A thousand years before Christ was born a Jewish king ruled on a throne in Jerusalem. David’s kingdom ranged from Sidon on the north in modern day Lebanon down to the Gulf of Aqaba on the south, which is the tip of the Red Sea east of Egypt. It encompassed the land from the Jordan River west to the Mediterranean, part of which is today’s West Bank, though it was called Judea and Samaria in the time of Christ. David’s kingdom also included land east of the Jordan comprising modern day Jordan and Syria.
When David died, Solomon his son inherited the throne and expanded the kingdom, and upon Solomon’s death, a civil war divided the Jewish nation into two kingdoms, the one of the north being called Israel and the one of the south called Judah. The kingdom of Israel was conquered in 722 B.C. by the Assyrians who deported the captive Jews to Nineveh in modern day Iraq. As was the custom of the Assyrians, the Jews of the northern kingdom were assimilated into the mixed societies of other Assyrian conquests and essentially ceased to exist as a national identity.
Assyria was conquered by the Babylonians, who in time conquered the southern kingdom of Judah in 597 B.C., deporting those Jews into exile in Babylon which also is in modern Iraq. When the Persians – today’s Iranians – conquered the Babylonians, the exiled southern kingdom Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple and city, which had been destroyed during their conquest. The territory west of the Jordan was thereafter inhabited by Jews continuously until they revolted against their Roman conquerors in 70 A.D. The Temple was again destroyed and the Jews were scattered in the Diaspora until the founding of the modern state of Israel for post-war survivors in 1948.
In last year’s blogs, Inventing the Middle East and A Fool’s Errand, posted on September 11 and 18, 2010 respectively, I covered an historical background for modern Israel which I won’t repeat here but they are worth reading or rereading as a context for this blog. They explain, for example, that an area called Palestine was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire for the 400 years preceding World War I.
(Palestine, incidentally, was an anti-Semitic name given to the area by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D. after putting down the Bar Kochba revolt. It derives from the name of a hated Jewish enemy – the Philistines – who were of Greek origin, not Arabic)
It seems Obama has little understanding of the ancient and modern history of Israel because in his State Department speech on May 19 he called on the state of Israel to commit national hari-kari as their ancestors had repeatedly done. In what Ed Morrisey’s Hot Air blog calls the “Obamateurism of the Day” Obama’s speech drew a firestorm of criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike for its sheer dumbness in calling on Israel to essentially make peace at any price with the Palestinians.
It would take a very long blog to comment on every outrageous Obamateurism included in the speech so I’ll concentrate on the worst of the worst. To wit:
For decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region. For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could be blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes … For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own.
In other words, Obama considers “suffering the humiliation of occupation” – which is flat out untrue – and “never living in a nation of their own” – which is a misrepresentation – the moral equivalent of having your kids blown up on a bus and shooting rockets into Jewish homes?
It was Jordan which began calling Judea and Samaria “the West Bank,” when the Jordanian Arabs seized that territory at the end of Israel’s war of independence. The Arabs who are called Palestinians today, as if the term signified nationality, never created a Palestinian state when it was well within their power to do so, making Obama’s claim of “never living in a nation of their own” specious. Jordan’s claim to Judea and Samaria was never recognized by the international community, so ownership has never been resolved. Israel seized the territory in the 1967 war. For all of these reasons, Obama’s claim of “humiliation of occupation” is baseless. There has never been a Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank.
Continuing, Obama said,
… because of our friendship [with Israel], it's important that we tell the truth: The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel … must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.
This is a set up, as we shall see. A more accurate statement would have been, “Israel must act dangerously to advance the peace I have in mind.” (Having rammed healthcare through, Obama is still in legacy-building mode.) Conspicuously absent is no bold or dangerous acts are asked of the Palestinians.
Declaring that “… it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them …” Obama then imposes peace on them with this statement, obviously a deference to Palestinian demands which have and will continue to be rejected by Israel:
The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps...
Borrowing an Obamaism: let me be clear on this. The 1967 lines were never formal borders. Obama knows this or ought to know this if he is going to play diplomacy. The 1967 line in the West Bank is in fact the 1949 Armistice Line at which Israel stopped the attacking Arab armies in the 1948 war at the end of Israel’s war of independence.
After the 1967 “Six-Day War,” UN Security Council Resolution 242 declared that a new border must replace the armistice line. The British ambassador to the UN said at that time, "I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border; it is where the troops had to stop." His US counterpart agreed, saying "historically, there have never been secure or recognized boundaries in the area." President Lyndon Johnson admitted the need for a new boundary instead of going back to the lines from which the conflict erupted when he said, "It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders."
So Obama is the first American president – the first – to call for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict premised on the 1967 borders, an old armistice line, which among other things would divide Jerusalem and give to the Arabs the historically significant place of David’s throne 3,000 years ago and Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ 2,000 years ago. How mesmerizing is the simplicity of pure stupidity!
