President Obama's New "Peace" Policy and Israel's Very Existence

I was deeply distressed to hear President Obama’s recent remarks calling for Israel to return to its 1967 borders as a “starting place for peace negotiations” with the Palestinians.  It has been the policy of the United States of America to defend Israel’s right to exist and to allow it to maintain a country which it is able to defend by NOT returning to the 1967 borders.  Indeed, as recently as 2005 President Bush promised Israel once again that, in exchange for other concessions, the United States would continue to NOT ever press Israel to return to those indefensible borders.  President Obama broke that pledge and dramatically changed U.S. policy in the process with his foolish and ill-considered announcement a week and half ago for Israel to return those captured lands which it won while defending its very existence against multiple Arab armies, yet again, during the 6-Day War in 1967.

The irony of all of this, and what many that disparage the “evil Jew Zionists” will repeatedly fail to acknowledge, is the fact that directly after the Six Day War the Israeli government did indeed offer to return the Golan Heights to Syria, despite the canon emplacements that Israel’s enemies placed there which look down on the Galilee and Tiberius.  Israel also offered to return the strategic Sinai peninsula to Egypt (Something that did come into being when President Carter finally brokered peace between Egypt and Israel in 1979).  Finally, Israel also offered to return the West Bank to Jordan. 

What did Israel want in exchange for the return of these captured lands?  All they asked for was an acknowledgement of Israel’s right to exist and to have peace.  At that time, all of the surrounding Arab nations responded to Israel’s offer by declaring that there was to be no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with them, and certainly no peace.  Israel kept these territories accordingly.  To return these lands to the surrounding hostile nations would return Israel to a nation where its international airport is only three miles away from the pre-1967 borders and the nation itself would be only eight miles wide at it narrowest point. 

For Israel, a nation that most of its neighbors does not even acknowledge as a rightful nation to this very day, and a country which leaders such as Iran’s President Ahmadinejad have vowed to “wipe off the face of the map” and “drive the Jews into the sea”, one can perhaps begin to understand the Jew’s hesitancy in wanting to sign their death warrants by returning these buffer lands that allow them the tenuous ability to defend their nation, and indeed their very existence.

The Palestinians have spent the last 64 years portraying themselves as the victims of the Jews.  These “refugees” have not been cared for by their Arab brothers.  The other Arab nations will not allow the Palestinian people to immigrate to their nations.  Indeed, the Arabs would rather have their Palestinian brothers live in poverty and squalor so that they can use them as a political club with which to beat the Israelis over the head with in world opinion. The Palestinian leadership has been corrupt and incompetent.  Indeed, today the Palestinian government has aligned itself with Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization whose only purpose is the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people.
 
The United States financial support for the Palestinian people continues despite this, as we prop up a Palestinian people who wish us, “the Great Satan”, no good will either.  Indeed, many Palestinians were seen to be cheering in the streets during the horrific attacks on America on 9/11.  Further, billions of dollars that the U.S. has given in aid for the Palestinian people over the decades has been diverted to private bank accounts, particularly that of the now departed and Nobel-Peace-Prize winning terrorist Yasser Arafat’s reign.
 
The Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular, point to how Israel treats them, and yet as Benjamin Netanyahu pointed out recently, over one million Arab citizens of Israel have been enjoying the same rights and freedoms that all Israeli people have enjoyed for decades.  The only difference is that the Arab-Israeli citizens are not required to serve a term in the Israeli armed forces, unlike their Jewish fellow-citizens.  They enjoy all of the other same freedoms otherwise.

Indeed, in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before congress a week ago, after President Obama’s deplorable announcement, Netanyahu put things in to proper perspective when he said, “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. I want you to stop for a second and think about that.  Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of one-percent are truly free, and they're all citizens of Israel!”

There are a few other passages in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech that bear repeating.  He drew a very clear picture of Israel’s dire situation when he stated, “Now the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after six million Jews were murdered, Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Leaders who spew such venom, should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet. But there is something that makes the outrage even greater: The lack of outrage.  In much of the international community, the calls for our destruction are met with utter silence.   It is even worse because there are many who rush to condemn Israel for defending itself against Iran's terror proxies.”

Netanyahu continued, “So peace must be anchored in security. In recent years, Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and Gaza.  But we didn't get peace.  Instead, we got 12,000 thousand rockets fired from those areas on our cities, on our children, by Hezbollah and Hamas.  The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon failed to prevent the smuggling of this weaponry.  The European observers in Gaza evaporated  overnight. So if Israel simply walked out of the territories, the flow of weapons into a future Palestinian state would be unchecked.  Missiles fired from it could reach virtually every home in Israel in less than a minute.”

He summarized his remarks before our congress by stating, “You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about. 

The Prime Minister is right.  Further, with the current and seeming perpetual mindset of the Palestinians and most Arab peoples towards Israel and the Jews, a true and lasting peace will NEVER be established.  See the link for our good friend Free’s blog, John Galt for President, for the video of how this mindset is inculcated into the children of the Arabs and Palestinians.  How is peace ever to be brought forth when the Palestinian children are taught that Jews are swine and dogs, basically subhuman? 

I strongly suspect that the only peace that Israel will EVER find, the only peace that the Palestinian and Arab people will ultimately respect and honor, will come when America fully supports Israel’s right to protect itself by retaliating in a war in which they unequivocally and unconditionally destroy the surrounding Arab armies; when they do not negotiate with those they have unquestionably vanquished in war; when Israel dictates from that position of strength and power what the terms of surrender for the Arab and Palestinian people will be. 

Attempts at negotiation and Israel returning land for peace have not worked and indeed have only encouraged more terrorist attacks upon itself.  Such actions are not seen as tokens of mercy or goodwill by the typical Middle Eastern Arab.  Indeed these acts are seen as signs of weakness; a weakness that can be pressed and exploited.  Only through the horrible conclusion of an overwhelming war can Israel achieve a final lasting peace.  To continue on the path of the status quo is entirely fruitless and ultimately puts Israel’s very existence in jeopardy.

 The former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, said it well, "There will be no peace until they love their children more than they hate us."  She was right.

HT to Carrie for providing much of the research material for this article.