America’s Place in the World (Discussion)

Hopefully, many of you have by now read my recent commentary entitled “America’s Place inthe World."

I have had a number of comments and exchanges as a result of that posting, and would like to share that discussion with you.

Janet Cooke of Philadelphian, Pennsylvania wrote:

I was just thinking about your blog and that I was missing hearing what you might be thinking about this budget/healthcare/threaten to shut down the government fiasco we are witnessing in Washington now!  I was planning to communicate with you this morning about missing your commentary -  and then I opened the email from you and found the comments from Eric re: Syria, etc., and your response.   

 Not the topic that was on my mind but good to hear your thinking!  I'm always glad to learn what you're thinking about situations and behaviors that amaze and overwhelm me.  The budget stuff and the ridiculous but dangerous(?) behavior of the Republicans is of great concern.  Maybe, because like you, I've wanted to expect so much better behavior from members of our government, it's especially upsetting. I am tuned in.

To which I responded:

With respect to the shutting down of the government and the even more serious imminent failure to raise the debt ceiling there is not much to say. It is akin to a father, (or a mother) taking one of their children hostage and demanding ransom for not harming such a child. Will the mother (or father) pay! Probably yes. But when that happens again and again, without any assurance of the safety of the child or even children, there comes a time when it is necessary to say no more. These are our children. This is our economy. This is the world economy. You can't use that for blackmail.

The trouble with paying ransom to hostage takers is that the more one pays, the more it encourages the hostage-taking. No matter what the cost, at one point one has to refuse or there is no end to it. The ransom will just keep going up. 

However, even though you feel this crisis is front and center, I would still like to have your input on my exchange with Eric Offner on the Syria debacle.

Nancy Vieira, who works for the National Institute of Health, and is domiciled in Silver Springs, Maryland, contributed the following:

So good to read your column once again! Thank-you for deciding to respond to your friend’s provocative email and for posting it on your web site for us (always!) interested readers.  

It never ceases to amaze me how cruel and barbaric the “civilized” human species can be. I will never forget watching a live broadcast from a hut in Rwanda and, as the journalist spoke in the doorway of the hut, seeing in the background, down the dirt road, 2 men with machetes hacking away at “something” on the ground (a fellow human being was my presumption). Striking with a machete and seeing up close what it is you are actually doing to a “living thing”, to me, is mind boggling enough. But, dropping a bomb of chemical weaponry on your own citizens, innocents, while comfortably sitting at home with plenty of food, water, all the comforts of modern day living and family and friends, not ever having to see the chemical damage inflicted upon the human and other animal species up close and personal, their suffering, is unconscionable.   

And, to turn one’s head and say, “it’s not my problem” is also unconscionable. I cannot imagine how a human being can justify condoning these acts of vicious cruelty. I can only hope that, one day, we will all live in peace on this planet.

Prompting me to reply as follows:

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

You are one of very few, who has seen barbarity up close. Every time we close our eyes we become accomplices. It is so easy to say there is nothing we can do. There is always something we can do. Where there is a Will, there is a Way. 

It is high time for us to take the words, "NEVER AGAIN" seriously". But it isn't only chemical weapons that should arouse our ire, as horrible as they are. Every time we condone atrocities, and in Syria we should have acted after the Hama murders in 1982, which few people even remember. (I might add that I had not remembered it until I read Thomas Friedman's book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" published in 1989, but not read by me until three years ago. It is still an eye opener.

Again thank you for taking the time to write.

And finally, Herb Reiner, of Cedar Grove, NJ expressed this view:

Glad to hear from you that you’re well and glad to see that you have not lost interest in expressing your political views despite the lack of response to your last commentary. I will just add a few observations to chew on. 

  

Firstly, the distinction between a civil war and a revolution is nebulous and in the case of Syria one can truly say it is both. The Syrians are certainly not fighting against a foreign occupying power. 

  

Secondly, even from the early stages of the conflict, Obama realized that the Opposition was fractured and disorganized. The most motivated and well organized among them were the Islamist, who today appear the strongest among the opposition groups. Obama was always left with bad choices, but I believe his reluctance to supply heavy weapons was justified.  The secular groups, it seems are welcoming all the support they can get from the Islamists and it is not clear who would control our heavy weapons.  Let's not forget how the Stinger missiles we supplied to Pakistan were used to shoot down our own aircraft.  

