Abandoned History
President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world has been analyzed ad nauseum, word-by-word and comma-by-comma. Depending on one’s preconceived predilections, Israel supporters have concluded that either the country has been thrown under the bus or a giant step has been taken toward bringing peace to the region.
What has not been discussed is how friends of Israel and some Israelis themselves have unwittingly contributed to the script of President Obama’s speech.
President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world has been analyzed ad nauseum, word-by-word and comma-by-comma. Depending on one’s preconceived predilections, Israel supporters have concluded that either the country has been thrown under the bus or a giant step has been taken toward bringing peace to the region.
What has not been discussed is how friends of Israel and some Israelis themselves have unwittingly contributed to the script of President Obama’s speech.
There were several good points in the President’s speech, but many more bad points that will obstruct the road to peace rather than enhance it. Key among these is putting the issue of settlements front and center. Whether one agrees or not with Israel’s settlement policy we should all be able to agree that it is not the key issue in the peace process. Yet because of the President’s comments it has become just that.
The term settlement conjures up images of a trailer camp or a tent city. It is images of squatters putting up residences for the sole purpose of creating “facts on the ground.” Everyone, whether supporters of Israel or not, refers to these communities as “settlements.” And so an image evolves unchallenged.
The problem is that the image is incorrect. These so-called settlements are in fact suburban neighborhoods with houses and playgrounds and schools with hearts and souls – children playing and old ladies sitting on porches, businesses and residences, curtains and knick-knacks. Families like yours and mine, thriving. It’s what we call natural growth.
And yet there is no human face to it.
Shame on us for not making that clear.
Then there is the argument of a one state solution versus a two state solution. It is as if the disagreement is over the existence of a Palestinian state. Nonsense, no one is arguing against a Palestinian state. The question is will this state have military forces or be allowed to form military alliances with other countries such as Iran.
Why not focus on building commerce and educational systems that train doctors and teachers and mathematicians instead of hatred? Why not build hospitals and soccer fields and call upon Israel to help – to be a partner for a better future for themselves and their children? If this is the state they want to build then I believe that Israel would be an enthusiastic partner.
The primary opposition is to the presumed character of the second state. Is that a position that Americans would want to defend if they understood it?
There are other accepted notions and unchallenged images. For example, if I would draw a picture of life in Palestine before the Jews came based upon the current political rhetoric it would be a place like the current Israel occupied by peaceful Palestinians in their homes near orange groves. If, however, I would draw my picture from actual facts the picture would be of a barren, sparsely populated place, a near feudal society and the land in the hands of absentee owners living in the area now called Lebanon, then a province of the Ottoman Empire. When did friends of Israel stop reminding everyone about the lack of truth in the Palestinian claims?
The dream then was that with the plow and the hoe Jews were going to transform the barren land into one flowing with milk and honey. Sadly, it seems to be a dream that no one under the age of 50 remembers.
Does anyone remember the mass of Jewish refugees, forcibly displaced from Arab lands that they had called home for generations upon generations? All of them were absorbed in that tiny space called Israel. Meanwhile, equal numbers of Palestinian refugees (not created by Israel) were kept in camps by the surrounding Arab leaders despite their vast land holdings and financial resources. Is that part of today’s conversation on the Israel- Palestinian problem?
The guilt of silence and abdication falls upon the framers of the pro-Israel position.
Three other uncontested myths:
The majority population in Jerusalem for the last 2,000 years was Muslim. Not true. With the exception of the 60 years immediately following the Roman expulsion of 70 AD, Jews have always been the largest religious group resident in Jerusalem.
There was no anti-Semitism in the Arab world until the Jewish influx after the Holocaust. Not true. Just one example was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, an enthusiastic admirer of Hitler who even lived for a time in Nazi Germany during the war.
Nor do people remember that Beirut, once known as the Paris of the Middle East, was wrecked not by Israeli bombs but by a civil war between Muslim and Christian Lebanese that erupted in 1975.
I’d be willing to wager that neither President Obama nor most of his advisers know anything about this. Perhaps if they knew it would not have made a difference, but we will never know.
These and many other arguments resting in the graveyard of the politically correct are no longer part of the backdrop of the current set of negotiations. Whatever fault we find with President Obama’s view of the problem falls partly in the laps of Israel’s friends.
If there is a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph it is because nobody kept his memory alive.