Sunday, April 18, 2010

Obama's Apartheid State

In his rush to create a second Palestinian state, Obama is avoiding all of the hard questions.

One of them is why over 12 billion dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority over 15 years has had negligible effect--and what that fact indicates about the prospects for a future Arab Palestinian state.

Here are some others:
Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israel Defense Forces general who now serves as Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister, posed the following query in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post: “If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews? Why do those areas have to be Judenrein? Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”...


These are excellent questions. If what Israel is being asked to negotiate with the Palestinians is mutual recognition and legitimacy in the context of a cessation of violence, why can’t Jews stay in the areas designated as part of a Palestinian state, just as Arabs live in Israel with full rights as citizens? Indeed, what kind of a crazy peace would create a state alongside Israel in which Jews are forbidden to live and where Arabs face the death sentence for selling property to Jews, as is currently the case in both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority?
The New York Times describes the "Obama doctrine" as 'relegating issues like human rights and democracy to second-tier concerns'.

No kidding--and the New York Times lauds this as a good thing.

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3 comments:

NormanF said...

Liberalism has changed a great deal since the 1970s when human rights and democracy were top concerns. Now its playing sympatico with tyrannies and despotisms. That is called "realism."

Daled Amos said...

Liberalism has changed a great deal since the 1970s

Have you read "Liberal Fascism?

NormanF said...

There are fascist elements in post-modern liberalism. The idea the state knows what is best for the people has replaced the earlier animating principle of individual freedom. And no surprise that has carried over into foreign policy thinking, which we see reflected in an uncritical support for Third World autocracies and a criticism of the West, that reaches its height in the hostility for Israel. And this is an ideology that accepts the lack of freedom in the world as a given...