HERTZBERG’S LIES IN ‘THE NEW YORKER’ REGARDING ISRAEL

In his article of 6 June 2011 in The New Yorker Magazine titled ‘O’bama vs. Netanyahu,’ Hendrik Hertzberg, in support of President Obama’s attempt to isolate and enable the destruction of Israel, like all liberals, especially those in the media, leaves no lie unturned and provides no shortage of distortions. Given the lack of space, I have chosen to focus only on one of them.

Hertzberg states:

“The Thursday before, anticipating the imminent arrival of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama had said that the borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state “should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps”— a fundamental tenet of American policy for decades, a goal of Israeli and Palestinian representatives in every serious negotiation, and an obvious feature of any conceivable settlement.”

Contrary to Hertzberg’s misrepresentation, by calling for a return to the June 4, “1967 borders” (also known as the 1949 Armistice Line or the “Green Line”), with “mutually agreed” land swaps, Obama not only has ignored the fact that the “Green Line” merely is an armistice line and not a real international boundary, but more so has disregarded Resolution 242 of 1967, the basis of almost every previous Arab Israeli peace initiative since the Six-Day War beginning with the Rogers Plan of 1969.  Specifically, the Resolution calls for a “negotiated” withdrawal from “territories,” not “the territories” to “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”  In other words, it stipulates that Israel is not required to concede sovereign land in exchange for any West Bank land it retains under a future peace accord.  Further, as demonstrated by their rejection of the generous Israeli concessions offered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008 that went even further than those which earlier the PLO rejected at Camp David and Taba the concept of “mutually agreed” land swaps neither is accepted by the “Palestinians” nor has it ever been central to any peace initiative.  This is because the Palestinians, be it Hamas or the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, do not recognize Israel’s right to exist nor are they willing to accept anything aside from the pre-1967 lines, meaning the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

In fact, one need not look any further than its most recent commitment to Israel’s security, the 2004 Bush (Sharon) Letter as the basis for any withdrawal, to see that a return to the 1967 lines has in no way been “a fundamental tenet of American policy for decades.”  This commitment, at the time backed by a bi-partisan majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress, by linking the idea of defensible borders to Israel’s own defensive capabilities, such that “the United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure and defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats,” not only supports Israel’s requirement for defensible borders, but highlights that a “defensible border” must improve Israel’s ability to provide for its own security.  This distinction regarding Israel’s ability to defend itself is a necessity given that while a “secure boundary” as per Resolutions 242 includes the same interpretation it also could imply a boundary that was secured by U.S. guarantees, NATO troops, or even other international forces all of which could prove to be unreliable.  Further, “in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers,” the U.S. commitment makes clear that the retention of the existing settlement blocks is not contingent on the need for reciprocal land swaps using territory under Israeli sovereignty from within the 1967 borders, such that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a “full and complete” return to the 1949 Armistice Lines.”  Thus, the Bush (Sharon) letter, rather specifically tied defensible borders to Israel’s ability to defend itself through clear-cut modifications of the 1967 lines.

The “new reality” to which President Bush was referring is that Israel’s borders no longer are defensible based on a strategy of preemption and offense against conventional Arab armies amassing on them, unlike in the 1967 war whereby such borders served as the starting point for an expansion into the Sinai, Golan Heights and the West Bank in order to avoid complete invasion akin to that of the 1948 War of Independence.  In more recent times, as demonstrated in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, holding these territories is necessary for fighting a defensive rather than offensive war.  Further, given the transformation of many of Israel’s enemies from large state entities with conventional military to guerrilla organizations with massive rocket arsenals and the fact that the West Bank virtually overlooks Israel’s main cities, sitting several thousand feet above major population centers such as Tel Aviv, it is critical to avert the introduction there of mortars, rockets, and surface-to-air missiles.  As such, Israel’s presence along the eastern perimeter of the West Bank in the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert has and will continue to enable it to prevent weapons smuggling by such terrorists and the infiltration of hostile forces.  Thus, while true that the majority of, if not most, Israeli’s would like to live in peace, an agreement along the indefensible 1967 borders, with “mutually” agreed land swaps, in no way would achieve this goal as such borders would not ensure that a future peace agreement will be stable and not undermined by the combination of Israeli vulnerabilities and the remaining hostility that might be prevalent even after a formal peace treaty has been signed.