  

Thirdly, it may be beyond the power of even the most powerful military in the world to alone help "people being slaughtered," without engendering even worse consequences. We should be thankful that Obama did not have to carry out his threat against Assad crossing the red line with the fantasy of a quick in-and-out punishment, which would kill even more innocent victims and could plunge the whole region into chaos.  As for overthrowing Assad  -- be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!  

 Best wishes and keep writing and thinking.

Prompting this response on my part:

It’s so good to hear from you and to have the benefit of your views.

It is so easy to find reasons to close one's eyes. Maybe, because of my background as a Holocaust survivor, who remembers, and who has studied the history of that atrocity while the world found just as many reasons to close its eyes. There were worse things than Hitler they said. We should be worried about the Communists, not the Nazis. What business is it what happens to German Nationals? We must not interfere in their sovereign affairs.

Above all we have our own problems with high unemployment, and didn't we have enough getting involved in European affairs in World War I.

Even when Britain was on its last legs, they argued it is only about protecting the British Empire, what do we care. 

I fear that what we are witnessing is neo-isolationism.

Yes, I hear the arguments that you are making. But that was not true in the beginning. In the beginning we witnessed peaceful demonstrations of an oppressed people and we saw Hama of 1982 all over again. That was the time to say NO - NOT AGAIN! This will not stand!! At the very beginning a no fly zone, which could have been attained with weapons fired from off shore at airbases, should have been imposed. It would not have been 100% successful. So what. It would have made a difference.

Yes, a lot of extremist elements have reared their ugly head. But that is because we stood aside. If we wouldn't help them others will jump in. And so they did. But even now we see battles between secular groups and religious ideologues. Why don't we help the secularists? The longer we don't help them, the more a desperate people turn to the Jihadists. Our failure has helped the Jihadists and continues to help them. But above all where is our sense of compassion; our sense of justice.

Now as to Stinger missiles. The problem is not that we supplied them to Pakistan. We supplied them to the Taliban to shoot down Soviet planes in the Soviet-Afghanistan campaign. Was that a mistake? NO!!!!! At a time when we were in a life and death struggle with the Soviets, handing them a major defeat was the first, and possibly only, priority. In any case Stinger missiles have not been our major problem in Afghanistan. Very few of our planes have been shot down by Stinger missiles. In fact we have lost very few planes. The weapons that have bedeviled us are IEDs, the roadside bombs, not Stinger missiles. That is a phony argument that is being used. But, carefully selected groups would minimize the risk if any. 

Does anyone really think that if we stand aside and don't try to influence events that things will turn out better than if we do? That doesn't work in private life and it doesn't work in public events. Trying, even if sometimes failing to influence events, is almost always the better course. 

As for "plunge(ing) the whole region into chaos" this is not what our action would do. It is our non-action that is doing this. Our non-action is destabilizing Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and possibly others. Both Turkey and Jordan have been begging us to help.

This argument is essentially one to be left to the Right. Laissez-faire is an argument that should be left to the proponents of the Right. Pacifism sounds good. But is has never worked. Isolationism has its appeal, but it too has never worked.

I continue to invite comments, questions, or corrections, and will respond to them. I will distribute such exchanges with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued II)

In my last commentary entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)," which I urge the reader to re-read, as well as the start of this analysis entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward" I concluded with a quote from the Center for Policy Research on the Ryan budget and the James B. Stewart article defending it:

We have people who want to be part of the inside Washington conversation who praise the budget's courage and integrity. Then we have people who believe in arithmetic who call it what it is: a piece of trash. By the way, Paul Ryan is a very nice guy.

Then again we have another so-called New York Times “centrist” columnist, David Brooks, whose many fulminations have long ago turned me off. I gave up on him many years ago when he advocated what he called a “flat/fair tax” which to me was, and is, an oxymoron. By definition, for the rich and the poor to pay the same tax can never be fair, though I have since then come to wonder whether our present system, isn’t even worse, with the lower earners paying a higher % of their income than the rich.

In any case here is Brooks' “centrist” take on the Ryan plan. He admits:

The Ryan budget would cut too deeply into discretionary spending. This could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility. Moreover, the Ryan tax ideas are too regressive. They make tax cuts for the rich explicit while they hide any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors.

