President Obama's Middle East Speech

The President endorsed the concept of two states for two peoples.  However, he called for a demilitarized Palestinian state along the 1967 lines with agreed upon land swaps.  This is the first time an American President has ever used those words in public. Note that the 1967 are not borders, but are in actuality the armistice lines from the 1948 War.

The President did acknowledge that Hamas' presence in the Palestinian unity government renders it problematic for Israel to engage in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.   It is hard to have a discussion with someone advocating your destruction.  The President also publicly rejected attempts by the Palestinians to gain recognition for their own state before the United Nations. "Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state," Obama said.

He also stated that the "future of Jerusalem" remains to be worked out, as does the fate of Palestinian refugees. Prime Minister Netanyahu described the military lines of the 1967 borders as "indefensible."

I am not sure where this leads.  The concept of two states for two peoples is not new policy for the United States.  I have always been of the impression that both sides have a general idea of where those boundaries would lie and that the major settlement blocs would be included within Israel.  However, no Palestinian official has ever said yes to any issue in negotiations with Israel since Oslo.  So it is not the statement itself that is objectionable as much as the public utterance of it by President Obama.  

Recall that the Bush letter to Sharon (4/14/04) acknowledged the facts on the ground (i.e., settlements) and that any negotiated peace would have to takes these facts into account.  "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."  That same letter acknowledged UN Security Council Resolution 242 as part of Israel’s secure and recognized borders.

Perhaps the difference between Presidents Bush and Obama is merely one of emphasis. But there is no doubting that Bush's emphasis is more pro-Israel and Obama's is not.   In order for there to be peace and a final settlement, Palestinians are going to have to come to grips with both the legitimacy and the permanence of the Jewish State.  That is why Palestinian recognition of Israel’s Jewish character is so important.  Palestinian Arabs are not close to being there, while President Obama failed to mention that fact.

Implicit in that speech is that Israel refusing to negotiate with any government that contains Hamas is acceptable to the United States.  President Obama accepted Prime Minister Netanyahu's demands for strict security arrangements and a gradual, continuous withdrawal from the West Bank.  These have to be viewed as positives for Israel.

All in all – a mixed bag.

ANTI-ZIONIST SENTIMENTS OF NON-ORTHODOX RABBINIC STUDENTS: OF SECULAR LIBERALISM AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Rabbi Daniel Gordis, who is almost always spot on regarding Israel and Jewish issues, wrote an article lambasting American Rabbinic students who are training for a career in Judaism, but are anti-Israel in outlook.  The issue was highlighted this week by Gary Rosenblatt, the editor of the New York Jewish Week.  I suspect that Rabbinic students, much like most of the American Jewish community, slants leftward in ideology, but runs the gamut from ardent AIPAC Zionists to J Street’s let’s pressure the Israelis to make more concessions.  The extent of this problem has not yet been quantified.  However, even in small percentages, the issue is problematic because of the potential influence Rabbis have on their congregants on both religious matters and the state of Israel.  These students will be the future leaders of the American Jewish community.  So that there can be a multiplier effect on these students’ views.

So assuming the problem exists to some degree, the question becomes where did these Rabbinic students develop their anti-Israel views.  My answer is to examine secular liberalism and political correctness.  And to find these attributes, you need to look no further than the vast majority of college campuses throughout the United States.  Stand With Us is an organization that is devoted to dealing with misinformation about Israel on college campuses and their work addresses precisely this issue.

The moral foundation of both Israel and the United States is God-based, which derives from Jewish law and Judeo-Christian ethics.  Liberalism as a philosophy as exemplified by college campuses and Western Europe secularism has moved away from God as the source of morality.  Secular liberalism bases rights on attempting to maximize both equality and freedom.  Secular liberalism finds it impossible to base rights and discourse on anything other than the parity of various groups as they choose the way of life they prefer to follow, whether their preferences be well-founded in the God-based moral order or not. 

Secular liberalism depends on a modern conviction that neither religion (which is synonymous with what I call God-based morality), tradition nor inherited loyalties has any binding authority.  Anything that denies equal freedom is to be condemned as oppressive and marginalized.  Without God-based morality and no absolute sense of right and wrong or good and evil, you have moral relativism. 

I am sure we have all heard the phrase that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.  The moral relativist refuses to condemn the terrorist’s indiscriminate murder, based on the perceived oppression of the victim’s group.  If the Palestinians are denied freedom and the right to their own country by Zionist oppressors, then terrorism against Israelis and settlers in particular is therefore justified.

