I AM A JEW (PART XXII - American Defenders of Israel Display a Double Standard)

As the title shows this is the 22nd part (actually the 23^rd, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts, I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on Part I and then scrolling upwards or by accessing the label I Am A Jew.

If I were writing about the United States instead of about Israel, and I pointed out its continuing racism, despite the fact that we now have the first African-American President, few would disagree.

If I pointed out that our laws are not evenly enforced regardless of race, with far more African-Americans being arrested, for example, for marijuana possession than Whites, despite the fact that violations occur at about the same frequency, would they jump to defend the U.S.? I doubt it! But when anyone criticizes Israel for far worse human rights abuses, they cry anti-Semitism; they cry it is a smear and they point out some of the good things that can be found about Israel. But why do they have a double standard?

I have been writing these articles about the sins committed by the government of Israel that succeeded that of its founders, that came to power over the dead body of Yitzhak Rabin and has been taking Israel in a totally different direction ever since, both economically, where its policies resemble much more the agenda of the U.S. Tea Party, and in foreign affairs where they resemble the ideas of the U.S. former Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

But how is my criticism rebutted?

  

These and many more came from Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia. But what do they prove? We certainly could not produce similar pictures for, say Saudi Arabia, but neither I, nor anyone that I know equates Israel with Saudi Arabia. But just because there are examples of some good things in Israel, they hardly rebut, or even alleviate, the things I have been writing about.

For example, above there is a picture of what appears to be a Muslim women riding on a bus with an orthodox man. That may be true in some places but it doesn’t change the fact described in Part XXI of my series:

Our task was to observe and record gender segregation on bus line 56. On this bus line and others both in Jerusalem and between Jerusalem and other cities Haredim insist that women sit in the back of the bus and when possible only enter through the back door.

Or the picture of the Arab Druse Colonel shown contrasted against the description set forth in an article that recently was posted on Bloomberg View entitled "Cana ‘Jewish State’ Be a Democracy" where the author points out:

Access to housing (for Arabs) is not always equal. Spending on infrastructure in Arab towns is much lower than in Jewish towns.

Some things never seem to change. I still have an exchange that I had in November of 2010 with a very liberal woman in American politics, in fact, the mother-in-law of a prominent African-American journalist.

She wrote:

I don't feel quite as negative about Israel as you do, especially since its Arab citizens are far better off in Israel than most Arabs in their own countries, to say nothing of how Jews fare in Arab lands.

My response in part was:

You may or may not remember that during the Civil Rights battles of the '60s we oft heard the argument that American Blacks were much better off than most in Africa. Arabs in Israel are Israeli citizens and they are entitled to be as well off as Jews. Whether they are better off than Arabs in other lands is irrelevant. As for Jews in Arabs lands, I think that is as irrelevant as the argument about American Muslims being entitled to no more rights than Christians in Saudi Arabia. Palestinians are not responsible for the policies of other states nor should Israel imitate oppressive states.

But the excuses for Israeli discriminatory policies go on and on, as can be seen from the photos above. At best they are saying Israel is not all that bad. Well, that may be, but it just isn’t good enough.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (PART XXI - Voices in Defense of Israel)

As the title shows this is the 21st part (actually the 22^nd, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts, I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on Part I and then scrolling upwards or by accessing the label I Am A Jew.

I have not been publishing any comments received from readers because as I said at the end of each my blogs: “I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete. “

The series is not complete, but I think it is time to publish some of the comments I have received, and to analyze them.

Leonard Levenson, a criminal defense attorney, living and having his office in Manhattan, NY wrote:

I have been following your series very closely. I am very impressed by the thoroughness of your research and the apparent logic of your arguments. However, though I find your facts are correct, the conclusions you draw from them are not. I have been waiting for you to complete your series before responding in depth. At the outset however, I believe that all of the atrocities committed by Israel stem from the overhanging threat to their existence. The massacre at Deir Yassin for example occurred during a fight for Israel's very survival. The source of danger was, of course Arab hostility. The assassination of Count Bernadotte was the perception that he posed a threat to the survival of Israel. The reaction was extreme and unwise but it stemmed from Arab hostility.

