg the liberals laid during the Bork hearing process would come back to both haunt them and the nation. Bork is now a verb and even Sam Nunn, said he enjoyed my memo but he and his fellow Senators did not hearken to its message.
Politicians seem never to learn the message of history. One day maybe to be Schumered, to be Reided and to be Pelosied all will become part of our language and will be substitutes for words like lied to, screwed by and just plain being stupid. Watered down is already an acceptable phrase. (See 1 below.)
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More rebuttal regarding the carbon hoax. (See 2 below.)
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Obama heightened the racial divide in this country for political gain. The facts suggest Democrats have a history of racial prejudice that far exceeds Republicans.
One day black voters may awake from their stupor and realize they have been played for fools and continue to be. Progressive policies have enslaved them , wrecked their family structure, by their own admission incarcerated them, and left them more unemployed than ever. They have been suckered into attending a poor education structure, separated from their church and religion and the economic disparity between whites and blacks has spread.
Trump told them they had nothing to lose but they were too ingrained to understand. Sad indeed but then they have only themselves to blame because they have chosen to follow the likes of their corrupt leadership like the self-serving Jackson's, Waters', Rangel's and Sharpton's among others .(See 3 below.)
Meanwhile, with the passing of each day it is evident Democrats are conducting themselves with an eye towards taking back Congress in the 2018 elections. They are working over time doing everything they can to slow walk Trump's nominees so they can chew up time on the legislative calendar and prevent Trump's ability to pass legislation and bring about changes in health care, tax policy, immigration etc.
Can Trump get a tax cut passed if it increases deficit spending in conjunction with spending on a wall and infrastructure? Democrats will be enthusiastic to spend but not Republican conservatives so that can result in gridlock and gum up any progress Trump committed to during his campaign.
Leaks coming out of The White House are also disturbing and show either some staff members are untrustworthy or those in various agencies have it in for Trump or both.
Democrats then can go to voters and campaign on how ineffective a non-politician like Trump is, and how incompetent Republican legislators have proven to be and so it goes.
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Israel and America. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
| Democrats Ran Afoul of the Immutable Laws of Politics |
| By Erick Erickson
There are some rather immutable laws of politics Democrats forgot about, but only after Republicans forgot about them first. They explain where we are at as a country and what will happen next.
The first law is that there is no such thing as a permanent political majority. The corollary is that once in power, a party is prone to forget the first law of politics. Republicans overplayed their hand after the 2004 election and Democrats swept into power. The Democrats then worked like crazy to cement their dominance for eight years only to see voters reject them. The protests around the country now have more to do with the Democrats’ unwillingness to accept voter rejection than anything else.
The second law is that once in power a party will begin taking actions it would never want its opponents to take. The corollary is that both parties establish precedents that are then expanded by the other. President Bush expanded and enhanced domestic intelligence gathering after the September 11 attacks. President Obama, as a candidate, became deeply critical of this action. But once he was elected, President Obama expanded what President Bush had already done.
President Obama claimed he had a pen and paper and could govern by executive order. Having forgotten the first rule of politics, he set up Hillary Clinton as the most powerful President in American history with sweeping investigative, war, and regulatory powers. Now the Democrats are scrambling and panicked that President Trump can use those precedents and powers.
We see this also in the Congress. The Democrats’ fealty to abortion politics set terrible precedents the Republicans will now use against them. In the 1980’s, Supreme Court hearings became character assassination campaigns all because of abortion. Robert Bork’s hearing gave way to a new political verb, “bork,” which means to assassinate one’s character by characterizing his career and beliefs in the worst possible light.
Then, Senator Joe Biden refused to even hold hearings on President George H. W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the last year of President Bush’s term in office. Again, because of abortion politics, Senator Harry Reid and the Democrats scuttled the filibuster on all presidential nominations except the Supreme Court to stack both the executive branch and judiciary with as many abortion activists as possible.
The result was that Republicans refused, once they got power back in the Senate (see rule one) to confirm any of President Obama’s judges and denied a hearing on Merrick Garland. Now Republicans can stack President Trump’s cabinet with conservatives over the loud objections of Democrats. Soon the Republicans will destroy the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.
