Rabid anti-Semitism coupled with an addiction to implausible conspiracy theories is a very strong predictor of national doom; Nazi Germany isn’t the only country to have followed these dark stars to the graveyard of history. Many liberal minded Americans (though loathing both anti-Semitism and chowderheaded conspiracy thinking themselves) don’t like to look this truth in the eye. It leads to some very uncomfortable reflections about the potential for democracy in many countries beyond Egypt, and casts a dark shadow over the prospects for the development of a stable and prosperous Palestinian state. It suggests that there are narrow limits on what we can expect from diplomacy with Iran.
There’s a lot of delusional thinking in the White House along these lines.
On our troubled globe, where states do truly terrible things to their people, gassing them, slaughtering them en masse, impoverishing and immiserating them, I am aware of only one country whose continued existence has been called into question. Should Zimbabwe exist? Or Sudan? Or Syria? Only Israel is subjected to constant questioning of its right to remain a nation. Israel, a sliver of a country surrounded by tyrannical regimes or perpetually unstable governments, free for the moment from war because of strength and not because of neighborly goodwill, this Israel is the target of the opprobrium of preening academics the world over. The question is not whether members of the ASA are anti-Semites, as individuals. All this is not because the world’s only Jewish state is uniquely evil. It is just uniquely Jewish.
The Irish no longer care. They are neither Catholic nor nationalistic. The IRA thugs of 1970 came from four-child families. Today the Irish have fewer than two children on average. Let the matter simmer for another twenty years, and the Palestinian Arabs will look more like the Irish of 1996 than the Irish of 1970. At that point, the “narrative” will change, because no one will care about the old “narrative.”
In the meantime the Israeli settlers have built a garden and a workshop where before there were bare rocks, and thriving communities that are integral parts of Israeli society. It takes longer to get crosstown in Manhattan in traffic than it does to drive from the center of Tel Aviv to Ariel, the largest town in Samaria. This is yet another accomplishment of Jewish ingenuity and industriousness, and it is (or should be) an inspiring example to all who hope for a better life for the peoples of the Middle East. We will know that the Palestinians want peace when they admire rather than abhor this effort.
As science progresses, so also peace will come to that region, funeral by funeral.
The fact that Obama has adopted a Lindberghian policy doesn’t mean that in this new context he is not being realistic. The worrisome reality is that the relative strengths in the much-discussed, historical hostility between Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East, are not balanced, this according to a reliable security source with access to intelligence data. Syria is the main area for this struggle and what the US and Israel see is that the Shiites, backed by Iran, are a solid power with the ability to control and carry out a clear policy.
In contrast, the Sunnis do not have any real power at this point. They are fragmented. The Syrian opposition has not proved that it is internally cohesive and can control and keep order in major sections of Syria, let alone in Iraq. They were unable to retain power even in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood won control. So the Americans handed over Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to Iran.
There is no doubt that Preisdent Obama knows very well that he is turning into a partner of leaders who have committed crimes against humanity and a friend of those who declare their intentions of doing so. No problem. He simply prefers Iran over Israel.
It does seem a theory that best fits the evidence.
The relation between Obama and Netanyahu in the White House meeting reflected and prefigured the relation between the U.S. and Israel on the international and diplomatic stage, culminating in an agreement with Iran in which Israel had no part and was effectively ostracized. To say that Obama has no love for Israel is to put it mildly.
It would be interesting in this context to see the Khalidi/Obama video squirreled away by the Los Angeles Times. Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO spokesman and current Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, makes no secret of his hatred for Israel. Obama and Khalidi were good friends, and as Discover the Networks reports, “In 2003 Obama would attend a farewell party in Khalidi’s honor when the latter was leaving the University of Chicago to embark on his new position at Columbia.” The event was filmed and one may plausibly wonder what revelation the LAT is suppressing with regard to Obama’s participation, especially as Obama had praised Khalidi for having “challenged my thinking.” Israpundit’s Ted Belman puts it succinctly: “What was said at this event was presumably so damaging to Obama’s political career that the LA Times, that liberal bastion, who came into possession of a tape of the event, refused to release it.”
In any case, everything Obama has done vis à vis the Jewish state — favoring anti-Zionist rabbis and organizations, inveighing against housing construction in its own capital city, supporting the Palestinians in fruitless rounds of “peace talks,” insisting that Israel retreat to its indefensible pre-1967 borders, leaking military secrets about Israeli pre-emptive actions against Syria and Hezbollah — indicates that Obama would like to see Israel confined to a tiny sliver of land, boxed in between the sea and the Arabs, reduced to a rump state at the mercy of its enemies, and eventually ushered out of the corridors of history. This puts him in league with the ayatollahs. This is Obama’s version of the knockout game.
Except in the knockout game, the victim selection is random.