 Israel, on the other hand was willing to cooperate with regard to the development of the Middle East economically and developmentally. Beneficial proposals for the irrigation of dry land in Palestine by diverting the Litani River would have greatly increased the productivity of the land but was rejected by Palestinian and Arab leaders. Other economic and developmental projects such as joint desalination proposals were put forth and likewise rejected.

 The terrorist acts by Israel were essentially misguided defensive acts designed to protect the Israeli state and population. The terrorist acts of the Arabs were misguided offensive acts designed to destroy Israel. I have not yet completed my research into the specifics of my comments. I doubt that it will be as thorough as yours. However, when completed I will communicate further.

This is a perfect example of what I see as a kind of “kneejerk” reaction in defense of actions by Israel that purport to be based on researched facts, but that upon examination are anything but that.

Levenson writes: “The massacre at Deir Yassin for example occurred during a fight for Israel's very survival.”

Even if that were true, would it justify the slaughter of innocent men, women and children? But it isn’t even true!

If Levenson had bothered to read my post "I AM A JEW (Part II)" carefully he would not have made this blanket statement for I wrote, and I quote in part:

“What has come to be known as the Deir Yassin massacre is instructive. I quote from Wikipedia:

“The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab village of roughly 600 people. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem by Palestinian forces during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine…. sparked terror within the Palestinian community, encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances, and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later. (Emphasis added)”

I call Levenson’s attention to the fact that at this point Israel was not “fighting for its life.” Arab armies entered the fray five weeks later and to a large extent because of this event. If Levenson, or for that matter other readers, want to know more of the details of Deir Yassin, I urge them to read the post here.

But Deir Yassin - or for that matter the bombing of the King David hotel - would not be a blot on Israel but for events that followed, about which the Jerusalem Post recently wrote:

On July 22, 1946, three phone calls were placed to the King David Hotel, an adjacent building and to The Jerusalem Post (then The Palestine Post), warning of an imminent bombing. Minutes later, a blast ripped through the historic hotel and then-headquarters of the British Mandate for Palestine’s civilian and military authorities, killing 91 people and injuring nearly 50.

These acts were not done by the Israeli Defense Forces, “The Haganah” but by the terrorist organizations known as the Stern Gang, later the Irgun and violated the ethics of The Haganah, which believed in “Purity of Arms.” In fact the differences between these groups was so fierce that it led to an actual clash of arms between them in the not to be forgotten “sinking of the ‘Altalena.’” 

So as long as the forces of decency reigned in Israel, it would have been wrong to even mention these horrendous deeds. But the Israel of its founders, the Israel of Ben-Gurion, is no more. The enemies of the Haganah, the enemies of Ben-Gurion, the very people who called Yitzhak Rabin a Nazi, and whose denunciations of him were directly responsible for his assassination, are now running the Israeli government.

They know no “Purity of Arms”! They are the philosophic descendants of terrorists, and they bear the blot of Deir Yassin and the King David Hotel and the Atelena.

As for Levenson’s comment:

Israel, on the other hand was willing to cooperate with regard to the development of the Middle East economically and developmentally. Beneficial proposals for the irrigation of dry land in Palestine by diverting the Litani River would have greatly increased the productivity of the land but was rejected by Palestinian and Arab leaders.

It is totally inaccurate, even though I wish it were true.

According to Wikipedia under the heading: “Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan” it states:

1955 US ambassador Eric Johnston negotiated the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan… Jordan undertook to abide by their allocations under the plan. The plan was initially un-ratified by Israel, but after the US linked the Johnston plan to aid, also agreed to accept the allocation provisions.

In that same post, under the heading: “Subsequent developments” it relates:

1988 The Syrian/Jordanian agreement on development of the Yarmouk is blocked when Israel as a riparian right holder refuses to ratify the plan and the World Bank withholds funding. Israel's augments its Johnson plan allocation of 25,000,000 m³/yr by a further 45,000,000–75,000,000 m³/yr.

That doesn’t quite sound like the Levenson rendition.