Now let’s see what happens when you add political correctness to the mix.  Political correctness is based on the fact that certain ideas cannot be advanced because they are offensive to certain groups.  The goal of political correctness is to prevent certain down-trodden groups from being offended.  In that regard, Jews, despite being the most persecuted group in human history, are not considered eligible for PC treatment because of perceived Jewish power in the U.S. and Israel’s actual power in the Middle East.  However, offending Arab and Muslim sensibilities would run counter to political correctness.

Now has does this all apply to Israel?  I start with the premise that on college campuses, students are being taught that Israel is an oppressive regime inflicting suffering on the Palestinians who are being deprived of their own country by the imperialist Zionists.  The real issues are of course much more subtle and nuanced than that.  But assume for the moment that there are two sets of people with valid and historical claims to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.  The historical record would support that Jews have recognized that fact and have offered to share the land with the Palestinians at multiple junctures in history, most recently in negotiations between former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Abu Mazen.  In every instance of attempts to share the land between Jews and Arabs by creating two states for two peoples, it has been the Palestinians that have done the rejecting, not the Israelis. 

The Palestinians have advanced an alternative version of history predicated on false premises.  As has been attributed the late Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.  The indisputable facts are that the Palestinians have been unwilling to compromise and share any portion of the Land of Israel with the Jewish people.  It is not Netanyahu who is refusing to sit down and negotiate; it is Abu Mazen. 

When Rabbinic students refuse to buy Israeli goods and are contemplating adding commemoration of the Nakba to Tisha B’Av, you have to start with misunderstanding of history, which is derived from secular liberalism and political correctness.

© 2011 Douglas J. Workman

Jimmy Carter and the Hamas-Fatah Unity Agreement

            It is difficult to be more wrong more frequently about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than former President Jimmy Carter.  In a column in the Washington Post dated May 3, 2011, Carter makes an argument for supporting the Palestinian unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.  If the international community and the United States were to support this unity arrangement, they, according to Carter, would be able to help Palestinian democracy and establish the basis for a unified Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that can make a secure peace with Israel.  If the West remains aloof or undermines the agreement, the Palestinian situation (actually he uses the phrase “situation in occupied Palestine territory”) may deteriorate with a new round of violence against Israel.  Carter asserts that the Hamas-Fatah agreement supports Palestinian rights and democracy.

            Carter is ignoring several key elements that comprise democracy.  The essence of democracy has to be significantly greater than merely holding elections one time, regardless of whether they are freely conducted.  You have to be able to disagree with the government in power and be able to voice that disagreement as peaceful dissent without feeling threatened by the government.  Can anyone rationally state that the ability to dissent has ever been part of Palestinian society?  Is it possible to believe that in all of Palestinian society no one is in favor of negotiating with Israel or that perhaps, some of the problems that Palestinians face are actually of their own making?  Could someone in the West Bank or Gaza publish an opinion piece in Arabic in those locations advocating positions like those and still be alive the next day? 

            How about the peaceful transition of power from one party to another?  When an Israeli party loses an election, it peacefully goes into the opposition, such as the last transition from a Kadima led coalition to a Likud led one.  Has that ever happened in a Palestinian society? 

            I make this point because Carter’s argument about aiding Palestinian democracy is meaningless until the institutions of democracy, such as a free press and the freedom of assembly, have been put in place.  The second part of Carter’s argument is that failure to support Palestinian unity may result in new rounds of violence against Israel.  Let’s not equivocate here.  What he is talking about is a Hamas/Fatah sponsored policy of terrorism and murdering of innocent Jews, whether they are inside the green line or not.  In a recent poll of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, 32% of Palestinian Arabs supported the brutal murder of five Fogel family members in Itamar, including children ages 11, 4, and 3 months.

            How about examining some facts about Hamas?  According to Carter, “In my talks with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, he said Hamas would accept a two-state agreement that is approved in a Palestinian referendum. Such an agreement could provide mutual recognition — Israel would recognize an independent Palestinian state and Palestine would recognize Israel. In other words, an agreement will include Hamas’s recognition of Israel.”  According to Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, “Our program does not include negotiations with Israel or recognizing it.  It will not be possible for the interim national government to participate or bet on or work on the peace process with Israel.”  Now that seems like a reasonable basis to support Hamas-Fatah unity.