But then having said that, he gets to what really upsets him, and it isn’t the outrages of the Ryan plan. Instead he rips into the President for criticizing its (The Ryan Plan’s) “real deficit-reducing accomplishments” (My careful reading of the plan does not reveal any such accomplishments unless you count the unspecified cuts in expenditures, and even then there is not one iota of an increase in revenue) as “trickle-down, … social Darwinists.” To be sure that is strong language, but that hardly makes it inappropriate, for a document that devastates our social safety net and severely cuts taxes for the rich. Mr. Brooks takes particular exception to the term “Social Darwinist” describing it as, as “a 19th-century philosophy that held, in part, that Aryans and Northern Europeans are racially superior to brown and Mediterranean peoples.” That may be the way it was once used, but Brooks should, and undoubtedly does know, that its meaning in 20^th century America is as The Atlantic describes it:  

“a term in Richard Hofstadter's 1944 book ‘Social Darwinism in American Thought’ which correctly describes it as a ‘phase in the history of conservative thought’ where ‘nature would provide that the best competitors in a competitive situation would win, and that this process would lead to continuing improvement.”

As we can see Brooks’ attack on the President is ad homonym and without foundation. But that is the way of the so-called middle.

But Mr. Brooks is such a symbol of this so-called middle (I call it a phony middle) that I have to dwell a little longer on Brooks’ writing. As early as June 13, 2011 in an article headed “Pundit Under Protest” he writes, as is his wont, with such an evenness, without regard to facts, as to make the article pathetic. Like any politician without principle, only worse, he knows that his audience likes to hear that there is no difference between the parties. He tries to oblige. He starts out by identifying the malaise that has gripped the country. He writes:

The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. [Emphasis added]

           

Mr. Brooks states a crucial fact, without focusing on a crucial date: 1983. What happened in 1983? Well nothing in particular, except that it was the second year of the Administration of Ronald Reagan, when the country was set upon a dramatic new course, with the mantra being from then on: “ Government is not the Solution – Government is the Problem” and for the next 38 years, except for first two years of the Clinton Administration, that was the guiding principle of our government. It does not follow, that these polices were the cause of the condition that Brooks describes, but one would think that a discussion of that possibility might have been in order. But never mind that. Let’s see what else he says.

Here is what he says about the Republican agenda:

The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefying boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible… Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012.

Well so far so good! But of course, being Brooks there is always, “On the other hand.” So here is what he says about Democrats.

…they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels!... They still have these grand spending ideas, but there is no longer any money to pay for them and there won’t be for decades. Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare. (Emphasis added)

Boy, what an indictment. But is it true? It may be true of some of the base, but it is not true of the Obama Administration and it is not true of the Democratic Party’s program. It is a contrived caricature. Let us take Medicare. The President proposed and Congressional Democrats passed over almost unanimous Republican opposition $132 billion worth of cuts from Medicare Advantage over 10 years, for which Republicans have been denouncing them as having taking money out of Medicare, if one can believes the hypocrisy. (I am not here going to discuss the merits or lack thereof here – but cite it simply to belie Brooks.)

In addition, months before Brooks falsely alleged that Democrats were unwilling to touch Medicare, in March of 2012 Obama offered as part of a deficit reduction deal with Speaker Boehner, just that, or as the New York Times reported:

The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade.

The offered deal included revenue enhancements, and fell apart when Boehner could not sell that part to his Tea Party-dominated Republican House caucus.

But how can Brooks, say, (with a straight face) “by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare.” The answer can only be that Brooks is no more concerned with facts than the Republicans who he is always defending, or at least falsely equating with a President and a party that is actually trying to do something.

As for Brooks’ assertion that “…they offer practically nothing,” “'Let's look at the record” in the immortal words of Al Smith: Mr. Brooks does not have to look at what has been proposed, just at what has been achieved, which because of Republican obstructionism is much less than what has been proposed. See the accomplishments as of November 25, 2009 here.

More has been accomplished since then, but of course upon the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Democrats and the President lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate. With a unanimous Republican determination that nothing will pass with less than 60 votes – which means a vote of 59 in favor, 41 against, or even 35 against, defeats a bill, not much more can be accomplished, and with Republicans capturing the House, gridlock is the order of the day. But here again the suggestion that both parties are at fault for not being willing to compromise, belies the facts. Even tax cuts proposed by the Administration, are blocked, even though the Republican mantra is that tax cuts are always good, but I guess they mean only for the rich.

But Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, isn’t much better. He thinks that the solution to all our problems is a third party. See my discussion entitled "The Media And Their Columnists."

We will never solve any problems if we constantly seek a false equivalency between the parties, or seek magic from outside them. Let the facts take us where they may, but let us not indulge in a false delusion in an effort not to have to choose. That leaves as either not voting, or voting on the basis of Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, or throwing our vote away on a third party.