There are many American Jews who are deeply concerned that the Israel that true Zionists like my father and I, and untold survivors of the Holocaust, and their children, is no more. We want an Israel that returns to the ideals of its founders, to the people, like Levenson, who went to Israel to work on a kibbutz, but that Israel is no more.

It is proud Jews, not self-hating ones, who decry what has happened and is happening in Israel. Who paid for advertisements in the New York Times like the one that appeared in the Times on September 16^th 2014 entitled “An Open letter to President Obama.” 

True Zionists seek the ideals on which Israel was founded!! Not the one of Netanyahu and Lieberman. Not the one that is described here:

I rode a bus in Jerusalem on January 22, that in and of itself is not unusual. What made this 90 minute journey unique was that it had been arranged by Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Centre (IRAC) for myself and Judith Sudilovsky, a free-lance journalist on assignment for Na’amat magazine. Our task was to observe and record gender segregation on bus line 56. On this bus line and others both in Jerusalem and between Jerusalem and other cities Haredim insist that women sit in the back of the bus, and when possible only enter through the back door.

Or the one described in an e-mail from “The Pluralist” an Israeli women’s organization:

The controversial nation state bill that passed its initial vote…(asserts) that only the Hebrew calendar will be the official state calendar… (or) that Arabic, the native tongue of 21% of Israel's population, will no longer be an official language on par with Hebrew.

But neither Levenson, nor most Americans, instinctive Israeli defenders of Israel, know what is going on. They believe what they want to believe, not what the reality is.

People in Israel are beginning to see the crisis that Israel has brought on itself. Thus a former director general of the Mossad, Shabtai Shavit writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz - see here or here - tells us:

I am truly concerned about the future of the Zionist project… the government’s blindness and political and strategic paralysis on the other. Although the State of Israel is dependent upon the United States, the relationship between the two countries has reached an unprecedented low point. Europe, our biggest market, has grown tired of us and is heading toward imposing sanctions on us. For China, Israel is an attractive high-tech project, and we are selling them our national assets for the sake of profit. Russia is gradually turning against us and supporting and assisting our enemies.

 I am concerned that large segments of the nation of Israel have forgotten, or put aside, the original vision of Zionism: to establish a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. No borders were defined in that vision, and the current defiant policy is working against it.

What can and ought to be done? We need to create an Archimedean lever that will stop the current deterioration and reverse today’s reality at once. I propose creating that lever by using the Arab League’s proposal from 2002, which was partly created by Saudi Arabia. The government must make a decision that the proposal will be the basis of talks with the moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

True American supporters of Israel, of whatever faith, must stop blindly labeling resistance to oppression terrorism, and not excuse the inexcusable, defend the indefensible, rationalize the irrational, or justify the unjustifiable.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (PART XVII - A Return to a Defense of Israel’s Policies & a Rebuttal Continued - Pt. 2)

As the title shows this is the 16th part (actually the 17^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV and Part XVI.

This is a continuation to a Defense of Israel’s Policies & a Rebuttal but it no longer rebuts the article entitled “Israel’s Borders,” but rather moves on to the article referenced in "Israel’s Borders," namely a Eugene W. Rostow article that appeared in The New Republic on October 21, 1991, some 23 years ago. It appears that time stood still. The same articles are being cited. In any case the article can be found here.

To a limited extent it brings to my consciousness a portion of United Nations Security Resolution 242 that I paid too little attention to. 242’s preamble says:

which should include the application of both the following principles: (emphasis added)

and the second principle set forth is:

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

So I was wrong to essentially ignore this second principle of an inseparable resolution.

And it could be argued that Israel under this resolution did not have to withdraw its armed forces from occupied territory until “acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;”

But exactly how this resolution justifies the settlement of an ever-increasing Jewish hostile, permanent occupying force, is beyond me.

The state of belligerency in effect ended when the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist within the 1967 borders as long ago as 1993. That is more than 20 years ago.

