My Response to Paula R. Stern's Angry Open Letter to John Kerry

An open letter by blogger Paula R. Stern to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry echoes much of the right wing commentary I've seen coming out of both Israel and the diaspora Jewish community. It also echoes the really unfortunate comments by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon who told Kerry to "leave us alone."

Stern writes, in part:

"You won’t fail in your goal of ramming peace down our throats because of this, however. You will fail because, amazingly enough, you don’t even understand Israel. We are the easiest to get, the easiest, honestly. All you have to do is listen and see – but even that is beyond you.

[...]

For a long time now, the Arabs have fooled you. They’ll speak to you of peace over the coffee they serve you and then when you leave the room, they slap each other on the backs and laugh – another successful day at making the US look stupid."

Secretary Kerry did not threaten Israel. He simply relayed the dangerous trends he sees building around the world. BTW, the Palestinians want to haul him before the ICC for supposedly threatening Mahmoud Abbas, something else he did not do. Let me just say this is the strongest terms: I disagree with this letter.

Secretary Kerry is no simpleton. He has not been fooled. He may be on mission impossible but he is anything but stupid or naive. Predicting a failure that seems likely doesn’t mean that trying is not worthwhile. It is the correct and moral thing to do. It’s what separates Israelis and Jews from the Palestinian Arabs: we value life and we strive for peace.

Of course, I could make equally negative comments about Naftali Bennet, whom Stern praises. Bennet fails to understand that Israel cannot possibly rule over millions of hostile Arabs and survive as a democratic Jewish state. Right wing Israelis also live for an impossible dream. In that sense they are just like the Palestinians Stern is so critical of.

When my father fought for Israel’s independence in 1948-49 he fought for a state that, for the next 18 years, did not include Judea and Samaria and yet it was still a Jewish State in Israel. In 1967, when other Israelis celebrated, his first words on hearing of the great victory were, “Occupation. Bad business.” I think history has proven him right.

Stern knows her history. Indeed, she has seen it first hand, including the horrors of terror perpetrated by Palestinian Arabs on innocent Israelis. Sadly, possibly due to her very real pain and justified anger, she draws the wrong conclusions from that history. A peace agreement, should it ever come (which I seriously doubt) does not mean a terrorist state or greater threat. Gaza became a threat because it was a withdrawal without any peace agreement, and without basic steps to insure Israel’s security, such as controlling the border with Egypt. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made clear that he won’t make those mistakes again.

Peace with Egypt, on the other hand, has held for nearly 35 years. It held through two tumultuous changes of government and two years of Islamist rule by Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. How many Israeli Jewish lives have been saved by making peace and by giving up Sinai?

Instead of anger at John Kerry we should be thanking him for allowing us to demonstrate once again that Israel is the one side in the conflict that always strives for peace. Yes, he may fail and yes, if he does, it will be because the Palestinian leadership is not ready for peace. I give him credit for trying, and credit for trying to bring about what, for most Israelis, is the great hope and dream: peace and security.

More Reasons Why the Peace Process is a Moral and Strategic Imperative

The only alternative to war is peace. The only road to peace is negotiation. - Golda Meir

I believe however that peace is attainable regardless of the Arabs mentality, society or government.-Yitzhak Rabin

In the last piece I wrote passionately and personally about the moral imperative to seek peace from my liberal, Jewish, Israeli-American perspective. On Thursday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of a strategic imperative to pursue peace talks. He's right. While I can't help be passionate about the peace process I can lay out some practical reasons why it must go forward and why I support the prisoner release which the Israeli cabinet approved.

Before I go on let me say that my heart does go out to the families of these murderers. Not a one of them deserves to be released. I read the accounts of the attacks they perpetrated and I was sickened. It would be so very easy for me to hate the Arabs. I certainly hate things they have done like this. The easy thing is often precisely the wrong thing. As much as it may bother some of the right wingers out there I still believe Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing the right thing, even though it is both unpopular and difficult.

Israel needs to seize any opportunity to make peace for it's own interests. Even if the process fails, as we all expect it will, at least Israel is seen as making every effort for peace. That is vital for U.S. popular and government support. Indeed, this may be something President Obama needed to get the gulf states to go along (or at least not interfere) with a strike on the Iranian nuclear program. In other words, these peace talks may well be a side show for something that is more important, both to Israel and the U.S.

Then again, maybe the U.S. and Israel really have put a new peace process front and center in their thinking. This may also be the one time in history when the Arab-Israeli conflict is the easiest one in the Middle East to solve. The other conflicts in the region: the Syrian civil war, Egypt on the edge of civil war as well and, of course, the standoff with Iran are all more difficult problems.

