Sar Shalom
With the possibility that the Trump Administration might come to an end next January, the question is what should supporters of Israel seek from Biden, or whoever replaces him on the odd possibility that the Democrats are forced to find a substitute. One could argue that we should ask Biden to pledge not to use the Security Council as a tool to bludgeon Israel into compliance with his demands. Another possible request is that Biden refrain from public fights with Israel, that he refrain from harping on about the settlements, or that he talk with mainstream Israelis before formulating his diktats.
I would like to suggest something else that we should seek from Biden. This is because, for one, pledges during the campaign have a way of falling by the wayside once in office, as we saw with Obama and his promises to the pro-Israel community. Furthermore, what I suggest can also deliver benefits for Israel if Biden does it even before the election, let alone getting inaugurated. What I suggest we ask for instead is that Biden declare over and over again that the Palestinian national movement (PNM) has a Trump-like dedication to the truth and that he provide fact after fact to buttress that claim.
There is no shortage of material with which to support that claim. To start, there is the claim that the Jews have no connection to the land of Israel or Jerusalem and thus the Israelis are interlopers who do not belong on the land. A variation is that today's Jews are really Khazars with no connection to any real Jews of the past who did live as a sovereign entity on the land, with the same consequence that Israelis are interlopers. A corollary is that the Palestinians are descended from either Jebusites or Canaanites and thus have roots to the land preceding the Jews. Turning to current events, Palestinian nationalists have a habit of lifting photos of atrocities from all over the world and slapping captions on them stating that Israel had done that to the Palestinians. When actual conflict occurs between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel actually does cause the death of some number of Palestinians, the Palestinians habitually exaggerate the number of casualties and claim that their fallen combatants were actually non-combatants. The list could go on.
If Biden were to force the media to contend with those facts and then state based on that that the PNM is as committed to the truth as is Donald Trump, conditions would be set to erode western sympathy for the PNM. Once it is accepted that the PNM is no more truthful than Donald Trump, we can press the case to those who just want to see an equitable end to the conflict that they should not take the PNM's claims at face value that they only seek the 1967-territories and thus should not assume that prevailing upon Israel to fulfill the PNM's demands would actually end the conflict. Convincing the public that the PNM is no more truthful than Donald Trump would allow us to set a condition for any concession that the mainstream media would support, that the PNM should acknowledge basic truths. None of those benefits require the enactment of any policies.
The Day of the Dhimmi is Done - Michael Lumish, PhD, proprietor. (mike.lumish@gmail.com)
April Fools Day was last month.
ReplyDeleteThis piece is breathtaking in terms of its tone-deafness, political naivete, and wishes slipped under the pillow for the tooth fairy.
Do you really believe that before Donald Trump showed up Washington was a town where people had a habit of truth telling? Do you believe that Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, et al, have been practicing honesty for the past 3 or 4 years, or the past 30 years for that matter? Where were you born, where do you live, and how long have you been paying attention to the reality of politics? Your fantasies of Joe Biden walking around calling the PLO & Co. liars has as much chance of happening as him walking around with his thumb in his mouth while dong the Charleston from now until election day, i.e., an improvement for sure, but one which will never happen.
"Donald Trump is a liar!" ROFLMAO
I'll do a reverse bifurcation. First, would getting the public to accept that the PLO and other eliminationist Palestinian factions are a bunch of liars serve Israel's interests? If it does, would Biden comparing their fidelity to the truth to that of Donald Trump contribute to selling the public on that notion? If both of those are established, then there's the matter of the feasibility of getting Biden to actually make those statements.
DeleteOn the first point, the NY Times response to Abbas' last open foray in a western language into Holocaust denial/relativism would circumstantially suggest that it would. It is less than proof, but I'm not aware of anything that would constitute evidence to the contrary. The citation of incontrovertible facts from someone the media can't ignore can only help with the second.
This leaves the third point. Clearly Biden will not spontaneously start talking like that. He also will not do so just because some blogger thinks it would be a good idea. However, if Haim Saban and the never-Trump conservatives, most of whom are in the conservative camp primarily because of foreign and military policy, were to lobby Biden for that, they might have a chance.
As to the role of honesty prior to Trump, Trump puts all the lying that occurred previously on steroids. It doesn't matter if you believe that or not. Most people who are not already pro-Israel accept that and thus comparing the PLO to Trump on truth would clearly convey the former's notion of "truth." If Israel is genuinely your top concern, there should be nothing objectionable about that. There again, if Israel is only secondary to you to convincing others to join you in your conversion to movement conservatism, you would have plenty of grounds for objection.
" Trump puts all the lying that occurred previously on steroids."
DeleteIf you believe this, you are an amateur.
What I am saying is that I don't think that that is true, at least in any way that's meaningful. I think that is just something that people who hate Trump enjoy saying.
"It doesn't matter if you believe that or not. Most people who are not already pro-Israel accept that.."
Not sure what or who you mean by "most people." Is that 50 percent plus 1 ? Or is it that the b.s. the MSM peddles every day ad infinitum? I was brought up a liberal in New York, but I have moved about quite a bit in my life, and I have never quite seem to get how people who think they are heaven's gift to intellect assume over and over again that majorities must be with them, even when they're not. Want to explain that one to me? It's a real phenomenon that I have witnessed/experienced over and over in my life. BTW, I have been at least a registered Democrat for over 40 years. That doesn't include the adulation of JFK from the time I was a young boy up into adulthood. This stuff goes along with all the b.s. about "sowing division." Yes, the other guy from the other party is "divisive," but when my guy wins the country is somehow unified. There are plenty of idiots out there who truly believe this godawful nonsense. Perhaps you're one of them.
