The Charade Goes On

Mike L.

The snippets below were written by Khaled Abu Toameh and Herb Keinon and published in the Jeruslam Post.

Referring to recent Israeli plans to build housing units in settlements and east Jerusalem neighborhoods, the PLO leaders said: “The PLO Executive Committee considers the unprecedented settler decisions which were announced by the occupation government as conclusive proof that Israel’s first and last option remains expansionism, Judaization and theft of Palestinian land, and not ending occupation and implementing the two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 borders.”

It's all about spreading the propagandistic talking points in the ongoing delegitimization of Israel and the Jews of the Middle East.

"Settlers."  "Settlements."  "Occupation."  "Expansionism."  "Judaization."  "Theft."

And all in one sentence!

This charade is playing out pretty much the way that I expected it would.  The Americans call for talks.  The Israelis agree, but the Arabs hedge.  The Israelis make concessions, which the Arabs pocket and then simply demand more concessions.  Ultimately the Arabs refuse to negotiate or walk away from the table and the Euro-Arab axis, along with the American administration and the progressive-left (including progressive-left Jews), blame Israel for Arab intransigence.  This will lead to violence and, as John Kerry put it, delegitimization "on steroids."

This is all very predictable because we've seen this show before.

The committee warned that Israel’s actions would prompt the PA leadership to reassess its position toward the peace talks.

What we need to do is insist to everyone that demanding that Jews not be allowed to live, and therefore build, on historically Jewish land - in Judea, for crying out loud - is racist on its face.  One of the biggest mistakes that the Jewish left has made, and they have made many, is in justifying Arab racism towards Jews who choose to live in Judea or Samaria.  Every time a well-meaning, but exceedingly stupid, diaspora Jew calls for the dismantling of the "settlements" he or she is telling the world that, yes, Jews are not worthy to live where neither Mahmoud Abbas nor Barack Obama want them to live.

As for the talking points above, it's pure projection.  But they always do this.  They always accuse the Jews of whatever heinous crimes it is that they are committing.  The Jews are not "settlers" and their towns and cities are not "settlements."  The Jewish people are the native, indigenous people in that part of the world and their Arab tormentors are the off-spring of their former masters under the system of slavery known as dhimmitude after the Arab conquest of the 7th century.

This is perhaps what is so galling about this entire charade.  The Jews of the Middle East have been the victims of a particularly brutal form of Arab-Muslim imperialism that lasted for 13 centuries and then, when the Jewish people finally attained our freedom with the fall of the Ottoman empire - and thus the fall of the system of dhimmitude - the vast Arab majority then launched a war against the Jews in the Middle East that has lasted until this very day.  Yet, they have the shamelessness to then turn around and blame the Jews for our own persecution and call us "illegal."  And the progressive-left, including many, if not most, progressive-left Jews, buy into this fantasy.

And all within living memory of the Holocaust.

And therein, I think, lies the true tragedy.

It's one thing for anti-Jewish racist Arabs to demand a Judenrein state of "Palestine" and it's one thing for their European allies to go along with that racist demand, but to see diaspora Jews going along with it, as well, and in the name of "human rights" is just appalling.

The irony and stupidity could not be more cruel.

“We hold the US administration responsible for stopping these Israeli war crimes and attempts to foil the peace process,” the leaders said in a statement. “The last settlement steps contradict assurances that the Palestinian Authority received during preparatory talks for launching the negotiations.”

So, the PLO, a terrorist organization that Israel should never have recognized to begin with, considers a Jewish presence on Jewish land to be a "war crime" do they?  And they consider such a presence as an attempt to foil the peace process?  This is a game and it's purpose is not to bring about a 23rd Arab state, but to facilitate the long Arab war against the Jews, which is currently in the delegitimization phase.

The goal is to turn as much of the world community against the tiny Jewish minority in that part of the world as possible.  They've already managed to turn the Europeans and now the idea is to turn the Americans.  Once that happens Israel will be more or less helpless in the face of Arab / European / American pressure and will be forced back to something equivalent to what Abba Eban called the "Auschwitz borders."  Needless to say, this will not end Arab hostility toward the Jewish minority in the Middle East, but will embolden it, precisely because victory is emboldening.

This is an exceedingly perilous moment and if the "peace process" plays out as I expect that it will, we are going to see some very ugly developments in the coming few years.