[GCFL-discuss] Israel Without Hillary

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Green, don't we already know the answer to all of this though? Doesn't this
all go back to the Torah and the two brothers? (WOW Brain fart, I can't
remember names) They'll feud until end of days... (help me out here)

Lance

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List
<gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net> wrote:

>   Until the so-called Palestinians are interested in co-existing with
> Israel, in words -- English & Arabic -- and in deeds, the peace process is a
> pipe-dream.
> Everyone is in favor of an un-divided Jerusalem, except Bush & Rice; the
> only question is under whose sovereignty.  And frankly, i'm not sure where
> Obama is on that question.
>
>  greenBubble
>
>
> greenBubble, I knew you would have something to say along this line, but I
> waited until you did, because it is not much use to throw out what I think
> someone else is going to say and answer it before a person speaks for
> themselves.
>
> I take a long term view of all this. Only fifty or sixty years or so ago,
> there were people high up in American government who had no use for Jews and
> didn't care about Israel. They graduated from colleges where fraternities
> didn't allow Negroes or Jews to join, and many didn't allow Catholics
> either. The reason that changed was cold calculation of "what's in it for
> us", not unrestrained enthusiasm for Israel. Establishing Israel as a nation
> was done pretty much without U.S. military aid, in the teeth of British
> connivance with such open fans of Adolf Hitler as the Grand Mufti of
> Jerusalem. The original "arab" cause was the cause of feudal landlords,
> brutal illiterate monarchs, against an example they didn't want their own
> people to see: renewed agriculture, productive industry built from the
> ground up, democratic participation of everyone in public life...
>
> ...a rabbi who fought in the 1967 war tells me that after Israel seized the
> West Bank, he was greeted by Arab residents who looked FORWARD to becoming
> Israeli citizens, if only Israel had outright annexed the whole territory.
> It might have worked. There is no question that the concentration of
> Palestinians into brutal, overcrowded, refugee camps, living on a kind of
> welfare dole from the UN, was the work of Gamel Abdel Nasser, King Hussein's
> father, and whoever was dictator du jour in Syria, precisely because they
> WANTED to create an excuse for continuing war against Isreal, for the most
> ulterior and cynical of motives...
>
> ...but fast forward to today, and the real life situation is that three,
> four, five generations have grown up and learned their identity in this
> "Palestinian" environment. To deny that is like teaching African Americans
> whose great-great-grandparents moved north to live in the city that their
> identity is somehow rooted in a rural county in southern Alabama. It's
> not...
>
> ..."the people" are not the voices that make political deals. Politicians
> and parties and organizations that claim to represent "the people" are. But
> who and what "the people" will follow makes a big difference.
>
> If Israel cannot offer those people who have been defined as Palestinians,
> and come to think of themselves as Palestinians, a reasonable hope of some
> sort of life they can accept and appreciate, suicide bombers will continue
> to emerge, with a sense of self-righteousness, from among those people who
> see no hope for the future. If Hamas can clear criminal gangs off the
> street, provide some peace and quiet, organize medical and social services
> that nobody else offered, people will support Hamas. (I don't think you
> would disagree that the corruption and nepotism inside Fatah is what made
> Hamas popular).
>
> So Israel can either come to terms with the fact that this population of
> people exists and has to be provided for, or can try to exterminate every
> last one of them, or continue a state of pertetual war. As to U.S. policy,
> the survival of Israel is indeed non-negotiable, but mindless assent to
> whatever policy is pursued by whatever party won the last election and
> whatever sentiment dominates in the civil service of Israel is not
> acceptable. Sometimes we may have to say, this is what we support, and if
> you want to do something different, you are on your own until your policy is
> closer to what we can work with. The same goes for the Palestinian
> organizations. The Palestinian Authority would collapse without American and
> European funding.
>
> I don't expect such bold vision from either Obama or McCain. Its not
> considered a politically safe thing to do if you want to win an American
> election. But it would be a great president who found a way to implement
> policy along these lines.
>
> Siarlys
>
> P.S. While nobody devoted to Jerusalem, Christian, Muslim or Jewish, really
> wants to hear this, the only viable way to keep Jerusalem undivided is to
> organize it as a political entity to which everyone has free access. The
> Dome of the Rock isn't going away, neither is the Wailing Wall, nor those
> silly Greek and Armenian priests who get into brawls over who is stepping
> onto whose section in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Romans kicked the
> Jews out and named the city Aelia Capitolina, Jews eagerly helped both
> Sassanians and the original Muslim jihad take it from the Byzantines, and
> ultimately, if we don't want the place to keep changing hands like that, it
> needs to be accessible to all of the above (excepts the Sassanians, who are
> either refugee communities in India or converts to Shia Islam in Iran).
>
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