Despite Hertzberg’s blatant distortions, the erosion of the concept of defensible borders began recently in 2000 with Ehud Barack at Camp David II, despite severe opposition from both the military and the public, and even then there was no public agreement by Israel for “mutually agreed” land swaps.  In fact, neither Shimon Perez, nor his predecessor Yitzak Rabin, the architect of the vilified Oslo Accords, anticipated an outcome that would result in a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines.  Similarly, Menachem Begin, in the aftermath of the 1978 Camp David Accords, through Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, indicated that Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai should not be seen as a precedent for other fronts.  By exiting the Sinai, Begin made it clear that Israel had fulfilled the territorial aspects of Resolution 242 and no more withdrawals could be contemplated in any future peace deals.

As pointed out by Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, in a paper on ‘Israel’s Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace,’ by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Barak inaugurated a new land-for-peace paradigm that was not rooted in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which had governed all Arab Israeli peace initiatives since the Six-Day War.  Instead, from that point on, Israel was expected to live within the curtailed borders that Barak had proposed.  Even more far-reaching, the Palestinian leadership succeeded in establishing in the minds of Western policymakers the idea that the “1967 lines” – that is, the 1949 armistice lines – should be the new frame of reference for all future negotiations, as opposed to the notion of “secure and recognized boundaries” which had been unanimously approved by the UN Security Council after the Six-Day War.

He further explains that in the aftermath of Arafat’s rejection of Ehud Barak’s peace offer, the Palestinian suicide bombing war that followed, Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Second Lebanon War, the failed Annapolis talks, the war in Gaza, the Netanyahu government correctly is re-adopting the notion that safeguarding Israel’s vital security requirements is the only path to a viable and durable peace with the so-called “Palestinians.”  This includes defensible borders, a demilitarized Palestinian entity, control of a unified airspace with Judea and Samaria, electromagnetic communications frequency security, and other guarantees all of which mark a shift away from the previously held misperception that territorial withdrawals would make room for a peace deal, and that such a deal would bring security.  According to Yaalon, “Prime Minister Netanyahu is articulating a broad Israeli consensus that has been forged in the trauma of recent events for a security-first approach as the only avenue to real peace.”

Such a consensus is not incorrect given that the main objective of the “Palestinians” is not statehood along the 1967 lines, but instead to escalate the conflict.  After all, if peaceful coexistance truly was desired they would not have rejected the offer by Barack and that of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who resurrected the land swap idea in 2008 as part of newly proposed Israeli concessions that went even further than those at Camp David and Taba.  Despite agreeing to a land swap for 1.9% of the West Bank, which relates to the size of the areas of Jewish settlements, in return for  high quality land near the center of Israel, but which does not address Israel’s vital security needs, the “Palestinians” do not truly accept the concept of “mutually agrreed” land swaps because it would impede their claim to a right of return.  In fact, just recently, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in a New York Times op-ed, attempted to re-write history by falsely highlighting “Palestinian victimhood” and emphasized confrontation.  According to Abbas, ”Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.” Clearly, the expansion of Palestinian “lawfare” and other attempts to deligitimize Israel would not further peace and compromise.

Further, despite written guarantees accompanying the Declaration of Principals (“DOP”) and the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement where the PLO undertook, but failed, to remove those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, their stated objective remains the “Liberation of Palestine through armed struggle” and not statehood via peaceful negotiations.  This is made brutally clear by the all too familiar “Palestinian” call to arms, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which is supported by the indoctrination of the populace with hatred toward the Jews and a culture of incessant Islamic suicide terrorism where martyrdom is rewarded and praised.  Equally, if not more telling, is the 1988 Hamas Charter, which calls for the “obliteration of Israel” and the extermination of the Jewish people.  Once again, this intention was highlighted in a May 17, 2011 interview in the Palestinian daily al-Quds with Mahmoud al-Zahar, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Gaza who stated that:

“The position of the [Hamas] movement regarding the negotiations and the resistance has not changed. We’re in favor of the way of resistance, and the way of negotiations was and still contradicts the position of the majority of the Palestinian people, who voted for Hamas in the 2006 general elections… The world should know that there was no change in the position of the movement regarding resistance, as it is the only way. We can only negotiate issues within the framework of resistance.”

