Hey Joe, What D’ya Know…
by Gerald A. Honigman
now that you’re back from the Middle East Show?
Let me start this off with a compliment–something we were all advised to do when going in for a parent conference during my decades’ old teaching career.
As someone who has done some work himself on some thirty-five million stateless Kurds, who have been repeatedly used and abused by numerous parties for quite some time now, let me say that you, Vice President Biden, stand out as a source of relative reason and knowledge among your colleagues. You are to be commended for your concern about these people. Too often, they have been shafted by Washington folks–big time.
By the way, my own “stuff” on this subject is listed on one of Europe’s most prestigious centers of higher learning’s recommended reference lists…the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po)…
http://bibliotheque.sciences-po.fr/fr/produits/bibliographies/question-kurde/index.html
So, if you’d like to have a chat sometime about why tens of millions of truly stateless Kurds still have no “roadmap, ” while folks like yourself expect Israel to cave in to all that Arabs demand for the creation of their own 22nd state–and 2nd, not first, one within the borders of the original mandate of Palestine as Great Britain received it on April 25, 1920, then I’d just love to spend time with you. So-called “Palestinians,” most of whom came into the Mandate from elsewhere (well-documented, by the way), are Arabs. Should Kurds rename themselves and demand not one, but multiple states as well, using this game plan?
The pity is, you probably already know much of what I would fill you in about…which makes the hypocrisy which you either indulge in, despite appearances ( or go along with regardless), stink only worse.
Joe, you’ve recently returned from the Middle East after blasting Jews for building on land that they have called home since the days of the Pharaohs.
Judeans (Jews) lived and owned land in Judea (the West Bank) clear up to the 1920s and 1930s–when Arabs massacred them. After Arab Transjordan (formed in 1922 from some 80% of the Palestine Mandate) seized the west bank of the Jordan River when it joined other Arab states in attacking a reborn Israel in 1948, it formally made Judea Judenrein.
Mr. Vice President, I hate bullies–don’t you?
I know that you’re merely carrying out your bosses’ orders here, but it’s still nauseating any way.
Now, I also know that you like to call yourself “pro-Israel,” for a number of reasons…fundraising and so forth. And, compared to your boss, you seem to be relatively so.
Joe, I don’t want you to be “pro”-Israel…really.
I just don’t want you to expect the sole state of the Jews to prostrate itself to those (such as yourself) who would place it in a vise because it refuses to accept all that you want to shove down its throat or up some place else.
Please tell me why it’s okay for Americans to own Samoa, have virtual if not actual control of the Panama Canal Zone, etc.; for the Brits to fight a war off the coast of Argentina for London’s imperialist claim to the Falkland Islands; and so forth, but an Israel practically invisible on a school globe is chastised because it demands that the compromise promised to it via UNSC Resolution 242 after the June ’67 war still hold.
In case you forgot, here’s what a few folks had to say about this, since this is what the issue about Israel building in those very locales you guys are now complaining about is all about…
Britain’s Lord Caradon, one of the key architects of the final draft of 242:
We didn’t say that there should be withdrawl to the ’67 lines; we did not put the word “the” in; we did not say “all of the territories” deliberately (when discussing eventual withdrawal, in the contect of true treaties of peace, not ceasefires)…We all knew that the boundaries (’49 armistice lines) of ’67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, that they were merely ceasefire lines of a couple of decades earlier…We did not say that those ( pre-) ’67 boundaries must be forever.
President Lyndon Johnson June 19, 1967:
A return to the situation on June 4 (the day before the outbreak of hostilities) was not a prescription foir peace, but for renewed hostilities.
President Ronald Reagan, September 1, 1982:
In the pre-’67 borders, Israel was barely 10-miles wide…the bulk of Israel’s population within artillery range of hostile armies. i am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.
Secretay of State George Shultz, 1988:
Israel will never negotiate from nor return to the ’67 borders
Many others understood all the above as well–the need for a reasonable territorial compromise–including America’s last leader, President George W. Bush. He spelled this out in letters given to Israel during its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza…yet another test that Arabs would flunk with flying colors.
Now, the Obama Administration acts as if none of the above matters and/or even exists.
In well-documented reports, Mr. Vice President, you used the same bully tactics with the late Menachem Begin back in 1982, banging on the desk with your fists and so forth, to try to intimidate him into relinquishing his nation’s barest security needs to American “no friends, just interests” policies.
Israel must not cave in here.
Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion Airport, Haifa, the Knesset, and so forth will be the next targets of Arabs in the aftermath of another Israeli unilateral withdrawal–as Sderot, Ashkelon, and less populated points south were after the Gaza withdrawal. And this time the Jews will have a well-trained, well-equipped Arab army, courtesy of Washington, facing them after Israel is forced to return to its 9-15 mile wide, pre-’67 existence.
Hey Joe, have you ever banged on the table or threatened Arabs over their far worse rejectionist attitudes and total intransigence?
To this day, even your “moderate” latter day Arafatian buddies of Abbas’s Fatah insist that they will never recognize Israel as a state of the Jews. And they talk still of Trojan Horse ceasefires…not real treaties of peace with “their” kilab yahud, Jew Dogs.
Here’s how this translates, Joe…
It’s fine with you, Mr. Obama, and your friends for Arabs to call the almost two dozen states they already possess “Arab” (members of the Arab league, etc.)–despite tens of millions of non-Arabs who have been conquered and forcibly Arabized (going on to this very day) who still live those “Arab” states–but how dare Jews, one half of whose families in Israel fled “Arab”/Muslim lands, claim their tiny, resurrected one.
Hey Joe, here’s what I know…
Peace–real peace, not that of the grave, the one which Arabs still have in store for Israel–will never come by forcing a miniscule Israel to forsake its minimum security needs in return for promises by Arabs which can (and will) be broken tomorrow.
When peace is made between enemies, for it to last (learn the lesson of what happened regarding Germany after World War I), a reasonable compromise addressing the needs of both parties to the conflict must be reached. No one side gets all that it wants at the expense of the other. That kind of stuff only gives rise to problems down the road.
Taking the lead from President Obama himself, Arabs have simply stated–repeatedly and recently–that their job in “negotiations” (i.e.,Hebrew arm-twisting) will be to simply receive, while Israel will do all of the concrete giving.
To such folks–whether the bad cops of Hamas or the Washington whitewashed good cops of Abbas, Israel owes nothing at all.
And if you really want to know what needs to be done, please read my new book http://q4j-middle-east.com