I’m calling for a new approach.
Being the “responsible adult” doesn’t work.
Hoping that some day they will come to their senses and understand that coexistence is more profitable than endless war doesn’t work.
Thinking that “after all, they are human beings too and that if we treat them fairly they will act like human beings” doesn’t work.
Providing them with electricity so they can make rockets to try to kill us with doesn’t work.
Keeping their tribal enemies from killing them doesn’t work.
Paying them doesn’t work.
Giving them weapons “to fight terrorism” doesn’t work.
Respecting their religious rights (to behave like 7th century barbarians) doesn’t work.
Treating their corrupt inciter-in-chief like a president doesn’t work.
Destroying our villages and kicking our people out because they claim the land (they claim everything) doesn’t work.
Punishing our soldiers for shooting theirs doesn’t work.
Ransoming hostages doesn’t work.
Not having a death penalty for terrorist murder doesn’t work.
These things don’t work for several reasons. They don’t work because of the honor/shame culture of our enemies; they don’t work because Islam tells them that they really ought to be on top, and Jewish sovereignty is a perversion of the moral order; and they don’t work because they believe in a historical narrative that is false from start to finish.
We have been trying the old way since before the founding of the state. They have never accepted our presence in the land, and they have always murdered us (sometimes more frequently, sometimes less). Now, thanks to our own idiocy, they have set up an indoctrination regime that produces child soldiers that they send to butcher our families. They have created a generation of creatures that will slit the throat of a 4-month old baby or a 70-year old grandfather, and take pride in their work: the Arafat generation. And their parents, too, are proud.
The more we talk to them and try to reason with them, try to meet their demands, the more it feeds their fury. Why should they talk to dogs, pigs and monkeys? There is nothing to talk about, especially not with the Arafat generation.
The more concessions we make, the more they think they are winning and the harder they fight. It’s simple operant conditioning: every time they are violent, we give them something. Violence works for them.
So what works for us? First of all, a fundamental change in our point of view: stop treating them as another people more or less like us, with whom we must find a way to coexist. Coexistence is impossible. It’s not up to us; that is who they are. All we can do is win or lose.
What works is to see them as an implacable enemy that must be defeated by any means necessary.
What works is to stop talking and start fighting. Cut them off from everything we supply them, money, food, water, electricity, communication, transport. Take control of our capital and our holy places (today much of Jerusalem is in their hands). Take control of all of our country. If they send their soldiers against us, even their child soldiers, kill them.
If we’ve conditioned them to behave violently by rewarding violent behavior with concessions, we can extinguish this behavior too. Take away the positive reinforcement and replace it with punishment.
Nobody wants to do this. It’s hard, it’s cruel, and we would rather keep busy with our jobs and our families. We really don’t like war and killing, despite what our enemies say (as they project their own desires and behavior on us).
The alternative is to keep on pretending that we can reach an accommodation with them, because after all they are human too, and so on. We can keep trying to satisfy them. We can rationalize: who really cares about the Temple Mount except religious fanatics? Why shouldn’t we cede more and more land in Judea and Samaria to them? Yes, they are unreasonable, but we have to be the rational ones. After all, we are much stronger than they are. Aren’t we?
This is the path we’ve taken for the past 100 years, more or less, and the path we confirmed in 1993 when we signed the cursed Oslo agreements that caused the death of thousands of Israelis and gave birth to the Arafat generation. It is the path prescribed by European Jew-haters who even today support our enemies in every possible way short of bombing Tel Aviv.
It doesn’t work. What works is to fight for our land, the land that truly belongs to us, the land that they are trying to take with their lying “narrative” and their murderous violence. What works is to undo the damage done in 1967 when Moshe Dayan stupidly gave the Temple Mount to the Arabs, as well as the catastrophe of 1993.
What works is to stop pretending, stop submitting to threats and violence, and start standing up against our enemies. It’s a big job, and we have to start somewhere. So let it be the Temple Mount.
Ari Abramowitz gave them the finger with his mouth by reciting the Kaddish on the Temple Mount.
Furious Israeli police rushed in to silence him and haul him away.
The bad news for Israel’s appeasers is there are lots of more Jews like him and they aren’t prepared to concede, bare their throats and die.
In life you have to take a stand for principle and be willing to pay the price for it. Ari preferred to confront the unjust status-quo head on; Bibi prefers to live with it because deep down he feels the price of asserting the Jewish right to the Temple and Eretz Israel will bring the world’s wrath down upon the country and the price to be paid for being assertive is too high.
The next generation of Jews understands perfectly well the Jewish people are headed for the abyss if nothing changes. And one of them stood up and decided acquiescing to the status quo is no longer quite good enough.
There will be a lot more challenges to it over the years to come. Israel cannot keep it sustained by force. People keep asking why it readily submits to Arab demands and turns down Jewish ones.
In short, the way things have been done are no longer sufficient to keep the lid on. And change will come sooner than people expect. On the eve of Tisha B’Av, its time to put an end to the recurrent phenomenon of self-inflicted Jewish disasters.
