A Fist Full of Nails

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Secretary of State John Kerry and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone about the possibility of restarting peace talks with the Palestinians and a fourth prisoner release, Palestinian media reported on Monday.

According to a report in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi, Netanyahu did not respond positively during the conversation, and therefore Kerry told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he is canceling his scheduled visit to the region next week.

A Palestinian source also said on the heels of the canceled visit, a Palestinian delegation, including chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and the head of Palestinian Intelligence, Majid Faraj, will travel to Washington on Tuesday to present to Kerry a new Palestinian initiative.

A fourth prisoner release?  Are they out of their friggin' minds?  I cannot believe that at this point Israel would even begin to consider letting more murderers and terrorists out of prison.  And toward what end?  As a confidence building measure toward our enemies?  Perhaps it is time that they took some confidence building measures toward the Jews, if only to mix things up now and again.

Perhaps it is time that Barack Obama and John Kerry come to realize that the source of the conflict is not some Jews with hammers and a fist full of nails, but fourteen long centuries of systemic and irrational and toxic Jew hatred pouring from the mosques and capitals of the Arab-Muslim Middle East.  The problem is not that some Jew builds a second bathroom for his family in some house in Judea, but that much of the Arab-Muslim world tells one another that killing Jews is a sacred act in the eyes of Allah.  They tell their children that Jews are the sons and daughters of apes and pigs.  They tell their children that Jews are the most vile people on the planet who do nothing but spread plague, pestilence, and war.

And then people like John Kerry and Peter Beinart tell the world that the real problem is Israeli houses.  As the indomitable Daniel Greenfield writes:

There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its brick and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one story hilltop affairs or a five floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.

Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don't impress anyone in Europe or in Washington. Genocide is a minor matter when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment.

 What people seem unable to grasp is that this whole Obama - Abbas focus on where Jews may, or may not, be allowed to live is racist to the core.  Obama and Abbas are telling people that Jews who live on land where Jews have lived continuously for thousands of years are an impediment to peace.

Arabs living in Israel are not an impediment to peace, but Jews living in Judea are?

This is nothing but rank anti-Jewish bigotry and every time Obama or Kerry or "progressive Zionists" complain about Jews living, and thus building, in the wrong place they send the message that traditional Arab-Muslim bigotry against Jews is not only acceptable, but absolutely right and good.  It is a way of saying, "Yes, Mahmoud, you are right.  There is no way that your people can live in peace in a state of their own so long as those vile Jews are living among them."

And, yet, over the years this highly bigoted notion has taken root in the minds of well-meaning, but ignorant, westerners throughout Europe, Australia, and the Americas.  And what makes things so much worse, of course, is that progressive-left Jews, such as myself, did as much as anyone to help establish the idea that Jews should be allowed to live here, but not there, within Eretz Israel.

Of course, Obama and Kerry are going to parrot these ideas.  Why should they not when both Mahmoud Abbas and Alan Dershowitz tell them that a Jewish presence in "the territories" is an impediment to peace?

So long as western Jews continue to repeat this toxic nonsense there will be no chance at a resolution and if we want to assess blame we should start by looking in the mirror.