Cues, Skews, Jews, & News…

Cues, Skews, Jews, & News…
by Gerald A. Honigman

The news report out of Ramallah on December 4, 2013 stated that senior Palestinian Arab leaders called for the same pressure to be placed presumably on Israel as was used to produce the recent “deal” over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In other words, they want the world to agree to two more alleged “peace for our time,” disastrous Munich-style deals instead of one. Please recall how the first one turned out after Chamberlain’s sellout of the Czechs in 1938. But I’ve jumped ahead, so let’s step back a bit.

I guess Israel did not have much choice.

Despite a good argument that could be made for it to have turned down Washington’s latest invitation to “negotiate,” most of the world would have only blamed the Jews even more if it was a no show. President Obama has long-espoused the Saudi Peace Plan–much of which the current negotiations are based upon. Among other things, it called for a return to the ’67 lines.

The whole way this story has largely been reported is telling as well. Not that this is new “news.” Much, if not most, of the mainstream media has bought into the fiction of the Arabs’ David to the Jews’ Goliath for quite some time now.

Like too many other would-be sources of ethical enlightenment, the press prefers its Jews as perpetual victims. That includes Jewish writers as well.

Sympathy for dead Jews, a la the Holocaust, may still be okay in some circles, but Israel’s quest for empathy in attempts to balance its own existential needs with those of enemies sworn to its extinction and the slaughter of its people too often end in failure.

While volumes have been written about this problem (check out my friends in CAMERA, for example, http://www.camera.org/ ), let’s consider just a few examples which appeared back in late July 2013–just when the invitations to the current round of Jew arm-twisting (aka “peace negotiations”) were being prepared.

Taking its cues from such sources as the State Department, which fought President Truman over Israel’s very rebirth, the Arabs themselves, and from the Obama Administration, which has openly sided with much if not most of the Arabs’ key demands, the press has repeatedly turned out such paraphrased gems as you will see below.

Here are some excerpts from the Associated Press Karin Laub report on July 29th:

“Abbas remains leery of negotiations with Netanyahu fearing that any offer made by the hardliner would fall far short of Palestinian demands, so he insisted on a framework for negotiations. Abbas said Kerry assured him that the invitation will say border talks are based on the 1967 line.”

The AP’s Dan Perry followed up on July 30th with an even more extensive analysis. Paraphrasing some of his observations, he stated:

“Some say the Palestinians are driving what Israelis view as a hard bargain because they have already lost some three quarters of historical Palestine under the pre-’67 borders.”
Note, please, that the Arab narrative has just been accepted hook, line, and sinker.
That the Arab nation of Jordan sits on some 80% of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine does not even enter into the equation. That Arabs already have almost two dozen states on over six million square miles of territory, created largely on other, non-Arab peoples’ lands, apparently has no importance as well.

That falling far short of Arab demands means, among other things, that Israel will not allow itself to be inundated by gazillions of allegedly returning Arab refugees is rarely explained–and when it is, is often done in a accusatory way. Recall that more Jews fled Arab/Muslim lands due to the war Arabs started with their invasion of a reborn, minuscule Israel in 1948 than vice-versa. Unlike Arabs, they did not have other multiple states to go to.

Where in such reports is there a meaningful attempt to provide Israel’s position regarding a return to those pre-’67 war armistice lines (not borders)?

Why is there no mention of the final draft of UNSC Resolution 242 which assured Israel, after it was forced to fight in 1967 to break the Arabs’ blockade (a casus belli) and deal with other hostile acts, that it would finally get more secure and real borders to replace the lines imposed in 1949 after the combined Arab assault? The latter left Israel a mere 9-15 miles wide for almost two decades–a constant invitation to be attacked and bisected. As President George W. Bush said, Texas has driveways wider than that. A reading of 242’s architects, like Lord Caradon and Eugene Rostow, should be mandatory for anyone writing about this topic.

Instead, Netanyahu routinely gets labeled a “hardliner” (or worse) for refusing to cave into the Arabs’ idea of “negotiations,” whereby the latter just does all the taking while the Jews do all the giving. I know Christmas is coming, but Israel is not Santa Claus.

Netanyahu is merely asking for what Israel was indeed promised–such as a meaningful territorial compromise built into 242–along with other reasonable expectations. Since this position runs counter to Arab demands for Israel’s complicity in its own demise, Netanyahu indeed will fall far short of Arab expectations–as he must. And he knew this would happen right from the start but came to the party anyway.

It cannot be repeated too often…

Any 22nd Arab state–and second, not first, in “Palestine”–should not arise via the gross endangerment of the Jews’ sole one. Yet that idea also appears to be too much to hope for these days. Just read your local newspaper.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.