Permit me, however, to frame this strictly in terms of the Israelis and Palestinians. If you won't even negotiate with your enemy how will you ever have peace? Must Israel be condemned to endless wars, death and destruction?

I am not "gullible" for supporting a two state (really a multi-state) solution as some people have claimed. I can see clearly enough to know it's a choice between that and the eventual destruction of Israel. The Palestinians will never become Jordanians, they can't be bought off, they will never leave Judea, Samaria and Gaza voluntarily, and, if we include Gaza, there are almost as many of them between the river and the sea as there are of us. Once again, I say us because I have so much family and so many dear friends in Israel, plus, of course, I am planning a move there myself. Whatever happens, it will affect me directly.

If Israel tries to expel or kill the Palestinians, as hardliners online, many of them Americans and Christians, insist Israel should, the U.S. will almost certainly lead the international military against Israel. The Serbs weren't permitted to expel the Albanians, a much smaller number, in Kosovo. Do you really think Israel will get away with it? Insanity!

If you didn't read my very personal blog post and don't understand where I'm coming from, read it. If you did read it and still don't understand... fine.

Let me say this again, for the last time: if you oppose even negotiating for peace you and I have very different moral values and very different beliefs. You may, unwittingly, be an agent of the destruction of Israel. Have a nice life with your delusions of greater Israel or fortress Israel or whatever you think will work. Just please don't expect me to want or to have any part of it. I will continue to pray, as Jews have for centuries, for peace in Jerusalem and all of Israel. I will also work in any way I can to make peace a reality.

Time to March on Jerusalem? I Don't Think So

Yesterday on The Times of Israel website, blogger Emanuel Shahaf wrote an article imploring Israelis to march on Jerusalem and demand that the Israeli government gets serious about making peace with the Palestinians. He concludes:

If the Israeli public doesn’t take the initiative, gets its act together and without much further ado marches on Jerusalem to convince our fearful politicians that this is crunch time, that we have to act, seize the moment and negotiate this conflict away before it consumes us, then we deserve no better.

I strongly disagree with Mr. Shahaf and wrote a response which I posted as a comment. Here it is in full:
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I've read the article as well as the comments and responses. עמנואל שחף, with all due respect, you can only make peace when both sides want peace. The majority of Israelis still accept a "two state solution." I put it in quotes because today that means a four state solution within what was the original British Mandate of Palestine: three Arab states (Jordan, Gaza, West Bank) and a Jewish one which would be much weakened. Most of the recent polling I've seen from the P.A. indicates a two state solution is only acceptable as a step to liberating "all of Palestine," meaning, of course, all of Israel. The percentage that accepts the idea of living along side of a Jewish state is around 19%, and that was the most generous number I've seen.

The fact is that Ehud Olmert's 2008 offer, while now "off the table" as you point out, certainly was about the maximum Israel could ever offer. Mahmoud Abbas didn't even grace it with a formal response. There was no counter offer. Prime Minister Netanyahu lost his first government, in part, over the Wye River Accords. Yes, I know the budget was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, but after withdrawing from most of Hebron he lost most of his support from the right. In his second term he tried the settlement freeze which was ignored up until the last minute by Abbas and then it's end was used as an excuse for not negotiating. Recently we heard of a possible freeze again and Abbas suddenly needed every last Palestinian prisoner released no matter what they had done. Neither the Prime Minister nor his predecessor have failed to work for peace at all.

The reality is that Abbas has little popular support and nowhere near the courage to risk his life for an agreement even if he believed in peace. Having read and listened to his statements over the years, and what he has to say to his fellow Arabs in particular, I don't really believe he has any interest in peace at all. Once upon a time I was a peacenik. Like so many in the '90s I thought peace might be right around the corner if only we worked hard enough for it. Like so many I've since come to realize that I succumbed to a popular delusion.

Israel should always leave the door open to peace. We should always be ready to sit down and negotiate in good faith. We shouldn't beg those who fire rockets into Israel daily or those in Judea and Samaria who plot destruction to please, please, please make peace. That smacks of weakness and achieves nothing.

A mass march on the government that fails to work for peace is a wonderful idea. You would need to march on Ramallah, not Jerusalem.

Respectfully,
קייתלין מרטין

Israel is Always Ready to Negotiate for Peace

“The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” -Abba Eban
One of the popular but utterly false claims made by the pro-Palestinian crowd online is that no Israeli Prime Minister since Yitzhak Rabin has been willing to sit down and negotiate with the Palestinians for peace. That claim stinks to high heaven but none the less it's practically a meme on social networking sites like Facebook. Here is a summary of what each and every Israeli Prime Minister has done since the Rabin assassination.