Not only don’t the so-called “Palestinians,” but neither have their Arab patrons ever subscribed to a “two-state” solution in which they would coexist peacefully with the Jewish people of Israel.  After all, there was no shortage of Arab aggression toward Israel from long before the 1948 War of Independence through the 1967 Six Day War, when the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights were captured in self defense, despite there having been not a single settlement in any of these territories.  More so, if the Palestinians and/or Arabs truly were interested in “Palestinian” statehood, such could have been granted in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank or both between 1949 and 1967, when both Egypt and Jordan, respectively, illegally occupied those territories.

Today, as in the past, Israel’s enemies continue to seek its destruction and Israel only can depend on itself to defend its people.  While it is important to strive for peace, Israel must always be ready to fight.  As such, a return by Israel to a security-first approach of maintaining defensible borders beyond  the 1967 lines, as per U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, must remain firmly rooted in its longstanding commitment to defend itself without reliance on foreign forces.

SELF-HATING JEW

In his article of 6 June 2011 in the Jerusalem Post Magazine ‘Above the Fray: Killing peace in the name of peace’ Alon Ben-Meir in support of President Obama’s attempt to isolate and enable the destruction of Israel states:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s speech to a joint session of Congress brought political theater to a new height-and the State of Israel to a new low.  With his unabashed arrogance and demagoguery on display as never before, Netanyahu’s address effectively slammed shut any window of opportunity for a peace settlement. Perhaps he could not hear the windows closing through the deafening applause of more than two dozen standing ovations from the members of Congress. If anything, his speech demonstrated that he has not been listening to the warning bells that have been sounding for months.”

In response:

By calling for a return to the June 4, “1967 borders” (also known as the 1949 Armistice Line or the “Green Line”), with “mutually agreed” land swaps in his May 19, 2011 State Department remarks on the Middle East and North Africa, Obama not only has ignored the fact that the “Green Line” merely is an armistice line with, as insisted by the Arab leaders, no political signifigance and therefore not a real international boundary.  Even worse, he has chosen to disregarded U.N. Resolution 242 of 1967, the basis of almost every previous Arab Israeli peace initiative since the Six-Day War, beginning with the Rogers Plan of 1969, which calls for a “negotiated” withdrawal from “territories,” not “the territories” to “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”  In other words, it stipulated that Israel would not be required to concede sovereign land in exchange for any West Bank land it would retain under a future peace accord.  More so, a return to the “Green Line” is a clear violation of America’s most recent commitment to Israel’s security as delineated in the 2004 Bush (Sharon) Letter.  This committment, backed by a bi-partisan majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress and grounded in the aforementioned U.N. Resolutions, which “In light of new realities on the ground” clearly supports Israel’s requirement for defensible borders and its annexation of the existing settlement blocks such that “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.”   

Not only are the 1967 borders indefensible, but as in 2009, Obama’s adherence to the “Palestinian” position, this time “making the focus on borders in place of the settlement freeze,” which Ben-Meir states was a key objective of the speech delivered by Obama has enabled the PLO to continue to avoid direct negotiations with Israel along with the necessary compromises on settlements, east Jerusalem, refugees,  and recognition of the Jewish right to national sovereignty and the respective end to all claims against Israel and thus the conflict.  While he did “reiterate” that “Israel is the “Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people,” as with east Jerusalem, he left the refugee issue open and to be discussed only after Israel has agreed to borders along the armistice lines thereby providing the “Palestinians” with a veto on east Jerusalem and the settlements, and no incentive to negotiate or seek to find a solution to the refugee or any of the other above mentioned issues and claims.  This is in contrast to even the Clinton Plan parameters of December 2000, which clearly, albeit less unilaterally, embraced the key principles subscribed to by President Bush, those being blocks of settlements in the West Bank and the stipulation that the right of return should apply only to the Palestinian state and not to Israel. 

