The reason for that is because he has a way of getting directly to the heart of the matter.
Rubin writes:
IF THERE was a last straw for me regarding what was once the English-speaking world’s greatest newspaper, it is this New York Times editorial of October 19, 2011:
“One has to ask: If Mr. Netanyahu can negotiate with Hamas – which shoots rockets at Israel, refuses to recognize Israel’s existence and, on Tuesday, vowed to take even more hostages – why won’t he negotiate seriously with the Palestinian Authority, which Israel relies on to help keep the peace in the West Bank.”
What has one thing have to do with the other? Israel isn’t negotiating with Hamas on a political level but to save the life of a young Israeli who has been in horrible captivity for five years.
But what’s really disturbing here is the idea that it is Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who have been refusing to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority rather than the other way around.
Funnily enough, within hours of this editorial we have the ultimate Palestinian “moderate,” Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, saying:“We want to see an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967. We want the Palestinian people to live with dignity.”
Fayyad went on to explain that while the Palestinians are committed to resolving the conflict, “the conditions are not right to resume talks.”
In other words, even when the Palestinian prime minister openly rejects talks and even after dozens of previous rejections by him and Palestinian “President” Mahmoud Abbas, and dozens of documented acceptances of negotiations by Netanyahu and Israel, the lie that Israel doesn’t want to negotiate and the Palestinian Authority does is repeated.
Obviously, this is not a misunderstanding.
Yup.
The Palestinians refuse negotiations and the progressive-left blames the Jews.
Shocking, I know.
I am looking at the follow-up to UN 194 in 1951. Interesting, no mention of Palestinians, only Arabs.
ReplyDeleteOne would think that if re-settlement had been offered to the refugees themselves, along with compensation, many thousands would have accepted and integrated into the other Arab societies. There would not be this intractable issue today. But Arab leaders chose to let them suffer to further conflict.
The idea that these leaders have changed is ludicrous, except in a world turned upside down.
Yes. The 1951 proceedings also stated matter of factly that the Arab refugees abandoned and fled, as compared to the present notion offered that they were ethnically cleansed as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThe truth, of course, is that some were compelled to leave and other left of their own accord.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that never gets mentioned in progressive-left I-P discourse is that the Jews had no such option to flee.
Flee where?
It was a matter of fighting or dying.
The Arabs had options that the Jews did not.
I always find it odd when they talk about the so-called "ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians."
ReplyDeleteI mean, the Arabs of the mandate launched a genocidal civil war against the Jews directly after UN 181 at the end of November in 1947. A war fought against not just Jewish men, but against Holocaust survivors and Jewish women, yet they still got beat.
And now they have the chutzpah to yammer at us about "ethnic cleansing"?
What kind of moral calculus is it that says there should be no consequence to genocidal efforts against Jews?
Couple great points made in the comments here. I've often wondered why the question is never asked why Jordanian and Egyptian control of the WB and Gaza respectively were never called an occupation between 1949 and 1967. I'm not a fan of the "Palestinians are a recent invention" argument. The fact is they are, and have to be dealt with, as such. But the lands now supposedly being illegally occupied by Israel, have been similarly "occupied" for centuries.
ReplyDeleteBut only the Jews have been singled out as evil occupiers.
S.