Israel Matzav: 'Fierce moral urgency' uber alles

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

'Fierce moral urgency' uber alles

Rick Richman wrote a great piece in Commentary on Tuesday, in which he explains why the 'peace process' must be slowed down.

Before signing an agreement with an aging “president” more than five years past the end of his stated term — someone with no known successor, no process for choosing one, no institutions for holding elections, no capacity to implement any agreement in half his putative state (controlled by the terrorist group he promised to dismantle under the Road Map and didn’t), presiding over a society steeped in anti-Semitic incitement, unwilling to endorse even the concept of “two states for two peoples” (much less explicitly recognize a Jewish state) – we should put aside the perennial argument that time is running out, the over-hyped demographics, and “what’s happening in the settlements” (since what’s happening in the settlements is mostly construction in areas Israel will retain in any conceivable peace agreement), and pause to reflect on President Obama’s last sentence: “We do not know what a successor to Abbas will look like.”

We do not know, in other words, who will be implementing the agreement Israel is being rushed to sign. We do not know whether it will be Hamas, taking over a Palestinian state in an election or coup (both have happened before); or perhaps the guy next in line in Abbas’s corrupt ruling party; or perhaps the charismatic terrorist currently serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli jail, who would undoubtedly be released as part of a “peace agreement” but is not likely to be the next Nelson Mandela. We do not know because the Palestinian Authority has demonstrated multiple times that if converted to a state it will be a failed one, lacking the basic institutions of a successful state, unwilling to recognize a Jewish one. Yesterday the Fatah leadership unanimously endorsed Abbas’s rejection of any recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, without which the “two-state solution” is simply a two-stage plan.

If it is in fact urgent to sign an agreement while President-for-Life Abbas is still around, it is even more urgent for him to give his long overdue Bir Zeit speech, telling his people in Arabic that the price of a Palestinian state is recognition of a Jewish one, and that the conflict will not end with the “return” of the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war the Arabs started to a place where those descendants have never lived. It will end with their resettlement in the Arab states that started the war, where those descendants have lived their entire lives, deprived of basic civil and human rights by the countries of their birth.

If Abbas cannot give his Bir Zeit speech, it is not likely he can preside over a peaceful state. Moreover, as President Obama noted, we do not even know what the successor to Abbas will look like. Perhaps it is time to rethink a Palestinian state, not rush to create one.

But Rick seems to have forgotten the 'fierce moral urgency' that the Obami attribute to the creation of a 'Palestinian state.'

The real explanation begins with President Obama's long-standing friendship with Rashid Khalidi, now a professor at Bir Zeit on the Hudson and a former spokesman for the PLO. It continues with 20 years of listening to Jeremiah Wright's anti-Semitic diatribes week in and week out. And both of those things sit on the bases of Obama's bitter, anti-colonialist father and his Muslim upbringing. Victor Davis Hanson probably came as close as anyone to getting it right when he wrote:

Does Team Obama really believe that a murderous autocratic cabal like Hamas is merely different from a democratic constitutional republic like Israel? At best we have naiveté at the helm (Obama thinks he can mesmerize misunderstood killers), at worst, a genuine feeling that Israel is an aggressive, Western imperialist power exploiting indigenous people of color who simply wish to be free--in other words, the Rev. Wright-Bill Ayers-Rashid Khalidi view of the Middle East.
That 'at worst' view is what makes Obama believe that there's a 'fierce moral urgency' to make a 'Palestinian state' and thus undo the 'injustice' that's been done to this imaginary 'people.' That's the truth - and not what Ethan Bronner writes in the New York Times.

Abu Mazen is aging. Obama and Kerry have less than three years left in office. And there's a fierce moral urgency to the creation of a 'Palestinian state.' So who gives a damn about Israel and the Jews?

Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Fatah, fierce moral urgency, Hamas, John Kerry, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, Victor Davis Hanson