When you say "most people," you mean most people that you know and like. Where I live there is no shortage of people who believe Trump is on THEIR side and think Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest of the crew are the worst liars in history.
And then you challenge me with this "If Israel is your top concern" stuff. I would simply say that if Israel is YOUR top concern, then why the hell would you ever want to put Israel policy in the hands of Barack Obama's Vice President - a man who will be manipulated not by Israel well wishers but more like by the left wing and Obamanites of his party.
Do you even know when you've been lied to? Do you still believe that Trump stole the election by colluding with Russia? This is perhaps the ugliest conspiracy theory of nothing ever perpetrated on the American public, and was done so by the people you trust most. Don't lecture me. Perhaps just read the following article to see how True Masters of the Lie operate and how they instrumentalized antisemitism, and possibly Israel's future, in a quest for glory.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/russiagate-obama-iran
You seem to believe that Biden's quest for the Presidency is a fait accompli. Who told you that? Is it the same folks who told you that Hilary was a lead pipe cinch?
Just remember one thing. No matter what the MSM tells you, there were plenty of us out in the country who were not all shocked by Trump's victory. I thought he'd win. I thought so in the Spring of 2016. It's the "geniuses" who couldn't figure out what was going on. And apparently they still can't, or are willfully blind.
The day is still young. Still time to learn something:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-strategy-trade-lind
Make America Great Again. Make it more like Israel, i.e., a nation, with national interests.
P.S. Don't expect Biden to do this.
Maybe if he would be less welcoming to some of the pretend pro-Israel groups, like J Street, or the Sanders crowd, that might help assuage actual supporters of Israel much more than the silly suggestion to show "the PNM is no more truthful than Donald Trump," and others that have no basis in the real world.
ReplyDeleteLet's say you're Haim Saban or Jennifer Rubin on a conference call with Biden. Which of the following would be an easier sell: convincing Biden to ditch his friends at J-Street and the Sanders crowd, or presenting a list of whopping lies told by various PLO figures and convincing Biden that those whopping lies are actually whopping lies whose only notable American comparison is Donald Trump?
DeleteI'll admit that refusing to welcome groups like J-Street or the Sandernistas would show that he is in the pro-Israel crowd. However, what does that do to convince someone who is fully ignorant about the Middle East or who only sees today's apparent Jewish privilege in Israel and is ignorant of the Arabs' actual privilege during the 19th century that they should stop patronizing the Palestinians?
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DeleteThe post was about supporters of Israel, not someone fully ignorant about the Middle East. In any event, Biden likely knows already about the dishonesty of Palestinian leadership. How could he not? Yet he and other Democrats, afflicted with TDS, generally remain silent and pretend like Trump's "lies" are equivalent or even worse when they know this is not the truth.
DeleteThere is no need to equate at all. Other than to show hatred for Trump. Doing so excuses Palestinian intransigence and deceptions. The issue was supposed to be Biden and supporters of Israel, not Trump. That he had to be dragged in here at all says a lot.
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DeleteSar Shalom's arguments would go over well with liberal Jews in Westchester County, NY. They stopped thinking ages ago. Their take on antisemitism has been reduced and then petrified into something like liberal FDR, the Democrat against the Republicans who are of course represented by Adolf Hitler. lol
DeleteThen again, when one hears Ilhan Omar talk about "the Benjamins" she is really only following in the footsteps of her favorite Democrat President. No wonder the Party rewarded her with a seat on Foreign Relations.
Let me just again post this article by Lee Smith in Tablet. It's longish, but definitely worth the read. When you are done, you will want to break curfew to work off the excess energy, i.e., it's going to make you angry.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/russiagate-obama-iran
Sar Shalom,
ReplyDeleteYou truly love Israel, everybody else around here is simply a Republican. So let me address your issue and respectfully disagree to an extent. The key is not to start by calling out the lies, the key is to have an administration that is stridently pro-democracy. I'm no fan of Netanyahu, but he was right when he said that democracies tend to peace, dictatorships tend to war. A true pro-democracy administration would stop supporting the dictatorships, not only in the Middle East, but in Central America, Eastern Europe and everywhere else. If it really made clear that the weight of the United States would be behind democracies, that might have some effect.
You might have missed this little tidbit:
Delete"BTW, I have been at least a registered Democrat for over 40 years. That doesn't include the adulation of JFK from the time I was a young boy up into adulthood."
But, let's do a thought experiment. Let's say I actually decided to become a Republican. You imply heavily that that would exclude a true love of Israel. That's part of the empty headed stupidity we're come to expect from you, Joseph. The rest o your comment is the usual, time worn, mish mosh of Left-Speak leftover from classics such as "The Way We Were."
Sure, it would be nice if all countries were "democracies." But the idea is to attempt to spread democratic values with a sober recognition of realities, not simply cut off regimes you and your friends want to denounce. One can only foment a few chuckles imagining the identities of the "democracies" admired by you and yours, bruh.
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DeleteEven if everybody around here was a Republican, which is a false statement by you, what does that matter? Bringing that up does not reflect well on you. It illustrates just how intolerant you really are.
DeleteThere are many supporters of Israel that do not believe cozying up to J Street and Socialist Democrats (which includes Tlaib and Omar) is the best means to win them over. As important, many are already educated about Palestinian lies, and either don't care or refuse to be convinced. In other words, Biden would simply drive the J Streeters and other "progressive" Jews away.
It was unnecessary to mention Trump in this post, but it could not be helped. Rather than actually address an issue, it must be done in the context of TDS. To equate Trump and the Palestinians is, frankly, stupid.
It's old to be lectured by the likes of people that support illiberal causes and those that flaunt the actual rule of law. You are the one on the wrong side of this and many other issues, especially your ideas reach the ground.