Brief Notes: So, What's Next?

Mike L.



Now that we are in the midst of the Passover holiday and now that Obama has departed Israel we seem to be in a moment of stasis, wondering what will come next.  Most of the Arab-Israel conversation at this point revolves around The Great Netanyahu Apology and the releasing of 500 million dollars worth of tax funds to the Palestinian Authority... although one wonders how Mahmoud Abbas can possibly stuff 500 million dollars into his rather ample mattress.

We also know that John Kerry has no intention of going away... sadly.

I would emphasize, again, that Obama does not seem to have done quite so much damage as I initially expected.  The reason for this is because he did not demand "total settlement freeze" among the minority population of Palestinian-Jews as a precondition for talks with either the occupying Arab majority, nor their Palestinian-Arab front-line troops.

In regards The Great Netanyahu Apology, Smadar Bat Adam of Israel Hayom has this to say:

Turkish media reported this week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's apology has paved the way for a massive joint pipeline project carrying natural gas from Israel to Turkey and from there to Europe. There is no overestimating the influence joint economic interests can have on stable relations between countries.

It is said that during a private conversation, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once thanked French President Charles de Gaulle for France's help to Israel, attributing it to the strong alliance and friendship between the two countries. To which De Gaulle replied, "France has no friends, only interests."

Israel intends to sell about a gazillion dollars worth of natural gas to Turkey and Europe and to that I say, G-d bless 'em.  I am not the least little bit happy about Netanyahu's apology to Turkey because it is not only unwarranted, but affirms the common implication that the Jewish people have no honest rights to defend themselves from harm.  Nonetheless it should be reasonably obvious that Israel's future depends on Israeli technological ingenuity and trade.  The reason that BDS tends to fail, as Jon Haber has done a terrific job of documenting, is because the world wants to purchase Israeli goods and the reason that they want to purchase Israeli goods is because the UpStart Nation is on the technological cutting edge.

After all, if one honestly wants to boycott Israel then one needs to stop purchasing cell phones and computers.  {Good luck with that.}

I suppose that my real concern at the moment, however, is the possible damage that the Obama administration may do as they publicly indulge the Oslo Delusion.  When I was a young Hard-line, Right-Wing Zionist Fascist from Hell, I held considerable hope that Bill Clinton would convince Yassir Arafat that accepting a state in peace next to the Palestinian-Jewish one might be a good idea for the Palestinian-Arabs.

I no longer hold out any such hope and fail to understand how anyone aware of the last one hundred years of Jewish history in the Middle East could possibly conclude otherwise.  Nonetheless, if the Palestinian-Arabs honestly want to sit down for negotiations with the Palestinian-Jews, let them do so, but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that this is what they want.  On the contrary, the Palestinian-Arabs have demonstrated consistently that the last thing in this world that they want is a negotiated conclusion of hostilities.

What they want, obviously, is victory, not compromise, and a big part of the reason that they hold out for eventual victory is because the western states, including the United States, give them every reason to hold out and continue to fight.  This is why forking over that 500 million dollars is a huge mistake.  What it means is that the Palestinian-Arabs never have to suffer any consequences for their behavior.

I was never a huge fan of Benjamin Netanyahu, but I was never much of a critic, either.

Now I just feel disappointed in his leadership and very much look forward to the next turning of the page.

Have a terrific Pesach!

We're holding our seder on Saturday night and our old friend PaulinBerkeley will be in attendance.

He brings the Charoset!

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Oh, and by the way, Am Yisrael Chai!

Which is just another way of saying that The Day of the Dhimmi is Done.