generalspeaking

Playing Hardball

The facade of American disgruntlement with Israeli intransigence is what the world sees up close through reportage in its daily newspapers - oh, and electronic media. The United States reasonably feels entitled to some 'respect' from Israel, and the Jewish state is behaving like its usual curmudgeonly self; selfishly. Acting in the best interests of the existence and the safety and security of the country is clearly offensive to the international community.

In not-too-obliquely catering to the inflated interests of the Palestinians, ever more entitled and encouraged by sympathy emanating from all corners of the world at its plight facing up to the intransigent Israelis, this American administration has made it clear that Israel has incurred its displeasure through sheer reasonless obstinacy. Hitting back, hard, when you're hit is obviously a prerogative only of other states.

Although Israel has lashed back at its critics, attempting to fully outline its ongoing struggle against constant violent adversity, it has become a futile exercise aimed at a broadly disinterested international community whose sympathies now lie firmly with the embattled and oppressed Palestinians. Who have done nothing themselves to bring value to their lives beyond extending a volatile grudge of ownership of the entirety of what they claim to be Palestinian.

Whose executive ruling body encourages its population to 'resist the occupation'; code for exacting as much violent retribution against the brutal 'apartheid state' as conceivably possible; no costs in human lives too exorbitant to soothe their aggrievement. A state of perception that Palestinians owe in gratitude to those like former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the radical left who now own the podium, so to speak, in partnership with labour unions and leftist academics, along with countries like Sweden and Norway.

Israel does what any other country would do to defend itself, striking back when it is attacked. Each strike that emanates from Israel against a target hell-bent on eliminating it, further detracts from the presumed goodwill of the European Union, the United Nations, the United States who respond by a blanket condemnation of Israel, and through increasing their aid to the Palestinians.

When Israel announces a routine intention to build housing for Jewish residents within Jewish-majority areas in Jerusalem, areas legitimately their own, the U.S. reacts with horror.

When, at the very same time, the Palestinian Authority, which is to say Fatah, celebrates the heroic exploits of another of their martyrs who successfully murdered 37 Israelis in what came to be known as the Coastal Road massacre, there was no like response, but Secretary of State Clinton did ingenuously remark that this was a Hamas venture in glorifying suicide murderers, whether through ignorance or deliberate distortion of the truth.

The world has its opinion firmly set on what it expects from Israel, and the broad spectrum of violence it accepts from Arabs.

The United States, under the Obama administration, is playing fast and loose with its presumed 'undying' friendship with, and 'support' of Israel. Furiously chastising the country and its executive administration in public, to the approving acclaim of the Muslim world, and clandestinely undermining, at the same time, Israel's practical ability to defend itself from a catastrophic attack from a nuclear-arms-seeking Iran, among other enemies it faces.

Under this administration, there has arisen a refusal to honour previous arms sales agreements.
Concomitantly, sales of advanced weapons to Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have proceeded apace, to the tune of $10-billion; that should soothe the nerves of nervous American financial interests.

At the same time, the White House has blocked key weapons projects and upgrades for Israel, rejecting its requests for Apache Longbow helicopters among other vital armaments the Jewish state requires to defend itself, at the very time it has enthusiastically proven to Arab states that it meant what it said when President Obama promised closer ties to Muslim countries.

The solution is simple enough: required aircraft and weaponry will be restored for sale to Israel once it submits to American demands that it unequivocally surrender the West Bank and most of Jerusalem to the demands of the Palestinians. Of course these issues do not comprise the entire demands of the Palestinian Authority. True to form, whenever one of their demands seems close to fulfilment, they add others.

Another concern: how to effectively defend itself from a growing and increasingly professional Palestinian 'army', weapons-provided and trained by an especially charged U.S. commander in the field. There is always the real prospect of those U.S. trained-and-armed Palestinians turning against Israel. Added to the fact that Hezbollah is also training Hamas militants in Gaza. When a Palestinian State is achieved, both sides can then march on Israel; that's quite the potential scenario.

Israelis are growing increasingly concerned at their isolation; on the one hand resenting their growing pariah status, on the other reacting belligerently to that reality, as a nation long accustomed to double standards and betrayals. Yet, even while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed - while in Washington defending his administration's stance on the issues - that most Israelis are in support of a unified Jerusalem as their state capital, new polls state otherwise, with a bare majority now supporting defiance against the U.S., and a large minority urging accommodation.

It hardly seems to matter that while Jerusalem has been the most important geographical icon in Jewish history from ancient times to the present, representing thousands of years of heritage, compared to the Arab/Palestinians' claims of inheritance of the past several hundred years, the anguish involved in dividing Jerusalem for Jews is acceptable to the world community. Even while to do so will certainly result in Jews once again being cut off from access to their most sacred religious sites - which even now occurs with Israeli stewardship battling a rearguard response to Muslim denials of access.

Hung out to dry. So what else is new in this world we inhabit?

Labels: Israel, Peace, Political Realities, United States

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 25, 2010