And what truly demonstrates a lack of class in diplomacy and shows how far over his head Obama is in matters like these is that he sprung this ill-conceived idea in a speech delivered the day before Netanyahu was to meet to discuss negotiations with Obama and while Netanyahu was still in Israel!
What possible motive could Obama have had to do such a thing? (Maybe I’m giving too much credit in assuming that Obama had any motive.) Was it to bully Netanyahu into a corner before their meeting? Did it signal a shift in US policy toward the Palestinians? Whatever, it certainly torqued Netanyahu who immediately protested, saying that for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders would leave it “indefensible.” Reportedly Netanyahu had a heated phone conversation with Secretary of State Clinton before the Obama speech, and he demanded that the president’s reference to 1967 borders be cut from the speech, which Obama obviously ignored.
Therefore, after their White House meeting it was apparent that things hadn’t gone well in the Oval Office. Unlike Obama, Netanyahu fought for his country in special operations, which included the 1972 hostage rescue raid on a hijacked airliner. So Netanyahu isn’t intimidated by a community organizer. In contrast, Obama's body language after the Oval Office meeting said it all. He looked like a pouting brat as an independent-minded Netanyahu spoke and the president sat with his hand across his mouth, glaring in condescension at his guest.
Netanyahu looked directly at Obama and lectured him before the cameras, saying Israel will not go back to the 1967 borders because they are indefensible, and Israel will keep a military presence in the Jordan Valley. As if he was the professor and Obama was a student, the Israeli Prime Minister said:
Remember that, before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide. It was half the width of the Washington Beltway, and these were not the boundaries of peace; they were the boundaries of repeated wars, because the attack on Israel was so attractive. So we can't go back to those indefensible lines, and we're going to have to have a long-term military presence along the Jordan [Valley].
Netanyahu had too much class to remind the pouting president that when candidate Obama toured an Israeli town in 2008, he said, "If someone was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."
I can’t end without commenting on one other dictate in the Obama speech, though there were many just as ridiculous as this one.
The United States believes that negotiations should result [for] two states with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves ... in a sovereign and contiguous state.
Interesting statement. Anyone looked at a map of Israel lately? How could Palestine have “borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel”? The only Palestinian territory bordering Egypt is the Gaza Strip. And how, pray tell, would Palestine, sometimes known as the West Bank, achieve this chimerical contiguity with Gaza? Why, by cutting Israel in half, of course. Wow! Two Israels would certainly be easier to defend against those rockets that Obama would never subject his daughters to, especially when a launcher with the power of a B-B gun could hit anywhere in Israel. The 1967 war pushed the borders out in order for Israel to have a fighting chance in defending itself. Obama is proposing to pull them back cheek to jowl?
Tuesday, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the US Congress. Obama left the country.
Too bad. He missed an inspiring speech that got 50 standing ovations from both sides of the aisle, delivered by a man who was so comfortable in the occasion that it was more a chat than a speech. No lecturing. No condescension. It’s worth listening to on YouTube.
I wish I could comment on the many really good points Netanyahu made. But I've about used up my word budget, so I’ll just include these without comment.
[A]ll six Israeli prime ministers since the signing of the Oslo accords agreed to establish a Palestinian state, myself included. So why has peace not been achieved? Because so far the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it. You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about. ...
President Abbas must do what I have done. I stood before my people – and I told you it wasn’t easy for me. I stood before my people, and I said, “I will accept a Palestinian state.” It’s time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say, “I will accept a Jewish state.” Those six words will change history. They’ll make it clear to the Palestinians that this conflict must come to an end, that they’re not building a Palestinian state to continue the conflict with Israel, but to end it. And those six words will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace. ...
You know, everybody knows this. It’s time to say it. It’s important. And as for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected the freedom of worship for all faiths in the city. Throughout the millennial history of the Jewish capital, the only time that Jews, Christians and Muslims could worship freely, could have unfettered access to their holy sites, has been during Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. ...
In recent years, Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and from Gaza. We thought we’d get peace. That’s not what we got. We got 12,000 rockets fired from those areas on our cities, on our children, by Hezbollah and Hamas. The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, they failed to prevent the smuggling of this weaponry. The European observers in Gaza, they evaporated overnight. ...
So if Israel simply walked out of the territories, the flow of weapons into a future Palestinian state would be unchecked. And missiles fired from it could reach virtually every home in Israel in less than a minute. ...
I want you to think about that … Imagine there’s a siren going on now, and we have less than 60 seconds to find shelter from an incoming rocket. Would you live that way? Do you think anybody can live that way? Well, we’re not going to live that way, either. ...