But before I close this subject I must examine one more column by Brooks. It is dated April 16, 2012 and is entitled “The White House Argument.” I suggest the reader examine it before my next post. It is one of Brooks’ best jobs yet at sophism. But like all his others, it does far better at obfuscation than at clarification.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Media And Their Columnists

After my last post entitled: "The Deficit – One Big Hoax or a Looming Catastrophe?" which I did not find easy to write and I imagine my readers did not find easy to read, because it was in many ways counter-intuitive and because it was heavy on statistics, I want to spend this post covering a subject that is much easier to grasp, and while not within the “conventioanal wisdom” may not be quite so counterintuitive.

I have over the past weeks and month railed at the media in general and their columnists in particular, in part because in my opinion they have been unfairly maligning our President, but to a larger extent, because they have been short on facts and long on rhetoric. I have particularly been chagrined when they use misleading or downright false facts to malign our President.

For example in my post entitled: "The Trojan Horse" I took Krugman to task for criticizing President Obama for not sufficiently attacking former President Bush, when:

1.) It would have made more sense to himself attack the former President and
2.) More important, the criticism had no basis in fact, since as one Right wing blog had pointed out, Obama had been doing just that.

Now I find myself even further outraged by a columns in the New York Times by Tom Friedman, entitled: “The Whole Truth and Nothing But”.

I just wish Mr. Friedman heeded his own advice. Mr. Freidman decries that, “democracies have… been telling lies.” Yes, the politicians have been telling a lot of lies, and as I wrote in a letter to my local newspaper some time ago:

After the attempted assassination of Congresswomen, Gabrielle Giffords, there was an outcry for greater civility. Our need is not for greater civility, but for truth telling. The endless outrageous lies spread by Fox and so many other outlets, by e-mail and on the web, must be exposed for what they are.

But I wish the lying were confined to Fox and the Right. Mr. Friedman after calling for avoiding lies promptly goes on to tell a whopper. He tells us:

But no American politician dares utter the word ‘sacrifice.’

I had an immediate reaction to this. Is Mr. Friedman lying, or has he been simply living on another planet? Whichever is the truth, such nonsense should never find itself in print in the pages of the prestigious New York Times.

I was sure I heard our President talk about “shared sacrifice” over and over again. Could my memory be playing tricks on me? So I went to Google and put in “Obama on shared sacrifice.” Guess What?

1,410,000 hits popped up. The first “Obama urges ‘shared sacrifice’ on debt,” and one after another along the same line.

Now I am not accusing Mr. Friedman with deliberately lying. I have read Mr. Freidman’s books “Beirut to Jerusalem” and the “World is Flat”. They are excellent books. But what other explanation can there be? Maybe he is just too busy to bother with the facts before meeting his deadline for his next column, which must be exactly one newspaper column long. If is a little shorter they can put in a filler, quoting in large letters something in the column. But God forbid it should be too long! That is pretty constraining if one really means to say something meaningful, instead of something that people can be impressed with if they don’t think about it too long.

I don’t know what Thomas Friedman’s salary at the New York Times is, but in addition to his column he hits the lecture circuit, he goes on TV shows, he writes books, so much so, that he earns $2 million annually.

I don’t think he makes that kind of a salary from the New York Times. So he throws something together, and who cares if it has one iota of truth in it, as long as it makes good copy.

But that is not the only nonsense this well credentialed man turns out. He advocates a Third Party. Now what a third party would do for, or that mater to, our political system, he doesn’t say. We have had third parties many times. They have always succeeded in doing the opposite of what they were intended to do. The Green Party, headed by Ralph Nader, was instrumental in electing George W. Bush. Ross W. Perot who was much more closely aligned with the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party, was instrumental in electing Bill Clinton.

The time may come, if we ever have a system where a majority is needed to win an election, that a third party might be a viable vehicle. But until then, they are a threat to the principles they profess to support.

But Friedman, instead of pointing out that we have a choice between a moderate, even a conservative party in many ways in the Democratic Party and a Radical Right wing party, intent on rule or ruin, rides his hobby horse. And not just now: In April 2006, in May 2006, in June 2006 and in March 2010.

Now in July 2011 Friedman has a new idea:

President Obama should dump the Democrats and run as an independent, which he is, at heart, anyway (and) If President Obama wants to run with John Boehner that would be fine

Spare me!!!

It seems to me that if Friedman has nothing intelligent to write about he should give up his column. But that wouldn’t work. How would he then get his speaking engagements and his book sales? What would happen to his $2 million-plus income?