Israel’s future is not in the hands of its enemies; its in the hands of its people.
While I am not disputing the fact that we, the Jewish people, control our destiny and are responsible for what happens in this country, the politicians are maintaining the status quo because it’s what’s worked in the past and it’s what they think will continue to work. Even in light of the “77%” of reported people who felt that we should not “cave in” to Arab demands, Bibi capitulated. It’s not that the government is weak, it’s that we, the people, don’t demand, en masse, that they uphold the sovereignty that we have over this country. Why are we so complacent?
Well done. I believe you are correct on the new way for Israel. I am beyond
frustrated with Trump’s selections of Tillerson, McMaster and Mattis. What
better way to put America last than to pour our foreign policy capital into propping
up a new terror state in Judea and Samaria?
Nothing embodies the failed swamp of foreign policy more than the obsession with
the Palestinians. Yet clearly a shout-out to McMaster’s terrible policy of entrenching us further into that insufferable civil war without any discernible, winning strategy. (Despite Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the PFLP not even officially running, Fatah still lost to them in most of the municipal elections several months
ago in Judea & Sumaria.)
The new way in the U.S. must consist of the following:
For the US to continue any further money the PA/PLO must first, for a demonstrable period of time:
1) Discontinue PA and PLO payments ($300 million annually) to terrorists who murdered or injured Jews
2) Rename the dozens of schools, sports clubs, streets, public squares, children’s camps etc in the PA that are named after terrorist murderers of Jews
3) Completely revamp the PA textbooks and curricula that are teaching Palestinian Arab children to become murderers of Jews and destroy Israel
4) Discontinue PA official TV and newspaper programs, including the PA’s official Facebook page, promoting Jew-hatred, Jew-killings and honoring murderers of Jews
5) Change all official PA symbols (including official PA emblems, maps, stamps, stationary, etc.) that show Israel as a Palestinian Arab state
6) Cease all payments to the Hamas regime in Gaza
7) End all of Abbas’ demands that a future Palestinian State be ethnically cleansed of Jews
8) Formally declare illegal, dissociate from, and remove from the PA government all designated terrorist groups including Hamas, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
9) Make speeches by Abbas and all Imams condemning all Palestinian terrorist attacks including car rammings, and knifings against Jews.
All of these points are required under the signed Oslo and other agreements and it’s past time for the US to hold Abbas accountable. If noncompliance is continued the Palestinian Arab embassy in DC, which should never have been opened to begin with, should be immediately closed and the relationship seriously downgraded.
Trump should have appointed a SoS who regards the current State Department with
as much disdain as Scott Pruitt regards the EPA. The problems at the State Dept.
has persisted in a persistently dysfunctional capacity for decades. It stems from a
deep-rooted culture of moral relativism and an “America-last” mindset. As such, we
need a person with a strong ideological rudder who understands the issues, is on the
right side of them, and willing to bust up the entire State Dept. structure and the
global foreign policy apparatus.
For example, is a man with his background really the type of person to oppose
refugees, a Palestinian State, cooperation with Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim
Brotherhood? Where does he stand on political Islam? We know where he
stands on the Iran deal and reinstating sanctions and it’s troubling. Does he
support helping Iran in Iraq (we’re functioning as basically Iran’s Air Force) or
our current involvement in Libya? What would he do about the 15-year disaster
in Afghanistan, just as Russia and Iran are re-involving themselves there?
And although we know nothing about where Tillerson stands on most of these
issues, he is absolutely not the type of person who would fight the inveterate
players and insufferable mentality, within the system that stands opposed to
American interests. That is why people like James Baker, Condi Rice, Bob
-the snake-Corker, and Robert Gates — the embodiment of the problem with
foreign policy — are enthusiastically supporting him.
Tillerson’s past comments in support of Common Core, a carbon tax, the
homosexual agenda at the Boy Scouts, and TTP are not mere distractions
to his foreign policy views, as some have suggested.
The State Dept. has been used as a conduit to support social leftism for decades.
The most important quality in politics is a strong and fierce ideological conviction to fight the moral relativism in global affairs. Other qualities are important but useless
if someone is lacking that ideological rudder to row upstream in this environment.
Even someone who is inherently neutral on these issues will wind up downstream in the cesspool of the global foreign policy establishment, much less someone with the
connections, mindset, and “pragmatism” of a major transnational CEO.
Washington lobbyists are looking to cash in on the standoff between Qatar and a Saudi Arabia-led bloc of countries as the two sides scramble for influence with Congress and the Trump Administration. I find it very sad that the US is to the far
left of Saudi Arabia when it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood. Tillerson committed the US to a secret deal with the terror-friendly Qatar, when he was there last month.
The Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Qatar has not been
released. The State Dept. has rejected multiple requests to deliver the text of the
agreement.
The U.S. Embassy in Qatar released a tweet:
U.S. Embassy QatarVerified account @USEmbassyQatar
The U.S. and #Qatar signed a memorandum of understanding
strengthening cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
We’ve come a long way from the days of John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund
Randolph as SoS. We didn’t need another Bob Corker, albeit with closer ties to Putin.
