Is Obama Treating Palestinian Violence as an Inevitability?
It is therefore as if Obama was saying that there is some correspondence between the alleged offense of Israelis building apartments and Palestinians resorting to riots — or worse — on this pretext. This amounts to suggesting that Palestinian violence is a natural and excusable reaction to Jews building houses.
For the American president to say or imply this is itself, to coin a phrase, “very dangerous.”
History shows that much of this conflict has been exacerbated by this brand of amoral neutrality toward violence that has allowed extremists to set policy:
1921: In British-controlled Palestine, after rumors present an intra-Jewish clash as an anti-Arab uprising, Arabs riot in Jaffa, killing Jews. The British response? A temporary suspension of Jewish immigration into Palestine.
1929: The Palestinian leadership incites large-scale pogroms against Jews throughout Palestine, based on trumped-up stories of Jews attacking Muslims and Muslim shrines. The British response? A commission of inquiry recommends curtailment of Jewish immigration.
1996: Palestinians riot in Jerusalem following trumped-up rumors circulated by Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority that Israel’s opening of a Jerusalem archeological tunnel is designed to harm the mosques on Temple Mount. The international response? Criticism of an unnecessary Israeli provocation and renewed pressure on Israel to make further concessions.
2000: A pre-arranged visit to Temple Mount by Israeli politician Ariel Sharon is distorted by Palestinian media as being gratuitous violation of Muslim sanctuaries, producing riots and a terror wave. The international response? Condemnation of Israeli provocation and demands for more concessions in on-going peace talks.
Common to these examples (and others) is this clear fact: Palestinian violence, often based on lies fomented by unscrupulous men, is turned into a paying proposition. Far less clear is why President Obama would wish to encourage this time-honored Palestinian stratagem.
Even allowing that his comments stem from a background of pro-Palestinian partisanship, they are devoid of common sense and finesse, since Obama is seeking to reconvene peace talks. (The absence of such talks is itself the result of this policy of demanding a Jewish construction freeze that the Palestinian Authority never made a pre-condition for talks until Obama himself did, before backtracking — but only somewhat). Yet resuming talks, useful or useless as these might be, cannot occur if Obama assists a resort to violence by Palestinians.
To treat Palestinian violence as a social inevitability, like common theft, best dealt with by not attracting the thieves’ notice is to put a premium on it and to ensure its recurrence. Can Obama actually want this? And where then will his Arab/Israeli policy be?
You seem quite opinionated but Israel has to learn to survive without US support and the lobbying by American politicians at various fora.
The state of Israel can’t change its geography or neighbours. It should also treat Palestinian citizens with compassion. After all, the Jews have suffered Holocaust and no one can understand pain and suffering more than them.
And they must remember that the Holocaust was not engineered by Arabs or Muslims. Reconciliation and steps towards harmoning relations with Arabs will lead to similar gestures. Hostility and permanent aggression will not take them anywhere.
Maybe Mr Obama is mau-mauing the flak catchers. Maybe he enjoys threatening, or just implying the threat of violence against Israel.
To make it very simple, Islamic Arab or Islamic Palestinian violence is considered by the West, including the United States as inevitable, unavoidable, and to be greatly feared. As an example, every day hundreds of Sudanese refugees cross the Egyptian Sudanese border into Egypt, and those refugees who aren’t beaten half to death or imprisoned in makeshift concentration camps inside Egypt by Egyptian Border Police, are simply shot on sight and killed, and this includes men, women, children, old people, and babies. Now the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, THE UNHCR, as well as Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, regarding this state of affairs have little or nothing to protest or even complain about, after all, this is how Islamic Arabs are expected to behave. However, contrast this reaction by the UNHCR with it’s reactions to the attempts by Israeli Border Police to simply turn back those Sudanese refugees who have managed to survive their trek through Egypt. The UNHCR demands, as does Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, that Israel treat every refugee as legitimate until proven in court of law otherwise. The President of the United States Barack Obama likewise excuses Palestinian violence and threats of violence as inevitable, after all, what can any decent human being expect of primitive, ignorant, and impoverished Islamic Arabs. Thus the soft bigotry of low expectations, and the double standard of excusing of bad behavior by Islamic Arabs while at the same time demanding perfect behavior from the Israelis.
Of course this is exactly why the so called Arab Israeli peace process has failed for over 40 years, and is doomed to failure in the future.
There is a joke one may legitimately ask, and that is, how much American pressure does it take to force the Palestinians to negotiate in good faith?
The answer is of course that no one knows, it’s never been tried!
i’d like to state the obvious that palestinian violence IS inevitable, especially since they espouse, nurture, glorify, and export violence (in the form of cowardly terrorism) across the globe, even to innocents completely detached from the conflict. and they revel in said violence as the ultimate virtue and duty of palestinians everywhere.
if that’s not an inevitability, then nothing is. if i’m wrong, please tell me a time when they didn’t end up shooting, bombing, shooting rockets, or anything else generally violent (and if you do, it will be a rare exception that ultimately proves the rule).