Republicans should be careful about scuttling that filibuster. Democrats have surely learned their lesson and Republicans have other means of overcoming a Democrat filibuster. They can, for example, enforce the “two-speech” rule. This rule requires that, on a single legislative day, no senator can speak more than twice. If the Republicans schedule the debate on Neil Gorsuch for a single legislative day, that day may last three full weeks in reality, but once each Democrat has spoken twice debate will end without scrapping the filibuster.
The third law of politics is that all political processes move toward disorder until outside, forces intervene. Protestors will protest, and those protests will escalate. Payback will escalate as will revenge politics. Then a terrorist attack, war, a natural disaster, or an economic calamity will force both sides to stand out, regroup, and focus on the common good. It will happen, and it is sad that it takes such an event to bring unity.
These laws of politics would not matter so much if voters of both parties would take power away from Washington. Right now, leftwing voters have every reason to join conservatives in neutering Washington. They do not want President Trump to have so much power. They should be willing to scale back their ambitions of an amoral, socialist utopia for the nation and just concentrate on the states. Let California be a paradise of married gay union activists aborting children. Let Texas be a paradise of Christian free marketeers with large families. Then see which works bests.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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2) Establishment Politicians Using ‘Carbon Tax’ to Foil Trump
A number of mostly elderly very important persons have been compromised by the global warming hoax. The following wise men signed a tract: “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends.”
The carbon dividend tract was promoted in a Wall Street Journal article published on February 7th and signed by former Secretaries of State, Shultz and Baker. According to Shultz and Baker: “…there is mounting evidence of problems with the atmosphere that are growing too compelling to ignore.” That statement is simply wrong. There is no mounting evidence. Global temperature has been flat for 2 decades. The seas are not rising more than usual and the weather is not more extreme than usual. These important persons have simply fallen for the global warming hoax.
Ironically, just as our gang of global warming gentlemen launch their campaign for a carbon tax, the latest global temperature estimates from the government have been exposed as fraudulent, and inspired by politics, by a highly placed whistle blower.
Their carbon tax scheme is supposed to begin with a $40 per ton carbon tax. The proceeds from the carbon tax would be distributed to all persons with a valid Social Security number. This would appear to include every man, woman and child in the country except for illegal aliens who have not figured out how to get a Social Security number. Children are entitled to such a number at birth. Purportedly, this would provide a family of 4 with approximately $2000 per year.
Although the global warming gentlemen say they want to tax carbon, it is apparent that they are confused and are really proposing a tax on carbon dioxide (CO2), not carbon. Their numbers only make sense if that is what they are proposing. U.S. emissions of CO2 are about 5500 million metric tons per year, or 6,000 million 2000-pound tons. Assuming that 320 million people have Social Security numbers, or will quickly get one when they become lucrative, the $40 per ton tax on CO2 works out to $750 per person or $3,000 for a family of 4, not $2,000, as they state. A tax on carbon as opposed to CO2 would provide less than one third as much money, or about $800 for a family of 4.
If you work through the details, a $40 per ton CO2 tax would increase the cost of coal-generated electricity by 4 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH). For electricity generated by less-carbon natural gas, the increase would be about 2 cents per KWH. The cost of gasoline or diesel fuel would increase by about 12 cents per gallon. This amount of taxation is not enough to substantially change the use of fossil fuels or greatly reduce emissions of CO2. It would slightly advantage the use of natural gas compared to coal for generating electricity.
Wealthier people, with more automobiles and larger houses, would pay much more for energy than they would get back from the government. Low income people with fewer cars and smaller houses, particularly in areas with little coal use and mild climates, like California, would get back far more than they spent for energy. The tax would be very popular with lower income people, who would see it as free money from the government. That would ensure political support for the tax. At least that is what the carbon tax wise men assume.
The carbon dividend is designed to fight populism (i.e. Trump). The authors want to “…redirect this populist energy in a socially beneficial direction.” By handing large sums of money to the less prosperous citizens who voted for Trump, these wise men think they can defeat Trumpism and regain political control for themselves and their friends. This is an unholy alliance between global warming believers and establishment political forces that have been shut out of power by the Trump victory. Trump’s policy is to restore jobs that have been exported to low wage countries. The carbon tax advocates want to buy the Trump voters by giving them cash rather than jobs. Global warming provides a convenient excuse for distributing cash.