And who would take his place? Frank Bruni, who for years was the Times Food critic, has now magically become an expert on the political scene and gives us this pearl of wisdom.

Instead of talking about how smart politicians are or aren’t, we should have an infinitely more useful, meaningful conversation about whether we share and respect their values and whether they have shown themselves to be effective. Someone who rates high on both counts is someone to rally unreservedly around. Right now, neither Perry nor Obama fits that double bill.

I am sure glad to hear that he equates Rick Perry with Obama.

Or John Nocera who told it like it is when he wrote: “For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests," couldn’t take the heat when some objected to his telling it the way it is and four days later wrote: “That anger reached its apex on Tuesday, when I wrote a column comparing the Tea Party Republicans to terrorists. The words I chose were intemperate and offensive to many, and I’ve been roundly criticized. I was a hypocrite, the critics said, for using such language when on other occasions I’ve called for a more civil politics. In the cool light of day, I agree with them. I apologize.”

Who are these pundits who write for the Times? We have had Democrats called “traitors for losing China,” “for being soft on Communism” and “for being soft on crime.” Obama has been called “Un-American”, his birth has been questioned, even though his birth certificate has been available on the web since day one, he has been called a socialist, a communist, and a fascist. Kerry had his heroism impugned, and Gore was called a liar and worse, even though nothing he said was even an exaggeration. See: "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore." But Nocera apologizes for telling it like it is.

I will keep reading the New York Times. But I will do so with a grain of salt and I urge my readers to do the same.

With this I leave for Russia, but when I return I will tackle the thorny issues of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which require some badly needed truth telling.

Putting The Israeli/Arab "Conflict" In Context.

An issue as complicated as the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians can hardly be given adequate coverage in one essay. Accordingly I plan to devote more time and effort to this very important issue. In this article I plan to discuss the genesis of the conflict because I believe the comments received as well as the articles cited in those comments ignore the fundamental problems of the conflict, which can only be found in its history.

Jews inhabited Palestine in Biblical times but were driven out by wave after wave of invaders, from Romans in 135 A.D. to the 7th century when Muslim Arab armies moved north from Arabia to conquer most of the Middle East, including Palestine. The rulers allowed Christians and Jews to keep their religions. However, most of the local population gradually accepted Islam and the Arab-Islamic culture of their rulers. Thus while some Jews remained in Palestine they were a very small community with most Jews having become part of the great Jewish Diaspora.

Jews had never stopped coming to "the Holy land" or Palestine in small numbers throughout the exile. Palestine also remained the center of Jewish worship and a part of Jewish culture. However, the Jewish connection with the land was mostly abstract and connected with dreams of messianic redemption.

See here, from which some of the above is quoted and for a complete history.

It was not until the 19th century that the birth of Zionism made a return to Palestine a matter of Jewish policy, at least for some, and Jews started returning and buy land there. However, the Arabs were a feudal society and so the land being bought was purchased from absentee landlords and the “serfs’ who toiled on the land had no say in their expropriation. As far as they were concerned it was the Jews who threw them off their land. Most Zionists were not concerned about the Arab population, which they ignored, or thought would agree to voluntary transfer to other Arab countries. In any case, they envisioned the population of Palestine by millions of European Jews who would soon form a decisive majority in the land. At the same time, Palestine's Arab population grew rapidly. By 1914, the total population of Palestine stood at about 700,000. About 615,000 were Arabs, and 85,000 to 100,000 were Jews.

The history becomes ever more complicated and those who might want more details should go to the web site indicated above but one thing was consistent. Arabs always considered Jewish settlers to be an alien force, which they did not welcome.

With the rise of Hitler many Jews desperately wanted to emigrate from Germany and Austria. None of the Western countries were willing to open their borders to receive them. How many might have been saved from the Nazi “Final Solution” is hard to estimate but it would not be unreasonable to suppose that it would have been in the millions. Many tried to flee to Palestine but the British blocked their path and turned them back.

On Nov. 29, 1947 The UN General Assembly voted in favor of Palestine being divided into an Arab state and a Jewish state with Jerusalem to be put under international administration.

As can be seen the land assigned to the new Jewish state was extremely small with Jerusalem being deep in Arab territory and the border between what was called Trans-Jordan and Israel far west of the Jordan river. Nevertheless The Jews accepted the UN decision, but the Arabs rejected it, and upon Israel declaring its statehood war commenced, which Israel won handily.