The first Prime Minister after Yitzhak Rabin wase Shimon Peres, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with both Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Does anyone doubt his peacemaking credentials?

Next came Binyamin Netanyahu's first term. He not only negotiated with Arafat, but he signed the Wye River Memorandum in 1998 and withdrew from additional land, including most of Hebron, the second holiest place in Judaism. The consequences of that agreement were that the right abandoned Netanyahu and his government fell. He basically sacrificed his own political career at the time for an interim peace agreement.

After Netanyahu came Ehud Barak who negotiated both at Camp David and at Taba. President Bill Clinton blamed the failure of Camp David squarely on Arafat. When Barak upped the offer at Taba the response delivered by Yasser Abed Rabbo was that the Palestinians wouldn't give up "even one centimeter" of land. No counter offer was ever made. The offers from Israel were good enough that many moderate Arab leaders had encouraged Yasser Arafat to accept. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah of Jordan, and Mahmoud Abbas were among those urging Arafat to finally make peace with Israel. Prince Bandar, no friend of Israel, said Arafat's refusal to take the deal was "a crime". Arafat chose to fight the second intifada instead.

After Barak came Ariel Sharon who withdrew from all of Gaza without any agreement in the hope it would lead to peace. Instead the result was regular rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and two more conflicts. Then came Ehud Olmert who ran for Prime Minister on a platform of withdrawing from much of Judea and Samaria. He was at the 2007 Annapolis Conference, which was the first time both sides agreed that the final settlement would be a two-state solution. In 2008 he offered Abbas an area equal in size to the 1949 armistice line with land swaps to account for current demographics. He was turned down flat. Once again, there was no counteroffer from the Palestinians.

Now we have Binyamin Netanyahu again, who gave a 10 month settlement freeze and nearly lost his government for it. Abbas only negotiated in the last two weeks and then used the expiration of the freeze as an excuse not to negotiate. Since then the Prime Minister has offered to negotiate without preconditions whenever the Palestinians are ready. They are never ready.

The Villification of Prime Minister Netanyahu

If you read the left-leaning and much of the mainstream press it's easy to believe the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is the problem, or at least a big part of the problem, in the stalemated talks between Israel and the Palestinians. He is often described as "right wing" and "hard line" when nothing could be further from the truth.

Part of the reason, of course, is that he is from the Likud party. Likud is seen as the Israeli equivalent of the Republican Party by many American liberals. That is an oversimplification and is really incorrect. The Prime Minister himself corrects journalists, steadfastly referring to Likud as center-right. Israel is a multi-party system and, much unlike the Republicans, those right of center divide into a number of secular and religious parties. Prime Minister Netanyahu has committed himself to "two states for two peoples" and he is the elected leader of Likud. That position is an anathema to the truly right-wing parties, for example, National Union, which is in opposition to the current government.

This Prime Minister lost his government during his previous term when the right wing parties pulled out of the ruling coalition, including breakaway members of Likud. It wasn't the left that brought him down; it was the right. Why? He signed the Wye River Memorandum and gave control of more land to the Palestinian Authority, including most of Hebron. I have no doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu would do the same again if there was a real chance for peace. Right now there isn't one.

The problem is, and always has been, the Palestinian leadership. They have had a total of three leaders since 1919: Haj Amin al-Husseini, who sided with the Nazis in World War II and wanted to bring Hitler's final solution to Palestine, his nephew and chosen successor, Yassir Arafat, and Arafat's hand-picked successor, Mahmoud Abbas, whose doctoral dissertation amounted to Holocaust denial. Yes, people can overcome their past. Anwar Sadat flew planes for the Nazis and led Egypt to war on Yom Kippur in 1973. Today we remember Sadat as a man who gave his life for the sake of peace. Sadly, Abbas is no Sadat. He insists on terms that he knows Israel can never meet as preconditions to negotiation, guaranteeing their failure in advance.

Look what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians in 2008: land equal in area to what Jordan and Egypt occupied prior to 1967 with land swaps to account for present demographics, a divided Jerusalem with holy sites under international control, and a symbolic, limited acceptance of some Palestinian "refugees" into Israel. It's the most Israel probably could ever offer. The Palestinians didn't even respond and offered no counter-proposal.

What on earth could Prime Minister Netanyahu offer that hasn't already been offered? How is Prime Minister Netanyahu an obstacle to peace when he repeatedly says he will negotiate at any time in any place the Palestinians may choose? He's made the same offer to Syria. The answer is simple: Prime Minister Netanyahu is not a problem except in the minds of those who always find reason to blame Israel and those who believe them.