On September 9, 1993 the P.L.O. chairman, Yasser Arafat exchanged letters with then (soon to be assassinated) Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

If there was ever any justification for the continued presence of the occupation and the continued expansion of settlements on Israeli territory, it ended on this date. As a matter of fact even Hamas has now recognized Israel’s Right to exist. As I pointed out in my post "I AM A JEW (PART VIII - Hamas & Likud)," the British newspaper The Global Mail reported days ago:

Hamas is endorsing Mr. Abbas’s plan for establishing a state within the so-called “1967 borders” that delineated the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In effect, Hamas now accepts Israel’s existence and the previous agreements arrived at between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. See here.

But none of this matters. When a state is bound and determined at conquest, facts don’t matter. Its objective remains the same, as it has always been, at least in the eyes of Likud, and its leader, Netanyahu.

But allow me to return to Rostow’s presentation.

Mr. Rostow writes:

The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate.

But Rostow gives no source or citation for this bald statement. Any examination of American policy under numerous Presidents, including Reagan, shows that the US has consistently opposed Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank of Palestine.

And then Rostow makes the most incredible statement of all. One that shows his contempt for Human Rights. He urges:

Provisions for a shift of populations… are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who would prefer to live elsewhere.

In other words, Mr. Rostow sees nothing wrong with ethnic cleansing. If they don’t like living under a foreign oppressive state, they can pack up and become refugees, like so many already have. In Rostow’s view Palestinians, have no right to self-determination. In fact they have no rights at all.

And so I will deal with only one other article that deals with the Palestinian People (and here I must stress people, for in the end all the juridical arguments that can be made aside, what we are dealing with is people, and people are entitled to govern themselves and not be driven from their homes, or be invited to leave their homes and become refugees if they do not like to live under foreign domination.

Finally, Rostow makes this incredibly deceptive allegation:

The Bush administration seems to consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be "foreign" territory to which Israel has no claim. Yet the Jews have the same right to settle there, as they have to settle in Haifa.

This is sophistry at its worst. Jews, as individuals, may have the right to settle in occupied territory, though that it is far from established, but clearly an occupying power does not have the right to annex the territory, and indeed the private property of people in an occupied land, in order to change the ethnic character of that land. The building of settlement compounds with state funds is not the same as the right of individuals.

And so we come to Maurice Ostroff’s article of June 11, 2011

He finds a simple way out of the conundrum of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. He tells us the West bank is not occupied. It is disputed territory.

But for all these years the world has recognized the West Bank as occupied territory, not part of the territory assigned to Israel by the UN resolution and the only, I stress the only basis for Israel’s existence and the only basis for the territory that Israel is to occupy. Any territory beyond that is occupied, as a result of military action. That even includes the territory that Israel occupied between 1948 and 1967. Why nobody has challenged that annexation is difficult to understand. That is the recognized term for occupied territory. The canard about defensive wars allowing for captured territory to be annexed has no basis in law or in fact, and would have made Germany’s annexation of France legal, for it was France that declared war on Germany, not the other way around. In fact had Germany invaded Britain, according to this reasoning, Germany’s annexation of Britain would have been legal. Surely no one would want to stand by such absurd reasoning, and it should be noted that except for its constant repetition, no convincing legal citation has been produced. In fact, as he himself points out, even Sharon used that term.

But regardless of the outrages committed in the “disputed” territory of Kashmir, the proper way to settle such a dispute is to immediately have a plebiscite, and to allow the people of the “disputed territory “to decide their own fate. But that is clearly not what Mr. Ostrov champions, nor does Netanyahu, at least not until after Israel, through its policies, moves enough settler into the occupied territory so as to have a majority, or drives enough Palestinians out of the territory so as to accomplish the same end.

It has become clear that Israel is no longer interested, if it ever was, in negotiating a peace treaty with the Palestinians. It is only interested in annexation driven by a religious fervor based on nothing more than to re-establish a biblical nation.

This messianic drive has become the raison d'être of modern Israel. Unfortunately, it leaves no room for other ethnic groups, except as a despised and oppressed minority within the body politic.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (Part III)

This is a multi-part series on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. If you have not done so, please read the earlier installments, "I AM A JEW (Part I)" and "I AM A Jew (Part II)" before reading this. The titles are active links, so you can access them simply by clicking on them.

