Tell the NYT: Israelis Have Lost Interest in the ‘Peace Process’
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Labor party chair Shelly Yachimovich ran on a platform of economic equality, ignoring the peace process.
Photo Credit: Avishag Shaar Yashuv/Flash 90
For the past couple of years, the line pushed hard by the American Jewish anti-Zionist Left — the ones that love Israel so much they want to destroy it in order to save it, Peter Beinart, J Street, Thomas L. Friedman, Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Reform Movement, the New Israel Fund, etc. — has been that American Jews have become distanced from Israel because it has moved sharply to the right, abandoning democracy and liberal values, becoming a racist theocracy.
For example, here’s Friedman in December:
Israel’s friends need to understand that the center-left in Israel is dying. The Israeli election in January will bring to power Israeli rightists who never spoke at your local Israel Bonds dinner. These are people who want to annex the West Bank. Bibi Netanyahu is a dove in this crowd. The only thing standing between Israel and national suicide any more is America and its willingness to tell Israel the truth. [emphasis in original]
And here is Daniel Sokatch of the New Israel fund just a week ago:
If the polls are correct, on January 22, Israelis will elect the most right-wing government in Israeli history. It is likely to be even more hardline than the current coalition, on whose watch Israel’s relations with the Obama administration soured over disagreements over Iran, Israel’s expanding settlement enterprise, and the moribund peace process.
Oops.
How many times do I have to say it? These idiots do not have a clue about what Israelis think, what their priorities are, and of course how they vote.
This election was anything but a victory for the right wing. The Likud, perhaps in part because of the replacement of some relatively moderate members of its list with those farther to the right, ended up with far fewer seats than predicted. Although the new Bayit Hayehudi party — among those, in Friedman’s words, “who want to annex [parts of] the West Bank” — did remarkably well, it too did less well than expected.
The big surprise was the second-place finish of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. Centrist, concerned with social issues — including Haredi draft-avoidance — and the cost of apartments and food. So much for theocracy.
Interestingly — at least, it should be interesting to Sokatch, Friedman, Beinart, et al — there was little discussion during the campaign of “the peace process,” “the occupation” and the “two-state solution” with which they are obsessed. Everybody in Israel, with the exception of the European- and NIF-funded Left, knows that the “peace process” is dead because there is simply no common ground between the Israeli need for security and the Arab desire to destroy Israel.
No, the issues uppermost in their minds are Iran — and here, most Israelis have confidence in Netanyahu — and questions of social and economic policy.
In other words, after survival, Israelis are concerned with how best to improve the functioning of their democracy, how to share the burdens and distribute the benefits of their free society — exactly the areas in which the patronizing liberal American Jews think that they know better than the ‘primitive’ Israelis!
Now that they have been proven wrong, will they shut up? Of course not. But they should. As a person who has lived in Israel and the U.S., who today is close to children and grandchildren living in Israel and therefore can compare the two systems, I can say that I am far more worried about the future of democracy in the USA than in Israel.
Yes, Israel lives in constant threat of war, but most of its people have better access to good health care than Americans do. Yes, the cost of apartments is astronomical, but I am confident that this will shortly change, while the goal of home ownership is moving farther away for many Americans. And our political process…
My advice to Beinart, Friedman, Jacobs, Sokatch and friends is that they should just leave Israel alone — it is dealing with its problems well enough by itself — and concentrate on fixing things here in the U.S.
Visit Fresno Zionism.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Vic Rosenthal created FresnoZionism.org to provide a forum for publishing and discussing issues about Israel and the Mideast conflict, especially where there is a local connection. Rosenthal believes that America’s interests are best served by supporting the democratic state of Israel, the front line in the struggle between Western civilization and radical Islam. The viewpoint is not intended to be liberal or conservative — just pro-Israel.
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You can't make peace with terrorist they don't understand peace they are taught to hate and kill from the time they are old enough to understand
So much for Friedman and Sokatch as prognosticators!
I'm getting tired of American Jews here safe in the diaspora second guessing Israel on security matters — or intervening in Israeli elections. And that goes for the Right as well as the Left.
I dunno, I wish the Satmar Rebbe had intervened more successfully; I'd have been much happier with UTJ having lost a seat than gained one …
Also this line is hilarious coming from any American on the right: "Yes, Israel lives in constant threat of war, but most of its people have better access to good health care than Americans do."