Palestinian violence is ALWAYS inevitable, so it matters little what Obama says. It also matters not at all what Israel does or does not do – with negotiations, without negotiations, with a Palestinian state, without a Palestinian state, it’s all the same – there will be Palestinian violence.
Their goal is NOT peace, it is the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state, period. This conclusion is where all objective evidence leads.
While it is certainly true that Obama is no friend of Israel, quite the contrary, he & his amateur-hour team of leftist creeps & ideologues have done nothing but make the situation worse, blunder after blunder. But, of course, why should this problem differ from any other? The entire foreign policy of this administration is just a series of blunders, these are serial bunglers to put it mildly.
I disagree with the assumption that Israeli expansion of settlments into land set aside for a Palestinian state is irrelevant to the issue of violence.
The author and some comments are declaring that Palestinian violence is due to and only to an inherent ethnic hatred of Jews. This ignores contextual reality. This reality is the loss of homes and farms and an occupation lasting a generation that denied the rights of citizenship.
After all, the settlements are on land set aside for a Palestinian state and as such, are a clear Israeli statement of rejection of such a Palestinian state. What is the argument that Israel makes for settling the land? Is it to claim this land as theirs, which it does under the name of Judea and Samaria, and thus, openly oppose any possibility of a Palestinian state? So, why shouldn’t violence be the result of such a public declaration of the ‘elimination of a Palestinian state’?
Re #1 Indscribe: The Jews’ suffering during the Holocaust is reason to be intolerant of Arab attempts at further destruction of the Jewish Homeland. Tolerance as a one-way street becomes oppression of the tolerant party. At some level every human being knows this, but in an attempt to avoid destruction, they feign tolerance. Antisemitism in Europe is most probably due to the tolerance of the few Jews there of the phenomenon. If the person who opened his mouth with a slur against the Jews would lose his teeth, then the next person would think twice about opening his mouth. See how clearly this argument fits the “tolerance” of Europe for its Islamization!
Re #1
I think you are ignorant of the role of Arabs and Muslims in the events of the WWII and Holocaust. It was a mufti of Jerusalem, who went to Croatia, formed Muslim battalions to serve in German army, specifically, as guards in concentration camps. Read the history. Preferably before making statements that are not true.
In any case, There never was a country “Palestine”. Judea and Samara are territories allocated for Jewish home land. Again, read the history. The situation would be different if Arabs and Muslims would stop killing Jews. But somehow, I think, what makes people like you angry, is the ability of Jewish people to defend themselves and win wars that were brought upon them by your peers, Arabs and Muslims. You and arabs think that with terror and fear you will brake the Jewish people’s will. You are grossly mistaken
Regards.
Obama is part of the radical left politicly. Despite the high proportion of Jews among
them, as a group the left has historicly been anti-semetic and anti-zionist. I don’t know
why. And I AM a proud Jew!!!!
#1Indscribe
Most of the rubbish you espouse has been answered above reasonably competently. Regarding arab complicity in the Holocaust the Bosnian muslim volunteers that made up the SS Handschar division in the Baulkans under the civil/religious leadership of Husseini – Arafat’s uncle murdered 60,000 Jews there.
The old chestnut about Jews needing to be ‘compassionate’ because of their own suffering is merely a device demanding taht Jews adopt their ‘usual’ historical position of doing nothing whilst being killed by others. Sorry wrong century. Those days are over and the comment only reveals your true sentiment.
As far as gestures go, you have obviously been living in a cave for the last 50 years. There have been a thousand ‘gestures’ by Israel, from 1967 to Arafat at Camp David. ‘Gestures’ are only an ecouragement to more terror. Arabs only see that as weakness.
It again presumes some sort of bargaining sincerity that does not exist. No group of people have rejected the offers of statehood more in history because to finalise their position would mean acceptance of Israel. That they will never do and that position will be their undoing before yourself others like your and the whole world. Israel only needs to awake to that fact.
This is not about land it has never been about land it is just a phony excuse so Mohammedans can continue killing Jews. The so called Palestinians AKA the Mohammedan ARAB invaders are only in the Holy Land by ‘Right of Conquest’ a right they want to deny to the indigenous population the Jews.
For Mohammedans and left wing PC MC Moral equivalence spouting Islamophile moonbats all history begins with Mohammad so you have the Mohammedan INVADERS being classed as the legitimate occupiers of the land. In fact its not just moonbats and Mohammedans who choose to ignore HISTORY even one of the more intelligent posters on here ETAB seems to have swallowed the Mohammedan LIES too. FYI ETAB the Mohammedan INVADERS ALREADY have over 75% of what was the original Mandate of Palestine and TWO States Jordan and Syria. What right do Mohammedans and moonbats have to ask Israel which only has less than 25% of what was all THEIR historical land to give up MORE land to create a THIRD mohammedan State.