The carbon tax is supposed to increase according to a regular schedule. These wise men seem to assume that if we simply tax carbon enough, the carbon will disappear due to the workings of the free market. The problem with this theory is that the market is not actually free. For example, if the government declared that all electricity should be generated with nuclear energy and all automobiles should be fueled by natural gas, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by more than half. Considering that the other half of carbon dioxide emissions disappear into the ocean, U.S. responsibility for carbon dioxide growth in the atmosphere would be eliminated. But this approach is not likely to emerge from the workings of the free market unless prompted by government guidance, research and changed regulations. Currently the government guidance promotes windmills, solar power, and electric cars. These are overpriced non-solutions.
The idea of reducing U.S. carbon emissions makes no sense because most carbon emissions come from Asia, not the U.S. China alone burns 4 times as much coal as we do. Reducing carbon emissions also makes no sense because the evidence is rapidly accumulating that CO2 is a minor actor in the Earth’s climate. Further, CO2 is beneficial for agriculture. Crops grow better with less water when the amount of CO2 in the air is increased.
What level of carbon dioxide tax would be required to actually cause a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions? At $40 per ton there will be some effect due to a gradual shift away from coal to natural gas for electricity generation. This shift is already taking place due to the current low price of natural gas and the disproportionate regulatory burden placed on coal. If all coal generation were replaced by natural gas, national CO2 emissions would drop by about 15%. This would probably not happen anytime soon with a $40 tax, but it might happen faster with an $80 per ton tax that would increase further the cost per KWH differential for coal versus gas.
The carbon tax is a deeply corrupt idea. By handing out money, using bad science as an excuse, a discredited political class hopes to regain power. It is hard to see how this scheme would favor either Republicans or Democrats. Both parties would be obliged to support the carbon tax if a large part of the population is getting “free” money. The part of the population that would lose money might not notice the increase in the cost of electricity and gasoline, and they too would get checks from the government. Although the wise men propose that all the money collected would be returned to the citizens, the temptation to skim part of the tax for the government would become almost irresistible. If the carbon tax actually succeeded in eliminating carbon emissions, then there would be no money to distribute.
A somewhat similar scheme is going strong. A large part of the corn crop is converted to overpriced ethanol that is mixed with gasoline and burned up in cars. The scheme is justified by fake claims that it reduces global warming. Corn ethanol is popular in corn states, particularly politically crucial Iowa. Most people don’t notice the increase in the cost of gasoline, but the corn farmers notice the higher price of corn due to the ethanol mandates and subsidies. Such schemes are economic and political poison. Taking money from one group and giving it to another does not enhance prosperity.
Norman Rogers writes often on environmental and political issues. He maintains a website.
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3) Ted Cruz Is Right about the Democrats and Racism
The Democrat bench is so thin these days that perhaps Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., (aka Fauxahontas) is the best they can do to play point guard in the failed character assassination attempt of former colleague and current Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. She was rightly reprimanded by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and rightly condemned by Sen. Ted Cruz as misrepresenting both the past of Jeff Sessions and the historical truth about racial politics in this country.
Psychiatrists call the phenomena Warren exhibited as transference, the ascribing to others the faults you yourself possess. Warren attempted to call former Sen. Jeff Sessions a “racist” and, by implication, his party and President Trump as well, on the Senate floor, a severe breech of protocol. As Sen. Cruz pointed out in his reaction, Sen. Warren and her party had better look in the mirror of history:
The day after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was rebuked while making a speech critical of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Sen. Ted Cruz blasted Democrats, saying their party is the one rooted in racism. “The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan,” Cruz (R-Tex.) said in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. “You look at the most racist -- you look at the Dixiecrats, they were Democrats who imposed segregation, imposed Jim Crow laws, who founded the Klan. The Klan was founded by a great many Democrats.”
Cruz is right. The reason Democrats know so much about Jim Crow laws is that they wrote them. The Republican Party was founded to end slavery and free the slaves largely held by Democrats. As one wag suggested, perhaps the Democrats are so angry a Republicans because they’ve never forgiven the GOP for taking away their slaves.