Further, the refusal of Obama since assuming office in early 2009 to publicly endorse the Bush (Sharon) Letter, the failure of the PA to fulfill its commitments under signed Oslo agreements to arrest terrorists, outlaw terrorist groups and end the incitement to hatred and murder that permeates all aspects of “Palestinian” society, and more recently its stated intention to seek a unilateral declaration of statehood at the United Nations later this year in clear violation of the 1995 Interim Agreement, which requires that “neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations,” it is unlikely that Israel would take much comfort in any “ironclad security guarantees” from Obama or the Americans for that matter.  More so, such “ironclad security guarantees” mean nothing when in the very same speech where he purports to support Israel’s need for security he calls for the “full and phased withdrawal of the Israeli military forces,” from a new “Palestinian” state to have contiguous borders with Jordan, thereby eliminating Israel’s “critical presence in the Jordan Valley,” which every Israeli government has regarded as vital to Israeli defense and to which Ben-Meir himself refered to as a “legitimate security concern.”  Further, while Obama’s call for coordinating Israel’s military withdrawal with “Palestinian security” is laughable (we saw how that worked under Oslo), whats more unbelievable is his request that “Palestinian leaders provide a credible solution” for how to involve Hamas, a terrorist organization whose declared goal is to eliminate Israel, in any negotiations.  This is especially ironic as Obama opened his speech by praising his administrations killing of Osama Bin Laden, America’s equivalent of Israel’s Hamas. 

Clearly, the so-called “Palestinians,” be it Hamas or the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, refuse to make concessions to Israel on any of its territorial requirements because they do not recognize its right to exist nor are they willing to accept anything aside from the pre-1967 lines, meaning the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.  With such positions, those that led them to reject the generous Israeli offers of statehood in 2000, 2001 and 2008 and Obama’s recent gestures, it is hard to see how the peace process could lead to anything positive.  Therefore, there is no point in discussing the possibility of negotiating peace with either “Palestinian” camp. 

It is obvious that:

Not only is Israel, including its ancient sovereignty over the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Golan Heights,  the religious, historical, legal and rightful homeland of the Jews, but it is impossible to negotiate with those bent on its destruction.  Neither the so-called “Palestinians” nor their Arab patrons ever have subscribed to a “two-state” solution in which they would coexist peacefully with the Jewish people of Israel.  This is made brutally clear by the all too familiar “Palestinian” rallying cry, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”  

Let me be clear, I also do NOT subscribe to a two-state solution both because Israel belongs to the Jews and because a “Palestinian” terror-state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip not only would be a second “Palestinian” state, when one considers that Jordan is a “Palestinian” state given that its population is approx. 1/3 “Palestinian,” but more so that such a state would legitimize terror and the indoctrination of  hatred toward the people of Israel.

After all, there was no shortage of Arab aggression toward Israel on behalf of the so-called “Palestinians,” from long before the 1948 War of Independence through the 1967 Six Day War, when the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights were captured in self-defense, despite there not having been a single settlement in any of these territories prior to the war.  In fact, the PLO was founded in 1964, three years before Israel regained these territories and the Arab discourse then regarding liberating territory was not in reference to settlements like Efrat, which didn’t yet exist, but instead to Tel Aviv.  If the Palestinians and/or the Arabs truly were interested in “Palestinian” statehood, such could have been granted in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank or both between 1949 and 1967, when both Egypt and Jordan, respectively, illegally occupied them. 

In fact, the Palestinian National Authority (the “PA”), which under the PLO National Charter, despite numerous written guarantees, including those accompanying the Declaration of Principals (“DOP”) and the aforementioned 1995 Interim Agreement, still has failed to remove the articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist and which call for the “Liberation of Palestine through armed struggle,” not statehood through peaceful negotiations.  As further evidenced by the continuous indoctrination of Jew-hatred among its civilian population and through its recent merger with Hamas, whose 1988 Charter is equally, if not more telling, it is clear that the Palestinian Authority, like its new partner Hamas, seeks the destruction of Israel, to be replaced with an Islamic state, and the worldwide murder of Jews.