Israel Must Live Up To Its Commitments If Israel's American Supporters Hope To Change Obama Policy

NOTE: First published as part of The Jerusalem Post blogging competition earlier today

It seems that every day I read an editorial piece in a right-leaning or overtly right-wing publication or blog about the deteriorating relations between the Obama administration and Israel. The President has been, without any doubt, increasing pressure on Israel to halt all construction over the green line including eastern Jerusalem. Those on the political right continually portray President Obama as hostile to Israel. For example, Anne Bayefsky, writing for National Review Online, characterized the administration's policies at the U.N. as "a new strategy for throwing Israel to the wolves."

It is becoming increasingly difficult for those on the political left to simply dismiss these comments as just so much more Republican or right-wing anti-Obama rhetoric. Many of us in the American Jewish community who voted for President Obama did so with real reservations about his commitment to Israel. Candidate Obama did all he could to reassure the American supporters of Israel: Jewish, Christian, and others, and for many of us it was sufficient to allow us to focus on other issues when we entered the voting booth. When President Obama did meet with Jewish leaders he chose to exclude those who did not agree with his policies, even though that meant excluding the largest Jewish and Zionist organizations in the United States. Rather than reassuring American supporters of Israel the President further alienated those with legitimate concerns about his policies.

Israeli Deputy Premier Dan Meridor, speaking to reporters on July 21, correctly pointed out that agreements between Prime Minister Sharon and President Bush regarding settlement construction should be binding on the two countries:

"We never had an agreement with the previous administration. We had an agreement with America. The agreement we had with the Americans is binding on us and them [...] They should keep to the agreement. [...] It was agreed that the Israelis can go on building within certain parameters. That's what happened, and no word was said against it in six years."

There is still plenty of support for Mr. Meridor's position among Democrats and those left of center in the United States. Support by political leaders of both parties, as demonstrated by the unanimous support for Israel in both houses of Congress during Operation Cast Lead, remains as strong as ever. Many Congressional Democrats have been quietly or not so quietly expressing concerns about the President's policies in the Middle East.

Mr. Meridor speaks about the U.S. keeping agreements. That means that Israel must do the same. The most obvious example of where the Netanyahu government and, indeed, prior Israeli governments have not done so, or at the very least have dragged their collective feet and moved as slowly as possible, is in meeting the commitment to remove illegal settler outposts. Oh, and before someone challenges my use of the word "illegal", I mean illegal under Israeli law. Prime Minister Sharon, Prime Minister Olmert, and now Prime Minister Netanyahu have all committed to building no new settlements and to removing unauthorized ones set up by far right settlers.

Yes, I am aware that two small outposts were evacuated in May. I am also aware that the IDF has denied there are plans to quickly evacuate the remaining 23 outposts. The Chinese news agency Xinhua is reporting that evacuations will take place in September, citing the Jerusalem Post as a source. However, I have repeatedly read of plans for evacuating all the illegal outposts over the years and it never seems to happen.

Obviously I would like to see Mr. Meridor's words taken to heart by Democrats who can influence the President and hopefully bring about a policy change. However, it will be difficult if not impossible to convince the President to honor American commitments if Israel does not honor similar commitments.

I will remind people who see no point in even trying to influence the Obama administration of a little history. Initially President Clinton was seen by some to be hostile towards Israel. Relations between the Clinton administration and the first Netanyahu government were rocky at first. In the end President Clinton's efforts at peacemaking failed. His view on Israel evolved during that process and he placed the blame for that failure where it belongs, squarely with the Palestinians. It didn't take long before President Clinton was seen as a friend of Israel.

Early in the Bush administration when Prime Minister Sharon visited the President pro-Israel voices in the press colorfully stated that the Prime Minister had been "bushwhacked." The Prime Minister then famously warned President Bush that Israel was not Czechoslovakia in 1938:

"We are currently in the midst of a complex and difficult diplomatic campaign. I turn to the western democracies, first and foremost the leader of the free world, the United States. Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when the enlightened democracies of Europe decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for the sake of a temporary, convenient solution. Don't try to appease the Arabs at our expense. We will not accept this."

After 9/11 President Bush found common cause with Prime Minister Sharon and relations improved to the point that some called the President the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.

Republicans and conservatives who see political gain in discrediting President Obama will always throw proverbial stones regardless of the policy. They will always find fault. It is in their political interest to do so. Democrats, liberals, and moderates are more interested in meaningful policy change. History argues that it may be possible to bring about that change and that it is far too early to judge President Obama's administration. However, if we are to insist on change in a meaningful way we can't ask of American what Israel itself fails to do. If commitments are to be met they must be met by both countries.

NOTE: You can rate this article or comment on it as part of the competition.