Netanyahu once pinned back a US diplomat’s ears with 10 words that should serve as a warning to the policymakers and State Department pinheads who think they can impose an American-styled peace on an Israel which lives every day on a bull’s eye: "You live in Chevy Chase,” Netanyahu said. “Don't play with our future."
It’s advice that could benefit Obama, if he was able to accept advice. Which he can’t.
When David died, Solomon his son inherited the throne and expanded the kingdom, and upon Solomon’s death, a civil war divided the Jewish nation into two kingdoms, the one of the north being called Israel and the one of the south called Judah. The kingdom of Israel was conquered in 722 B.C. by the Assyrians who deported the captive Jews to Nineveh in modern day Iraq. As was the custom of the Assyrians, the Jews of the northern kingdom were assimilated into the mixed societies of other Assyrian conquests and essentially ceased to exist as a national identity.
Assyria was conquered by the Babylonians, who in time conquered the southern kingdom of Judah in 597 B.C., deporting those Jews into exile in Babylon which also is in modern Iraq. When the Persians – today’s Iranians – conquered the Babylonians, the exiled southern kingdom Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple and city, which had been destroyed during their conquest. The territory west of the Jordan was thereafter inhabited by Jews continuously until they revolted against their Roman conquerors in 70 A.D. The Temple was again destroyed and the Jews were scattered in the Diaspora until the founding of the modern state of Israel for post-war survivors in 1948.
In last year’s blogs, Inventing the Middle East and A Fool’s Errand, posted on September 11 and 18, 2010 respectively, I covered an historical background for modern Israel which I won’t repeat here but they are worth reading or rereading as a context for this blog. They explain, for example, that an area called Palestine was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire for the 400 years preceding World War I.
(Palestine, incidentally, was an anti-Semitic name given to the area by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D. after putting down the Bar Kochba revolt. It derives from the name of a hated Jewish enemy – the Philistines – who were of Greek origin, not Arabic)
It seems Obama has little understanding of the ancient and modern history of Israel because in his State Department speech on May 19 he called on the state of Israel to commit national hari-kari as their ancestors had repeatedly done. In what Ed Morrisey’s Hot Air blog calls the “Obamateurism of the Day” Obama’s speech drew a firestorm of criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike for its sheer dumbness in calling on Israel to essentially make peace at any price with the Palestinians.
It would take a very long blog to comment on every outrageous Obamateurism included in the speech so I’ll concentrate on the worst of the worst. To wit:
For decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region. For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could be blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes … For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own.
In other words, Obama considers “suffering the humiliation of occupation” – which is flat out untrue – and “never living in a nation of their own” – which is a misrepresentation – the moral equivalent of having your kids blown up on a bus and shooting rockets into Jewish homes?
It was Jordan which began calling Judea and Samaria “the West Bank,” when the Jordanian Arabs seized that territory at the end of Israel’s war of independence. The Arabs who are called Palestinians today, as if the term signified nationality, never created a Palestinian state when it was well within their power to do so, making Obama’s claim of “never living in a nation of their own” specious. Jordan’s claim to Judea and Samaria was never recognized by the international community, so ownership has never been resolved. Israel seized the territory in the 1967 war. For all of these reasons, Obama’s claim of “humiliation of occupation” is baseless. There has never been a Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank.
Continuing, Obama said,
… because of our friendship [with Israel], it's important that we tell the truth: The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel … must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.
This is a set up, as we shall see. A more accurate statement would have been, “Israel must act dangerously to advance the peace I have in mind.” (Having rammed healthcare through, Obama is still in legacy-building mode.) Conspicuously absent is no bold or dangerous acts are asked of the Palestinians.
Declaring that “… it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them …” Obama then imposes peace on them with this statement, obviously a deference to Palestinian demands which have and will continue to be rejected by Israel:
The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps...
Borrowing an Obamaism: let me be clear on this. The 1967 lines were never formal borders. Obama knows this or ought to know this if he is going to play diplomacy. The 1967 line in the West Bank is in fact the 1949 Armistice Line at which Israel stopped the attacking Arab armies in the 1948 war at the end of Israel’s war of independence.
After the 1967 “Six-Day War,” UN Security Council Resolution 242 declared that a new border must replace the armistice line. The British ambassador to the UN said at that time, "I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border; it is where the troops had to stop." His US counterpart agreed, saying "historically, there have never been secure or recognized boundaries in the area." President Lyndon Johnson admitted the need for a new boundary instead of going back to the lines from which the conflict erupted when he said, "It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders."
So Obama is the first American president – the first – to call for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict premised on the 1967 borders, an old armistice line, which among other things would divide Jerusalem and give to the Arabs the historically significant place of David’s throne 3,000 years ago and Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ 2,000 years ago. How mesmerizing is the simplicity of pure stupidity!
And what truly demonstrates a lack of class in diplomacy and shows how far over his head Obama is in matters like these is that he sprung this ill-conceived idea in a speech delivered the day before Netanyahu was to meet to discuss negotiations with Obama and while Netanyahu was still in Israel!