A long time ago I read John Steinbeck’s short novel, "The Moon is Down." It is the story of an invasion of an island and its occupation. Even though Steinbeck doesn’t specify who the invader and occupier was, I always assumed that he was referring to the Nazis. This is further confirmed by its copyright of 1942.

But as I reread the novella again more recently, it struck me that he never specifies who the occupier is, and that it has a much broader application, as most great novels do. It applies to all peoples under occupation.

It is about 80 pages long and it is worth reading. It is timeless. It can be bought from Amazon in paperback here, for Kindle here and at Barnes and Noble here. It can be read on the web for nothing here.

The point is that people under occupation will resist by any means available, no matter what the cost, and the people on the West Bank are clearly under occupation, even if they have the appearance of their own government in the form of the P.L.O., for the P.L.O., like the Vichy government of the Second World War, is serving the Israeli government. Its main task is to keep order in the West Bank, so that Israel wouldn’t have to do it, and it does it because it knows that if it does not, Israel will do it in a much more brutal way.

But it has no independent existence. It is not sovereign. One of the basic rights of sovereignty is the power to tax. But that power has been retained by Israel, which collect taxes from the Palestinians and at its own discretion makes it available to the P.L.O. “They (Israel) say taxes collected on behalf of the PA will be frozen, with limited access to bank deposits in Israel” whenever the P.L.O. does anything that dis-pleases the Israeli authorities (See here). In this case the P.L.O.s “crime” was to make an appeal to the U.N.

We keep hearing "Israel has the right to defend itself." But where is the even more fundamental right of a people to resist occupation?

Actually, resistance from the West Bank has been minimal for a long time. It may be that the P.L.O.’s. lack of resistance is giving Hamas increasing support as the last line of resistance.

The history of the P.L.O.’s terrorist activities is ably set forth in a blog of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, (see here) and it is quite a list. However, a careful reading shows, accoring to the website, that the last time the P.L.O. committed a terrorist act was in 2004, a decade ago, when “hijacking of a cruise ship off the coast of Egypt by a P.L.O. group” took place that resulted in the “murder(ed) (of) a disabled American passenger and threw his body overboard.” Apparently, the website is referring to the infamous Achille Lauro highjacking, but it has its dates wrong since that event took place in 1985, three decades ago. See here. 

The last time Israel faced an external military threat was in the 1967 war when “Israel seized control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Israel permanently annexed East Jerusalem and set up military administrations in the occupied territories.” See here. At that time, however, “Israel let it be known that Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai might be returned in exchange for Arab recognition of the right of Israel to exist and guarantees against future attack.”

Twelve years later, part of that objective was reached when Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 under which it returned the Sinai to Egypt (Ibid).

It took fifteen more years, but in 1994 Jordan and Israel signed (a) peace treaty. See here and here.

Henceforth Israel’s security would never again be threatened by external enemies.

But peace has not arrived for the people of Palestine. That applies to the people of Israel and even more it applies to the people of the occupied territories, who have now lived under Israeli occupation for well over three generations, for more than six decades. It is the longest occupation of any people in modern history.

But it didn’t and it doesn’t have to be that way. In 1993 The Oslo Accords were signed by then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It didn’t go nearly far enough. It “fell short of the promise of an independent Palestinian state. Oslo II created the Areas A, B and C in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority was given some limited powers and responsibilities in the Areas A and B and a prospect of negotiations on a final settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The Accord was officially signed on 28 September 1995.” See here.

Nevertheless, it was bitterly opposed by Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu.

On November 6^th 1995 Rabin was assassinated. See here.

What led up to the assassination?

In the 1990s, while leader of the Likud party in opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the most prominent critics of the series of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that became known as the Oslo Accords, which began under the Labor party government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Following Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by a right-wing Jewish extremist, some Israelis, including members of Rabin’s family, even blamed Netanyahu for being complicit in Rabin’s murder by fanning the flames of incitement against him. In particular, his critics point to rallies that Netanyahu addressed at which Rabin was portrayed on signs in a Nazi uniform and accused of being a traitor. See here. 

What happened after the assassination?

