Naive or an appeaser?

Editorial

U.S. President Barack Obama shocked the world last week by saying aloud what everyone already assumes: that a Palestinian state will look something like the pre-1967 borders, with assorted land swaps. While it may have been stating the obvious in realpolitik, in the world of public diplomacy, it was presupposing that Israel should begin negotiations already having conceded one of the most significant items on the agenda. It is a statement that this conflict is one in which both sides are equally to blame for the lack of peace or, to some it appears, that Israel is the main obstacle to peace.

The short-term memory loss of contemporary civilization has extended now to current events. There was a peace process that was leading to a two-state solution, a process in which Israel was demonstrating the willingness to make historic compromises, but Yasser Arafat upended that negotiating table in 2000 and began a new epoch of violence that continues today. Zionism, it needs to be repeated, has always been premised on the need for mutual peace and coexistence. Anti-Zionism, as the name implies, is premised on the elimination of Jewish self-determination. These are the two contending positions at play – coexistence or destruction. Until the world recognizes that this conflict is not about two parties of goodwill just struggling to iron out the details of a peace plan, we do not stand a hope of resolving the conflict.

To be clear: there are plenty of reasons to criticize Israel, as we must always acknowledge. But almost everything Israel does that draws such ire from the vigilant global humanitarian community is the result of 63 years of unrelenting violence by an enemy that recognizes no rules of engagement. For decades, Israel has been feeling its way through uncharted terrain unlike anything any other democracy has faced, trying to ethically employ conventional military means against a genocidal enemy whose tactics include sending men, children, women and people with disabilities to blow themselves up amid crowds of civilians.

There have been lots of incidents by the Israeli armed forces that legitimately cause concern among peace-loving people. But peace-loving people need to realize the root cause of the violence – and confront it – or a resolution to the conflict will never come and this generation’s people of peace will go down in history with Neville Chamberlain and the isolationist left of an earlier time.

The lack of understanding of the real root of this conflict is more of a barrier to peace than anything Israel has done. It is the almost unanimous global sympathy for the Palestinians that has encouraged continued violence. No matter the depths of depravity to which the Palestinian leadership sinks – such as using their own civilians as human shields and trumpeting the deaths in a win-win scenario, inculcating Jew-hatred in generations of children and using ambulances as terror tools – the world is happy to view the terrorists as victims. On the contrary, the most reasonable attempts by Israel to defend its civilians are decried as unjustifiable violence and gratuitous savagery.

There are probably as many people in Europe and North America willing to believe the crazed paranoia that Israel’s ultimate objective is to expand from the Euphrates to the Nile than there are people who believe the reality that the destruction of Israel is the end-goal of much of the Arab world. There may be more people who believe that Osama bin Laden is alive than accept the idea that Fatah is as committed as Hamas to destroying Israel. More people probably question Obama’s American citizenship than question the Palestinian leadership’s commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel. This is the context in which Obama’s statements about Israel must be understood. It is not that Obama said anything so egregious. Line by line, his comments were essentially motherhood stuff.

This is why Obama’s comments, while so banal on the surface, aroused such a rage among reasonable people: he ignores the opposite intentions of Israel (peace with its neighbors) and the Palestinian leadership, most of the Arab and much of the Muslim world (the destruction of Israel). His words suggest one of two things: Obama is either a naive idealist ignorant of the realities of the conflict, or he is an appeaser who believes that giving the Palestinians a taste of red meat will satiate their hunger. Neither case provides reasons for hopefulness among those who genuinely seek peace.

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