Was Warren talking about the racists that voted to confirm Eric Holder as Obama’s attorney general? Unlike a leader of Sen. Warren’s party, Sen. Robert Byrd, Sessions fought the KKK. Byrd’s very real sins were forgiven. Warren will not forgive Sessions’ imaginary sins.
Warren’s historical amnesia omits the fact that it was Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and former “Grand Kleagle” with the Ku Klux Klan, who held the distinction of being the only senator to have opposed the only two black nominees to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and led a 52-day filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Sen. Al Gore, father of the former vice president, voted against the act, as did Sen. J. William Fulbright, to whom Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial, current senior senator from South Carolina Ernest Hollings, Sen. Richard Russell and, of course, Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was a Democrat at that time.
Warren forgets that it was Democrats who unleashed the dogs and turned on the fire hoses on civil rights marchers. It was Democrats who stood in the schoolhouse door and are still standing there by opposing school choice and trapping minority children in failing schools. It was Democrats who blocked the bridge in Selma.
Warren’s amnesia omits the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would never have been possible without Republican leadership. Not only was that legislation a personal victory for Illinois Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen, then Senate Minority leader, Republicans in both the House and Senate supported the measure in far greater percentages than Democrats. Only six GOP Senators voted against the act, compared with 21 Democrats. The party of Abraham Lincoln and Jeff Sessions beat back the fire hoses and dogs of the party of Robert Byrd and Elizabeth Warren.
Again, the Democrats should know a lot about Jim Crow laws, since they are the ones who wrote them. Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush's national security advisor, explained at the 2000 GOP national convention why a black college professor would be a Republican:
"The first Republican I knew was my father John Rice. And he is still the Republican I admire the most. My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. I want you to know that my father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I."
And neither should we. Warren’s colleague, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., badgered Sessions about the awards he received from various groups whose founders or leaders have made politically incorrect statements Blumenthal found offensive. Neither Blumenthal nor Warren has any problem with Hillary Clinton, their 2016 presidential candidate, accepting the Margaret Sanger Award.
Back in March of 2009, Hillary Clinton accepted Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award, an organization originally called the American Birth Control League. In accepting the award, the Weekly Standard noted, Hillary had high praise for the noted eugenicist:
Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision... And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.
As J. Kenneth Blackwell, writing in the Washington Times, notes, those who chant “black lives matter” obviously exclude the abortion rate of black babies that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and the KKK could only dream of:
138,539 black babies, nearly one baby in three, were killed in the womb in 2010. According to the CDC, between 2007 and 2010, innocent black babies were victimized in nearly 36 percent of the abortion deaths in the United States, though blacks represent only 12.8 percent of the population. Some say the abortion capital of America is New York City. According to LifeSiteNews, the city’s Department of Health reported that in 2012, more black babies were aborted (31,328) than born (24,758). That’s 55.9 percent of black babies killed before birth. Blacks represented 42.4 percent of all abortions.
This is a disturbing and tragic situation that continues unabated and is the fulfillment of the dream of Hillary Clinton’s heroine Margaret Sanger. As Blackwell also noted:
According to Sanger, “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.” She opened her first abortion clinics in inner cities, and it’s no accident that even today, “79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s abortion facilities are located in black or minority neighborhoods.”
Rep. Chris Smith reminded Hillary Clinton, who proudly accepted the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in a speech to Congress in 2009 of the nature of Sanger’s belief that eugenics, something the Nazis would put into horrifying practice, was Margaret Sanger’s solution to all our problems, particularly racial ones. As LifeSite News reported at the time:
Addressing Mrs. Clinton, Smith said, "Are you kidding? In ‘awe’’ of Margaret Sanger, who said in 1921, ‘Eugenics … is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political, and social problems’. And who also said in 1922, ‘The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it’?"….
Sen. Warren, call your office. You condemn Jeff Sessions as racist as you serve the party of KKK member Robert Byrd, segregation, slavery, and Jim Crow, whose presidential nominee admired someone whose dream was of exterminating the black race.