What possible motive could Obama have had to do such a thing? (Maybe I’m giving too much credit in assuming that Obama had any motive.) Was it to bully Netanyahu into a corner before their meeting? Did it signal a shift in US policy toward the Palestinians? Whatever, it certainly torqued Netanyahu who immediately protested, saying that for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders would leave it “indefensible.” Reportedly Netanyahu had a heated phone conversation with Secretary of State Clinton before the Obama speech, and he demanded that the president’s reference to 1967 borders be cut from the speech, which Obama obviously ignored.
Therefore, after their White House meeting it was apparent that things hadn’t gone well in the Oval Office. Unlike Obama, Netanyahu fought for his country in special operations, which included the 1972 hostage rescue raid on a hijacked airliner. So Netanyahu isn’t intimidated by a community organizer. In contrast, Obama's body language after the Oval Office meeting said it all. He looked like a pouting brat as an independent-minded Netanyahu spoke and the president sat with his hand across his mouth, glaring in condescension at his guest.
Netanyahu looked directly at Obama and lectured him before the cameras, saying Israel will not go back to the 1967 borders because they are indefensible, and Israel will keep a military presence in the Jordan Valley. As if he was the professor and Obama was a student, the Israeli Prime Minister said:
Remember that, before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide. It was half the width of the Washington Beltway, and these were not the boundaries of peace; they were the boundaries of repeated wars, because the attack on Israel was so attractive. So we can't go back to those indefensible lines, and we're going to have to have a long-term military presence along the Jordan [Valley].
Netanyahu had too much class to remind the pouting president that when candidate Obama toured an Israeli town in 2008, he said, "If someone was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."
I can’t end without commenting on one other dictate in the Obama speech, though there were many just as ridiculous as this one.
The United States believes that negotiations should result [for] two states with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves ... in a sovereign and contiguous state.
Interesting statement. Anyone looked at a map of Israel lately? How could Palestine have “borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel”? The only Palestinian territory bordering Egypt is the Gaza Strip. And how, pray tell, would Palestine, sometimes known as the West Bank, achieve this chimerical contiguity with Gaza? Why, by cutting Israel in half, of course. Wow! Two Israels would certainly be easier to defend against those rockets that Obama would never subject his daughters to, especially when a launcher with the power of a B-B gun could hit anywhere in Israel. The 1967 war pushed the borders out in order for Israel to have a fighting chance in defending itself. Obama is proposing to pull them back cheek to jowl?
Tuesday, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the US Congress. Obama left the country.
Too bad. He missed an inspiring speech that got 50 standing ovations from both sides of the aisle, delivered by a man who was so comfortable in the occasion that it was more a chat than a speech. No lecturing. No condescension. It’s worth listening to on YouTube.
I wish I could comment on the many really good points Netanyahu made. But I've about used up my word budget, so I’ll just include these without comment.
[A]ll six Israeli prime ministers since the signing of the Oslo accords agreed to establish a Palestinian state, myself included. So why has peace not been achieved? Because so far the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it. You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about. ...
President Abbas must do what I have done. I stood before my people – and I told you it wasn’t easy for me. I stood before my people, and I said, “I will accept a Palestinian state.” It’s time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say, “I will accept a Jewish state.” Those six words will change history. They’ll make it clear to the Palestinians that this conflict must come to an end, that they’re not building a Palestinian state to continue the conflict with Israel, but to end it. And those six words will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace. ...
You know, everybody knows this. It’s time to say it. It’s important. And as for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected the freedom of worship for all faiths in the city. Throughout the millennial history of the Jewish capital, the only time that Jews, Christians and Muslims could worship freely, could have unfettered access to their holy sites, has been during Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. ...
In recent years, Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and from Gaza. We thought we’d get peace. That’s not what we got. We got 12,000 rockets fired from those areas on our cities, on our children, by Hezbollah and Hamas. The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, they failed to prevent the smuggling of this weaponry. The European observers in Gaza, they evaporated overnight. ...
So if Israel simply walked out of the territories, the flow of weapons into a future Palestinian state would be unchecked. And missiles fired from it could reach virtually every home in Israel in less than a minute. ...
I want you to think about that … Imagine there’s a siren going on now, and we have less than 60 seconds to find shelter from an incoming rocket. Would you live that way? Do you think anybody can live that way? Well, we’re not going to live that way, either. ...
Netanyahu once pinned back a US diplomat’s ears with 10 words that should serve as a warning to the policymakers and State Department pinheads who think they can impose an American-styled peace on an Israel which lives every day on a bull’s eye: "You live in Chevy Chase,” Netanyahu said. “Don't play with our future."
It’s advice that could benefit Obama, if he was able to accept advice. Which he can’t.
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