McMaster is the Gary Cohen of Trump’s foreign policy. Even worse. what a disaster. No different from Obama. McMaster already appointed a pro-Hamas guy to the NSC. Making the Muslim Brotherhood great again. Hamas now has representation at the NSC courtesy of McMaster.
There are a number of disturbing trends in Trump’s Middle East policy:
1. Abbas was invited to the White House as one of the first foreign leaders to be
hosted by the new president. Even though he’s a lifelong terrorist who embodies everything we are fighting, Trump treated him like a legitimate state leader and pledged to jump-start the repugnant and delusional “peace” talks. Some might take solace in Trump’s admonition of the PLO for paying the families of terrorists who
kill Israelis. But like everything with this administration, watch the actual (policy)
fire and not the (rhetorical) smoke. The PLO leadership immediately rejected the demand. So now what is Trump doing? Continuing to pressure Israel. Like his predecessors, he’s obsessing with the peace process as an end in itself. Other administrations also warned the Palestinians to stop the terror, but knowing it
will never happen, they kept strong-arming Israel into giving up Judea and Samaria.
It doesn’t help that a longtime friend of the president, NY liberal billionaire Ronald Lauder, is close with Abbas and is pressuring Trump to forge ties with him.
2. Trump’s very first foreign trip is to Saudi Arabia. That sent a horrible message. While he was also visiting Israel, that trip was contaminated by his equal treatment and recognition of terrorist Mahmoud Abbas. He is visiting him on land that never belonged to a distinct Muslim Arab people, always belonged to the Jews, and was
won back by Israel 50 years to the day before Trump’s visit.
3. During confirmation hearings, Mattis refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol. But what’s worse than not moving the embassy? Dangling the move in front
of the Israelis as a bargaining chip to get them to create a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. That is exactly what Tillerson is doing. Which is why Bibi is now
moving away from his request to move the embassy. If that is going to be used as blackmail, who needs it?
4. From Trump’s communications director to the SOS, administration officials have been referring to “Palestine” as if it’s a legitimate entity. Israeli media reported
that administration officials allegedly referred to the Western Wall as outside Israel’s jurisdiction. These might have been rogue left-wing holdovers at the East Jerusalem consulate, but Netanyahu’s left-wing opponent in Israel, the one Obama tried to get elected, (using $500,000 of tax-payer funds) now feels empowered to pressure him into making further concessions.
5. Looks like McMaster has become the most important voice on foreign policy and national security. He represents everything in the swamp, voters desired to drain.
He essentially wants to get us involved in every Islamic civil war, yet at the same time bring in multitudes of refugees and go soft on Islam. It is precisely this mentality of worrying about the Arab street, Arab refugees, and Arab nation-building first that
has thrown Israel under the bus and, more importantly, places American interests last. He has Islam and foreign policy exactly backwards. It’s no coincidence that the turn in policy towards Israel coincides with the rise of McMaster.
6. Coinciding with the rise of McMaster, Trump has declined to sign an executive order designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group. It’s no wonder; McMaster is now filling the top NSC positions with pro-Hamas technocrats, such
as Kris Bauman, who blamed Netanyahu for inciting Palestinian terror. Some
might point to the good work Nikki Haley has done on Israel in the U.N., but if
Trump is going to continue to stock his administration with those who love the Muslim Brotherhood and determine policy outcomes, Haley’s work at the U.N. is
just ceremonial.
Trump can be a fighter when he wants to, but what does he actually want and what does he believe? Trump had his lunch eaten on the budget and the border wall by a party out of power, but he is suddenly able to play hardball when negotiating against Israel. Conservatives can either continue with the soft bigotry of low expectations and explain away these problems by noting that “at least he’s better than Obama,” or we can try to empower our ally (Bannon) within the administration by demanding a course correction.
What is so disturbing about Trump’s newfound obsession with the Palestinians is
that this is one issue on which all Republicans – even the establishment – are on the right side. Thus, the fact that there is enough momentum within this administration
to move Trump to the left on this issue demonstrates just how far off the rails this presidency is headed. Imagine, on issues where there is so much less positive energy among Republicans, such as free markets, health care, values, and cutting spending, how much pressure will move him past the equilibrium of conservative direction.
Furthermore, there is/was something very nostalgic about this issue, particularly for
Bible-believing conservatives on the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, a miracle
of biblical proportions. The public spat between John Kerry and Israel over where Jews can live was the last high-profile act of treachery from the Obama administration. All Republicans and conservatives spoke out with one voice about
the moral absurdity of this position. Are we prepared to continue some of the
same policies under our banner? If nothing else, perhaps the continuation of the “peace process” is emblematic of so much else we are seeing from Trump: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
By the way, Vic, you warned me about all of my high expectations beginning with
the embassy move and you were 100% correct!
A very powerful and persuasive argument that no effort at compromise will work with the Palestinians that a completely new course should be adopted.