•                Taking power in 1996 for his first term (1996-1999) shortly after Rabin’s death, Prime Minister Netanyahu proceeded to drag out the negotiations begun by the previous government while delaying or refusing to implement provisions of already-signed agreements, including redeployments of Israeli troops, antagonizing Palestinian negotiators as well as US President Bill Clinton. Following his first meeting with Netanyahu, in 1996, a frustrated Clinton exclaimed angrily to his aides: “Who the f--k does he think he is? Who's the f---ing superpower here?"

•                While drawing out talks with Palestinian negotiators, Netanyahu increased settlement construction, following the advice of his Likud predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, who said after losing power in 1992 that if he had remained prime minister: “I would have conducted negotiations on autonomy for 10 years and in the meantime we would have reached half a million [settlers in the occupied West Bank].”

•                In 2001, back in the opposition, Netanyahu was caught on video bragging to a group of Jewish settlers that he had undermined the Oslo process while prime minister, stating: "I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords.” Regarding pressure from the US, Netanyahu said: "America is a thing you can move very easily." In the video he also told the settlers that the way to deal with Palestinians is to "beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it's unbearable."

•                In 2005, then-Finance Minister Netanyahu resigned from his post in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud government in protest of Sharon’s plan to withdraw settlers and soldiers from Gaza and four small Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Remaining on the fence until the last minute, Netanyahu resigned despite the fact that Sharon assured his right-wing critics that the withdrawal from Gaza would actually help prevent the creation of a Palestinian state rather than hasten it, by alleviating international pressure and allowing Israel to continue settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As top Sharon advisor Dov Weisglass put it in 2004, the Gaza withdrawal supplied the “formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians… until the Palestinians turn into Finns.” (Ibid) 

I have received some additional comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete. I hope that there will be many at the end of the series.

I am an American

I recently submitted the following Letter to the Editor to my local newspaper the Fort Lee Suburbanite. I would like to share it with my readers. The letter follows:

I live in the Colony in Fort Lee. The other day a woman asked me in the elevator whom I planned to vote for. I responded Obama, and asked and you? She said, “I don’t know – I didn’t like Obama’s refusal to meet with Netanyahu.” Then we parted.

Here is my response to this woman and others who may have similar doubts.

As an American, a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, A Zionist descended from Zionists, but above all an American, I do not believe that the head of any country has the right to summon the President of the United States. He can petition the President for a meeting, and if it fits into the President's schedule, and it is in the mutual interests of the parties, a meeting can be arranged. That applies to all foreign heads of state. The Prime Minister of Israel is not, nor should he be, an exception.

But Netanyahu has gone out of his way to violate every rule of diplomatic behavior. In my view he has been a disaster for Israel. Since any Letter to the Editor has to be short I commend readers to "Peter Beinart on Netanyahu’s Bullying Act" from The Daily Beast.

That article relates in some detail Netanyahu’s long history of meddling in American politics, so much so that the Republican Secretary of State James Baker briefly had him banned from the State Department. But beyond that, and I quote from the article, “Netanyahu has been brazenly intervening in American politics—often with an eye to screwing Democratic presidents.”

But let us also not forget Netanyahu’s role in inciting so vehemently against the sainted assassinated Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, that many accused him of responsibility for that assassination.

But now he has the gall to come to the US and use our airwaves to try to dictate American foreign policy. Appearing on US Television, Netanyahu declared: “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” I agree with the Prime Minster that no one has a right to place a “Red Light” before Israel. But, in fact no one has!!!

Israel’s Defense Minster, Ehud Barak has said: "Israel retains its right to make sovereign decisions and the United States respects that."

The opposition comes from within Israel where Meir Dagan, former Mossad Chief, said on 60 Minutes that an “Attack On Iran is the 'Stupidest Idea' He's Ever Heard.”

The attempt by any country to dictate American policy, particularly on issues of war and peace must be rejected by all Americans.

Note: Links to URLs were not part of the Letter to the Editor.

It is necessary to add that according to Israel's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, the Obama White House has been the most supportive administration throughout the two countries' diplomatic relations on matters of Israeli security. See here, here and here.