Why is it important to focus on this history? It bears on the rights of Jews in Palestine. It shows beyond doubt that the Arabs were always an occupied people, exploited by the Imperialist powers and by their own land-owning class.

We need to ask ourselves if the UN had decided to give a piece of territory for a Jewish state to be carved out of the US, or out of Mexico, or out of Africa what would the reaction of the indigenous population have been? It is safe to say it would have been hostile. So the hostility of the Arabs should not be a surprise nor can it be condemned as evil.

That is why David Ben-Gurion the founding leader of Israel said, “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Why indeed would they accept that? The answer is reality. Their armies have been defeated again and again. As a result Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel. In desperation they have turned to the only weapon available to the weak, terrorism. Does that make them evil? I don’t think so! Since the dawn of time terrorism has been a weapon used. Even in Biblical times Samson brought down the temple on the heads of the civilian population when he was shorn of his strength. The Jews in striving for a homeland in Palestine used terrorism. On 6 November 1944, Lord Moyne (Walter Guinness), the British Minister Resident in Egypt, was assassinated in Cairo. On 22 July 1946 the King David Hotel was bombed by the Irgun, father to the Likud Party, killing 91 people and injuring 46. The Catholics in Ireland resorted to terrorism with the support of many Americans. And let us not forget the Sabra and Shatila massacres! What was the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but terrorism? It is a weapon that we would prefer not to see employed but it has a long and storied history. It does not make those who employ it evil by definition.

But even terrorism hasn’t worked. We have ended up with the worst possible situation for all. Israeli’s continue to live without the security that is every people’s desire, and the Arabs continue to live in the squalor of displaced persons camps, which have now become multi-generational and gives them even less security than the Israelis have.

Let’s give Peace a Chance!!!

But peace cannot happen in the face of an expansionist Israel.

As can be seen from the map above, Israel started and accepted a small piece of territory. As a result of subsequent wars Israel grew. It is now accepted that Israel is entitled to all the territory as shown on the map below. Its border with Egypt has now been straightened. Its lands in the north now encompass all the territory to the border with Lebanon. And in the west it has expanded to the Jordan River and the area up to and around Jerusalem. Yet Israel has not been content with its conquered territories. It has built and continues to build settlements on occupied territory in the West Bank despite protests from every American Administration except for the Bush Administration. While it claims to have stopped building new settlements it insists on its right to expand existing ones and in the process continues to seize Arab lands and to destroy Arab homes.



According to Thomas L. Friedman, writing in the NY Times of February 4, 2009:

“The West Bank is so chopped up and divided now by roads, checkpoints and fences to separate Israel’s crazy settlements from Palestinian villages that a Palestinian could fly from Jerusalem to Paris quicker than he or she could drive from Jenin, here in the northern West Bank, to Hebron in the south.”

This is an intolerable situation. What Israel and the Israeli lobby demands is that the Palestinians quietly accept their oppression, accept their ever-diminishing lands, accept their lack of rights, and never fight back. No people would allow such oppression without resistance.

Israel is armed to the teeth. Yet any attempt for its adversaries to arm is treated as an outrage. Where is the balance?

Palestinians are human beings.

And every resistance, whether it is the "intifada", which consists of the throwing of stones against Israeli guns is treated as an outrage instead of the desperation which it represents.

Even the treatment of Palestinian weak claims of “The Right of Return” is treated as an outrage. To be sure Israel could never allow the refugees to return, for that would mean the end of the Jewish state, something that cannot be contemplated. But that does not mean that one should not acknowledge that this “right of return” has been recognized by the International Committee of the Red Cross which holds that persons displaced during armed conflict must be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased even though the language of the Fourth Geneva Convention is not nearly as clear as some would contend. Israel has never, as it should, offered as an alternative the resettlement of Arabs in the West Bank, in permanent communities so they can stop being refugees in their own lands. Israel contends that this is something that the Arab nations need to do, but it is, and must be Israel’s responsibility. With American help, this along with adequate compensation must be the framework for negotiations.

Removing many of the settlements will not be easy, but the problem keeps being compounded by their expansion and by continued illegal (even under Israeli law) settlement activity, which is not being prevented by the Israeli authorities. The increasing support for an ethnic cleansing of Arabs from the West Bank by fanatical orthodox Jews must be denounced and the areas need to be referred to by Israeli authorities as the “occupied territories” or the “West Bank” and “Gaza” and not as “Samaria” and “Judea.”