Israel Matzav

Peres' imagination turns Kissinger into a hero

A reminder that the graphic at the top of this post was done by daughter # 3 child #5. If any of you need a graphic artist, Mrs. Carl and I are encouraging her to take projects from home during the summer. She is quite talented.

I didn't make it to the President's conference on Tuesday - too many other commitments at home and for work (I don't get paid to blog). But I hope to make it today and will probably be heading over there around the time that you are reading this. Stephen Leavitt was there on Tuesday and felt a sense of dystopia when the subject turned to 'peace' in the Middle East.

On the other hand, when the speakers spoke of peace, we entered the fantasy aspect of the conference.

It began with Professor Daniel Kahneman’s lecture.

Kahneman spoke of Hawks and Doves, the long time and extremely controversial theory he propounds regarding why nations go to war. His conclusions were that while the positions and analyses of the Hawks often seem to be correct, it is only seems so because people are internally biased and prejudiced to sooner believe and/or follow those positions and observations for a variety of cognitively distorted reasons or personal benefit (such as not looking stupid historically after they leave political office). And while the position of Doves seem too often to prove to be wrong, in reality they aren’t. The speech and theory was obviously far more complex than that, but I think that sums it up succinctly enough.

As an example, he spoke of the Egyptian peace treaty that has lasted 30 years. When he mentioned that example, I couldn’t help but think of the recent terror attacks emanating from Egypt, the massive weapons smuggling operations running from Egypt to Gaza, the hatred of Egyptians for the Jewish state – which never subsided in those 30 years, and the strong likelihood the treaty will soon be history. And then my thoughts went on to Oslo…

Read the whole thing.

Stephen goes on to describe how they conference sponsors managed to turn Henry Kissinger into the best friend Israel ever had. Yes, Kissinger, the guy who opposed the Jackson-Vanik amendment that eventually opened the gates of the Soviet Union to allow Jews out, opposed the airlift of supplies to Israel that saved the day in the Yom Kippur War, and who was indifferent to the possibility that Russian Jews would be sent to the gas chambers. It's disgraceful that Israel chose to honor him.

Labels: Middle East peace process, President's Conference

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:42 AM