Hearing adjourned.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications
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4)
A beautiful friendship
By CAROLINE GLICK
Less than a week after he was inaugurated into office, President Donald Trump announced that he had repaired the US’s fractured ties with Israel. “It got repaired as soon as I took the oath of office,” he said.
Not only does Israel now enjoy warm relations with the White House. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in the US capital next week, he will be greeted by the most supportive political climate Israel has ever seen in Washington.
It is true that dangers to Israel’s ties with America lurk in the background. The radical Left is taking control of the Democratic Party.
But the forces now hijacking the party on a whole host of issues have yet to transform their hatred of Israel into the position of most Democratic lawmakers in Congress.
Democrats in both houses of Congress joined with their Republican counterparts in condemning UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that criminalized Israel. A significant number of Democratic lawmakers support Trump’s decision to slap new sanctions on Iran.
Similarly, radical Jewish groups have been unsuccessful in rallying the more moderate leftist Jewish leadership to their cause. Case in point is the widespread support Trump’s appointment of David Friedman to serve as his ambassador to Israel is receiving from the community.
Whereas J Street and T’ruah are circulating a petition calling for people to oppose his Senate confirmation, sources close to the issue in Washington say that AIPAC supports it.
Given this political climate, Netanyahu must use his meeting with Trump to develop a working alliance to secure Israel’s long-term strategic interests both on issues of joint concern and on issues that concern Israel alone.
The first issue on the agenda must be Iran.
Since taking office, Trump has signaled that unlike his predecessors, he is willing to lead a campaign against Iran. Trump has placed Iran on notice that its continued aggression will not go unanswered and he has harshly criticized Obama’s nuclear deal with the mullahs.
In the lead-up to his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu has said that he will present the new president with five options for scaling back Tehran’s nuclear program. No time can be wasted in addressing this problem.
Iran continues spinning its advanced centrifuges.
The mullahs are still on schedule to field the means to deploy nuclear warheads at will within a decade. Netanyahu’s task is to work with Trump to significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program as quickly as possible.
Then there is Syria. And Russia.
On Sunday, Trump restated his desire to develop ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Netanyahu must present Trump with a viable plan to reconstitute US-Russian ties in exchange for Russian abandonment of its alliance with Tehran and its cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah in Syria.
Here, too, time is of the essence.
According to news reports this week, President Bashar Assad is redeploying his forces to the Syrian border with Israel. Almost since the outset of the war in Syria six years ago, Assad’s forces have been under Iranian and Hezbollah control. If Syrian forces deploy to the border, then Iran and Hezbollah will control the border.
Israel cannot permit such a development. It’s not just that such a deployment greatly expands the risk of war. As long as Russia is acting in strategic alliance with Iran and Hezbollah in Syria, the deployment of Iranian-controlled forces to the border raises the real possibility that Israel will find itself at war with Russia in Syria.
Then there are the Sunnis. For the past six years, Netanyahu successfully withstood Obama’s pressure by developing an informal alliance with Sunni regimes that share its opposition to Iran and to the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to sources aware of the Trump administration’s strategic plans, the administration wishes to integrate Israel more strongly into Washington’s alliance structure with Sunni regimes. Israel, of course, has good reason to support this plan, particularly if it involves extending the US military’s Central Command to include Israel.
There are, however, significant limitations on the potential of Israel’s ties to Sunni regimes. First, there is the fact that all of these regimes are threatened by Islamist forces operating in their territory and on their borders.
As Israel Air Force commander Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel warned this week, Israel is concerned that in the event any of these regimes is overthrown, the advanced US weapons it fields will fall under the control of Islamist forces.
Then there is the fact that in exchange for taking their relations with Israel out of the proverbial closet, the Arabs will demand that Israel make concessions to the PLO.
This then brings us to the only subject the media is discussing in relation to Netanyahu’s upcoming meeting with Trump: Will Trump push Israel to make concessions to the PLO or won’t he? The short answer is that it doesn’t appear that Trump has the slightest intention of doing so.
Over the past week, the administration has made three statements about the Palestinians.
First, of course, was the White House’s statement about the so-called Israeli settlements that came out last Thursday.
Although nearly all media reports on the statement claimed it aligned Trump with his predecessors in opposition to Israel’s civilian presence in Judea and Samaria, the fact is that the statement was the most supportive statement any US administration has ever made about those communities.