" the Satmar Rebbe"
My opinion holds double for any American Jew who thinks that there should not be a Medinat Yisrael!
Ending Zionism must be among goals of Muslim unity: Ahmadinejad.
PRESS TV (Iran) Sun Jan 27, 2013 11:18AM GMT.
http://presstv.com/detail/2013/01/27/285808/muslim-unity-must-end-zionism/
Iran�s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on Muslim nations to pursue.
�specific aims� to achieve unity, saying putting an end to Zionism should be.
among the goals of unity.
�Under circumstances that the corrupt, uncultured and murderous Zionists are.
occupying and killing oppressed people, we should not sit idly by,�.
President Ahmadinejad said in an address to the 26th International Islamic.
Unity Conference in Tehran on Sunday.
He added that Muslims should unite against the evil and bullying powers and.
noted that monotheism, justice and love for humans are among other.
objectives of unity among Muslim nations.
The Iranian chief executive censured the existence of dissension among.
Muslims and stated that an incomplete understanding of the Holy Quran and.
Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is the reason behind such differences.
Ahmadinejad further criticized the ongoing economic system in the world,
saying the global economic system transferes the assets of nations to the.
pockets of certain powers.
The 26th International Islamic Unity Conference started in Iran�s capital,
Tehran, with the presence of Shia and Sunni thinkers from 102 countries. The
participants are scheduled to discuss the issue of unity among Islamic Ummah.
and the existing problems of the Muslim world during the two-day event.
The 25th International Islamic Unity Conference was held in Tehran in.
February 2012. A major part of the conference revolved around the topic of.
Islamic Awakening and the popular uprisings in the Arab world.
The Islamic unity conference provides an opportunity for scholars to share.
views and review problems facing Muslims while presenting solutions.
Shelly Yachimovitch is right. Please read Joan Peters' " From Time Immemorial". Friedman, like Nicolas Kristof, both good men , are wrong about Israel. Also read "Myths and Facts", by Mitchell G. Bard. Get the facts and don't fall for Edward Said as Noam Chomsky did.
Joan Peters' work has been totally debunked. Promoting it serves our side no good whatsoever. This is especially true when we complain about Arab untruths — when we promote our own untruths at the same time we look like hypocrites and give up the moral high ground.
Charlie Hallm you are mistaken. I lived through the years before, during and after Israel became a State. I also had and still have family there. My uncle Yacov was a pioneer in Israel and owned Oranges and Grapefruit orchards. He hired Palestinian Arabs to work on the land he owned and actually bought from the Palestinian owner. Joan Peters described it the way I remember it. By the way, Historian Benny Morris, who is used a lot by Palestinian
Arabs to support their Myths, has retracted his report about how the Israelis chased the Arabs away, when government documents relating to that and other myths, were released and debunked them all. Morris was a young extreme idealist leftist who admitted he was wrong and apologized. But the Palestinian Arabs continue to use him as the justification for their hate. It was mostly because the surrounding Arab countries told the Palestinian inhabitants to get out of the area so that those countries coud destroy Israel, that most of them left. They were promised the whole of Israel in addition to their former homes back.They did not want to be caught in the middle. I was a mere child when I lived in Tel-Aviv before its roads were surfaced.Now I am an old lady but my memory is quite good. So please stop spreading those myths around. The Jewish people in Israel have suffered enough as most of them are holocaust survivors and their families. They do not need to be scapegoated anymore. Your kind of attitude is the kind that could bring on another holocaust. Also, keep in mind that the only peace the Palestinians will agree to, the right of return, will convert Israel into and Arab state, which is what the Palestinians want, one way or another. They are still launching rockets into Israel injuring men, women, children and soldiers. There were no borders to all the Middle Eastern countries until, under the British and French Mandate with the League of Nations, all those Borders were established at the same time that Israel's were. They are also arbitrary. So if Israel loses her borders, none of those countries should have theirs, as all those lands were part of the Ottoman Empire. The reason Joan Peter's Book was discredited is because it is so true. All the Books Noam Chomsky wrote were out and out lies. He is the greatest Jewish anti-semite in existence.
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