Israel should annex all of the land it currently controls and never entertain the idea of a 2 state solution again.
Oh, and Bibi should excuse defense minister Ehud Barak from his role and replace him with competence and resolve.
You seem quite opinionated but Israel has to learn to survive without US support and the lobbying by American politicians at various fora.
Yup. Agreed. We are opinionated, and we have to learn to survive without your support. So get your money, your soldiers and your interfering diplomats OUT of our lives and we will deal with Arab violence as it should be dealt with – an iron fist. It is time for Jews and Israelis to stop wheedling and whining like bent back ghetto kikes, and begging YOU for anything. We do not need your approbation to live our lives; we do not need your approval to build our homes or settle OUR land. It is time to draw out the steel of Matatyahu the Priest to deal with Jewish traitors appropriately – and to start acting like men who are not afraid to rinse their feet in the blood of their enemies – all of them.
And if you don’t like it, the heck with you. Who needs your 2 cents? Who needs your Monopoly money? We don’t!!
Required reading by all: “History Upside Down, The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression” by David Meir -Levi. The Palestinians consider eleiminating Israel their necessary contribution to getting the entire world to “submit” (their word) to Islam. Israel is both a geographic encumbrance to achieving a world wide Caliphate where we are all Muslim or we die. Obama should be thanking the Israelis for fighting back. There is NO excuse for not knowing what the Palestinians say IN THEIR OWN WORDS, just watch Palestinian Media Watch. Instead, in his willfull blindness, Obama is following in Chamberlain’s footsteps. The term “appeaser” needs to make a return to the vernacular. When it is the most commonly used adjective in describing Obama, we will be guaranteed that he is kept to a single term.
“There is not a person inside or outside the region who does not know that such language, in this context, is a euphemism for the threat of Palestinian violence”
Or he’s saying it’s a threat to any kind of lasting peace. Dunno why you can’t see it, but that seems sort of obvious to me. Keep taking the stuff that the other guy wants you to stop taking and he’ll keep having a legitimate grudge.
As long as israel has the whip hand, the arabs will be continue to lose their stuff and the arabs will continue to be mad about it. As long as the US has veto power, nobody will prevent it. I just wish I could fast-forward to see how israel will finally take the temple mount. They will do it, and it will REALLY be something to see. The US will do what it always does. I just hope the israelis realise what will happen if they bit of dirt ever changes hands – and no, I don’t mean muslim retaliation, I mean 100′s of thousands of insane fundamentalist christians flooding jerusalem for the rapture.
After all, the US must have bought SOMETHING with all that money and gutlessness, right?
Ruvy
HUZZAH! HUZZAH!
We will both see the wonder of that day!!
NO PALESTINIAN STATE – No land concessions R5.
Imagine that the various people who settled in the United States for the past 300 years decided one day that they one to parcel the United States into an independent State just for them, would the American public go for it. The Answer is absolutely NO.
The situation in Israel today is no different. The Arabs there are not Palestinians, there is no such Arab nation as Palestine or Palestinian people.
Europeans countries today are consisting of numerous people from other countries. Would the Europeans people cede part of their country to set up another State in their midst. The answer is absolutely NO.
Archeological excavations and historical data is the best proof Israel belongs to the Jewish Nation and non-other.
All the Arabs in Israel and surrounding areas are from the various Arab nations, such as Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and other Arab nations.
Prominent PLO Arab says there are no ‘Palestinians’ and no “Palestine”
PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein admitted in a March 31, 1977 interview with a Dutch newspaper Trouw.
“The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. ”
The Qur’an 17:104 – states the land belongs to the Jewish people
If the historic documents, comments written by eyewitnesses and declarations by the most authoritative Arab scholars are still not enough, let us quote the most important source for Muslim Arabs:
“And thereafter we [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd’.”.
017.104
YUSUFALI: And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, “Dwell securely in the land (of promise)”: but when the second of the warnings came to pass, We gathered you together in a mingled crowd.
PICKTHAL: And We said unto the Children of Israel after him: Dwell in the land; but when the promise of the Hereafter cometh to pass We shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various nations.
SHAKIR: And We said to the Israelites after him: Dwell in the land: and when the promise of the next life shall come to pass, we will bring you both together in judgment.
- Qur’an 17:104 -
Any sincere Muslim must recognize the Land they call “Palestine” as the Jewish Homeland, according to the book considered by Muslims to be the most sacred word and Allah’s ultimate revelation.
Sequence of historical events, agreements and a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel totaling approximately 45,000 square miles, as mandated by the League of Nations in July of 1922. The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I – Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan – agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel. (You might as well break apart Syria which was mandated at the same time).
Jay Draiman.
PS
20 Years of Research Reveals Jerusalem Belongs to Jews
(IsraelNN.com) Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: “Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law.”.
Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years. The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers – the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.
Gauthier’s main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem. The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I – Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan – agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel.
We must unleash the wrath of G-D against the enemies of Israel and those collaborating with the enemy.