Obama, of course rejected Israel’s right to any civilian presence beyond the 1949 armistice lines, including in Jerusalem. In his final weeks in office, Obama joined the international mob in falsely castigating Israeli communities in these areas as illegal.
George W. Bush for his part, made a distinction between the so-called settlement blocs and the more isolated Israeli villages in Judea and Samaria. He gave grudging and limited support for Israel’s right to respect the property rights of Jews in the former. He rejected Jewish property rights in the latter.
Trump repudiated both of these positions.
In its statement on Thursday, the administration made no distinction between Jewish property rights in any of the areas. Moreover, the statement did not even reject the construction of new Israeli communities.
According to the text of the statement, “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving” the goal of peace.
But, then again, they may be helpful. And then again, they may have no impact whatsoever on the chance of achieving peace.
Not only did the administration’s statement not reject Israel’s right to build new communities, it rejected completely the position of Trump’s predecessors that Israeli communities are an obstacle to peace.
In the administration’s words, “We don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace.”
After renouncing the positions of its predecessors on Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, the administration then refused to say whether its vision for peace includes a Palestinian state.
In line with the Republican Party’s platform that makes no mention of support for Palestinian statehood, the Trump administration continues to question the rationale for supporting a policy that has failed for the past 95 years.
Finally, the administration said it had no comment on the regulations law this week regarding Jewish construction rights in Judea and Samaria.
All White House spokesman Sean Spicer would say was that it would be discussed in Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu.
This brings us back to that meeting, and how Netanyahu should broach the Palestinian issue.
Both from statements by administration sources since the election and from the administration’s refusal to speak with Palestinian Authority officials since Trump’s electoral victory, Trump and his top advisers have made clear that they see no upside to US support for the PLO.
They do not want to support the PLO and they do not want to be dragged into fruitless discussions between Israel and the PLO. For the past 24 years, US mediation of those discussions has weakened America’s position in the region, has weakened Israel and has empowered the PLO and anti-American forces worldwide.
According to sources with knowledge of the administration’s position, Trump views the Israeli- Palestinian conflict as an internal Israeli issue.
He expects Israel to deal with it and do so in a way that stabilizes the region and keeps the Palestinians out of the headlines, to the extent possible.
In this vein, sources with knowledge of administration considerations claim that last Thursday’s White House statement on Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria was in part the result of exasperation with Israel’s inability to keep quiet on the issue. Had Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman not announced that they were issuing permits for thousands of building starts in Judea and Samaria, the White House wouldn’t have felt compelled to issue a statement on the matter.
The administration’s desire to disengage from the PLO is well aligned with Israel’s strategic interests. No good has ever come to Israel from US support for the PLO. Moreover, Israel has achieved its greatest strategic successes in relation to determining its borders when it has kept its moves as low key as possible.
For instance, in 1981, when then-prime minister Menachem Begin applied Israeli law to the Golan Heights, he did so with no fanfare. Rather than loudly announcing Israel’s right to sovereignty over the area, Begin insisted that the move was done to satisfy administrative imperatives and that Israel would be willing to consider border corrections in the event that Syria became serious about peace at some later date.
Begin’s example should inform Netanyahu’s preparations for his meeting with Trump.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu does not seem to realize the implications of Trump’s lack of interest in following in his predecessors’ footsteps in relation to the PLO.
Over the past few weeks, Netanyahu has insisted that he wishes to coordinate his positions on the Palestinians with the administration. While he should take any concerns Trump voices to him on the issue into consideration, he should also make clear that the administration’s belief that no good has come to the US from its support for the PLO is well-founded. He should also explain Israel’s need to control Area C in perpetuity, and the problem with maintaining military administration of the area. Finally, he should assure Trump that Israel intends to secure its interests in Judea and Samaria in a way than does not impinge on US priorities.
Next week can be the beginning of a new era in Israel’s relations with the US. But to make the most of this unprecedented opportunity, Israel needs to recognize its role as America’s ally. It must take the necessary steps to perform that role, and it must free the administration from the shackles of the PLO while securing its long-term interests in Judea and Samaria unilaterally, and quietly.
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