            Is it necessary to mention Hamas’ kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in 2006?  The illegal kidnapping occurred within the 1967 borders, which are nothing more than armistice lines at the end of the 1948 war and have not ever been an established international boundary.  Carter of course has repeatedly ignored that fact.  What about no observance of any form of human rights regarding Shalit?  Did Carter mention that?  Do I need to mention the number rockets that have been fired from Gaza into pre-1967 Israeli boundaries, terrorizing citizens of Sderot and Ashkelon?

            You cannot get around the fact that Hamas is an antisemitic terrorist organization with total disregard for human rights that not has been asked to compromise any of its fundamental principles in order to join up with Fatah.  Hamas has not been asked to amend its charter, which even Carter finds repugnant.  The charter goes way beyond not recognizing Israel.  It calls for Muslims to murder Jews (Article 7).  The list of antisemitic canards in the Charter is long – controlling the media, accumulation of wealth, use of wealth to stir revolutions, including both the French and Communist revolutions, taking over control of imperialist states, establishing clandestine organizations, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and B’nai Brith in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests (Article 22). 

I fail to see any benefit to supporting Hamas-Fatah unity.  Carter is once again way off the mark.

(c) 2011 Douglas J. Workman

The Death of Osama Bin Laden

           Osama Bin Laden is the paradigm of ultimate evil, in many ways worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao or other mass murderers because he attempted to justify his actions as being sanctioned by God. 

He is also a good bellwether as to your position of the use of state sanctioned killings.  If you are opposed to the use of the death penalty for Bin Laden, then I can respect you as a principled opponent of capital punishment.  I may disagree with you, but I understand where you are coming from.  If you approve of the killing of Bin Laden, as I do, then you are saying that some actions justify society’s use of capital punishment.  The discussion then moves to what actions and under what circumstances should society pursue the ultimate penalty and that is a discussion in which reasonable persons can engage.  It really opens up the door for the death penalty to be used in many other circumstances.

            Biblical Judaism clearly sanctions the death penalty.  There are multiple methods of executing criminals found in the Hebrew Bible – stoning, burning and hanging.  Rabbinic Judaism is clearly more ambivalent about the use of capital punishment.  There are discussions of capital punishment, but an argument could be made that these discussions were merely academic, much like the discussions of sacrifices.  Moreover, in Mishnah Makkhot 1:10,  it provides, “A Sanhedrin that executes once in seven years, is called murderous.  Rabbi Eliezer b. Azariah says once in seventy years.  Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say:  Had we been members of a Sanhedrin, no person would ever be put to death.  Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel remarked:  They would also multiply murderers in Israel.” 

The Rabbis had deep hesitations as to the use of the death penalty.  Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel ends this Mishnah with a note of caution.  The Rabbinic tendency to be overly lenient on executing murderers can take its toll on society.  In his opinion, the attitudes of the other Rabbis can cause an increase in the numbers of murderers.  The State of Israel has reflected this ambivalence.  In its history, the only trial that has resulted in capital punishment was that of Adolph Eichmann.  There have been, however, targeted killings of terrorists, much like the Navy Seals did with Bin Laden.

           I do, however, feel a sense of equivocation at all the celebrations going on.  I watched with morbid curiosity as people gathered outside the White House, in Times Square and at Ground Zero.  What was the cause of all the hooting and hollering?  Just like a John Wayne movie, the good guys came and finally got the ultimate bad guy.  There is a big sense of kicking some terrorist butt and that is satisfying to all who seek to live in a civilized society. 

However, killing Bin Laden does not change the fact that a cousin of mine who for many years sat at the same Seder table is no longer with us; that his children have had to grow up without their father; that his wife has had to spend the last decade without the love of her life.  I then multiply that sense of loss by 3000 other stories and I do not see Bin Laden’s death as a cause to celebrate.  There is a satisfaction in his death that many describe as a sense of closure.  I see it as justice, pure and simple.

            I can only imagine what it might be like when Bin Laden meets his Maker.  I suspect God would be telling him that Bin Laden could not have been more wrong in thinking that he was doing God’s will.  God was never with Bin Laden; God was with New York’s Bravest and New York’s Finest (the New York City Fire and Police Departments) who rushed into those burning buildings to try to save lives.  The murder of God’s children, purportedly in God’s name, is an act that not even God can forgive.  Now let Bin Laden deal with that for all eternity; for that would be Bin Laden's Hell.  May he rot in it!

(c) 2011 Douglas J. Workman