More so, if coexistence was their objective they would not have rejected the generous American and Israeli proposals made at Camp David II.  It was there that Barack inaugurated a new land-for-peace paradigm, for the first time not rooted in UN Security Council Resolution 242, to which President Clinton acknowledged that while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak “showed particular courage and vision and an understanding of the historical importance of the moment,” Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat “failed to demonstrate a flexibility or willingness to compromise his maximalist positions, particularly on Jerusalem.”  Neither would they have rejected the even more generous “Clinton Plan” of 2000 a few months later in December.  Despite warnings by the Israeli military establishment and a public strongly opposed to such a dangerous and one-sided proposal, Barack agreed to give the “Palestinians” 100% of Gaza, approx. 97% of the West Bank, the equivalent of 3% of Israeli sovereign territory, including an Israeli withdrawal from the vital Jordan Valley to be replaced by a “reliable” U.N. security force, similar to that which ignored Egypt’s violation of the 1956 cease-fire agreement when Nasser amassed its forces in the Sinai at the start of the 1967 War, a contiguous connection of the two territories under full “Palestinian” sovereignty and sovereignty over the Muslim and Christian sections of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.  Further, as later demonstrated by their rejection of an offer by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who in 2008 resurrected the land swap idea as part of newly proposed Israeli concessions that went even further than those at Camp David and Taba, the concept of “mutually agreed” land swaps never has been central to any peace initiative.  Neither is such a concept feasible as the “Palestinians” later indicated that they only are willing to consider a land swap of approx 1.9%, which relates to the size of the areas of Jewish settlement in return for  high quality land near the center of Israel, but which does not address Israel’s vital security needs.  I believe this is because they do not wish to obtain statehood, but instead to deligitimize Israel and escalate the conflict.    

As pointed out by Mordechai Kedar, the “Palestinians” are “turning to the United Nations mainly from despair of an Arab world that” in recent times “does nothing to liberate Palestine or even east Jerusalem for them” given that they “seem to be trying to perpetuate their problem with Israel rather than solving it.”   As such, a UN endorsement of statehood, without a declaration of their own and without having to recognize Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish National Homeland, as would be required under any bilateral agreement, would enable the “Palestinians” to achieve these objectives.  This intention was made clear in a recent New York Times op-ed where PA President Mahmoud Abbas attempted to re-write history by falsely highlighting “Palestinian victimhood” and emphasized confrontation.  According to Abbas, “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”  Clearly, the expansion of “Palestinian lawfare” and other attempts to delegitimize Israel would not further peace and compromise. 

Aside from Jew-hatred and a preference to live off charity rather than productive work, the main reason that the “Palestinians” never will be able or willing to conclude an agreement on final status with Israel that produces a “Palestinian” state stems, as Shlomo Ben-Ami stated in his Book, Scars of War Wounds of Peace, from the “ethos of their movement.”  He explains that while Zionism never abandoned wider territorial dreams, it would never have occurred to Ben-Gurion to delay the establishment of the Jewish state due to lack of access to the Western Wall or the Temple Mount and thus, “the positive ethos of building a new society was to compensate for the poverty of the territorial solution.”  Therefore, it is clear that it is not Israeli intransigence, but rather a consistent failure by the “Palestinian” leadership on behalf of its people, primarily due to a lack of will and/or capacity to process a positive founding ethos in order to assume a reasonable compromise.  This, he argues, is due to the nature of the Palestinian national movement, which “has been more about vindication and justice than about finding a solution.”  A recent report by Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post demonstrates that the “Palestinian” leadership to this day remains intransigent, based on comments by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat who, instead of simply agreeing to negotiate based on Obama’s recent outline, which fully endorses the “Palestinian” point of view, has required, as a precondition to any negotiations, that Netanyahu state publicly “two states on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”  What the “Palestinians” still refuse to understand is that “peace frequently is not about justice, but about stability.”

In Conclusion:

It should be obvious to anyone who listened to his recent speech, including Ben-Meir, that in addition to his antipathy towards Israel, Obama also is averse to acting against the will of both the UN and the muslim states, most of whom sponsor terror aimed at the US and Israel.  As a result, he is trying to force Israel into making dangerous concessions, such as the acceptance of indefensible borders, to the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority.

As my seven-year old niece so eloquently said, in response to my questioning of her (I like to educate them early) as to if she saw Obama’s “Winds of Change” speech:

“No, but I heard it was bad.”

To which I asked her if she knew why? To which she replied:

“No, why?”

To which I explained that Obama wanted to give away Israeli territory to people who “don’t like” Jews.  To which she asked:

“What is Territory?”

To which I explained that it was sovereign land legally owned by Israel.  To which she exclaimed:

“Why would he make us [the Jewish People] give away their land to people who don’t like us?”

Hence the point.  While incredibly smart for a seven-year old, if she can understand the gist of it, its hard to believe that someone as educated and experienced as Alon Ben-Meir can’t!