I need to register the fact that Rudy Giuliani in attacking Barack Obama for alleged flipflopping said that he had told "a pro-Israel group" that he was for an undivided Jerusalem and then changed his mind the next day. Fair point, a reference to Obama's shameful performance before AIPAC in June. Giuliani then said that he was for an undivided Jerusalem, and so is John McCain. They want neverending bloodshed in the Middle East.
Also: Can you imagine any politician referring to the NRA as a "pro-gun group"? No. You can't. That's because people know about the NRA, know it's the gun lobby. AIPAC is not a household word, though it is far more powerful than the NRA. Inexcusable. The journalists are to blame.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden told a conference call of Jewish media: “AIPAC does not speak for the entire American Jewish community…There’s other organizations as strong and as consequential….I’ve never disagreed with AIPAC on the objective…Whenever I’ve had disagreement with AIPAC it has always been a
tactical disagreement, not a substantive disagreement.” I suppose that's progress.
Those who wanbt never ending bloodshed want Israel to capitulate to terror. Those who want peace and know how peace is achiveved know this:
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: ISRAEL PROVES THERE IS A MILITARY SOLUTION TO TERRORISM
…Anyone who visits Jerusalem today will not see the ghost town it was in 2002, when Israel was absorbing an average of one suicide bombing a week.
… How did things improve so dramatically, and so quickly, for Palestinians and Israelis alike? Begin by recalling Israel's assassination, in late March, of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. At the time, the action was all but universally condemned as reckless and counterproductive. "By granting Yassin the martyrdom he craved, the Israelis have provided a motive for new suicide attacks," went an editorial in the normally pro-Israel Daily Telegraph of London. "More young Palestinians will fall in love with death, and more Israeli civilians will die with them."
Yet what followed for Israel were nearly six consecutive terror-free months. This wasn't because the Palestinian terror groups lacked for motivation to carry out attacks. It was because they lacked for means. The leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Yasser Arafat's own al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades had to spend their time figuring out how to survive, not on planning fresh attacks. The Israeli army incarcerated terror suspects in record numbers–some 6,000 now sit in Israeli prisons–which in turn helped yield information for future arrests. Most importantly, the security fence has begun to make the Israeli heartland nearly impenetrable to Palestinian infiltrators. (August's double suicide bombing in Beersheba happened precisely because there is still no security fence separating that town from the Palestinian city of Hebron, from where the bombers were dispatched.)
Taken together, these measures prove what a legion of diplomats, pundits and reporters have striven to deny: that there is a military solution to the conflict.
AND THIS- From the ultra-liberal Ha'aretz paper, July 3, 2008:
During the past five years the security forces, primarily the Shin Bet, have had impressive success. The number of Israelis killed as a result of Palestinian terrorism dropped from 426 in 2002 to only 13 last year. Whoever argues that it is not possible to win decisively in the asymmetric warfare against terrorism, will have to agree that in the West Bank Israel has achieved this to the maximum degree possible.
AND THIS:
THE ONLY 'SOLUTION' [FOR ISRAEL] IS MILITARY
Resolution occurs when one party realizes it can no longer pursue its aims, and gives them up. This usually follows its unambiguous vanquishment, either via a military collapse (as in World War II) or internal rot (as in the Cold War).
"In every case I can think of," writes strategist Michael Ledeen, "peace has come about at the end of a war in which there was a winner and a loser. The winner imposed terms on the loser, and those terms were called 'peace.'"
…Diplomacy rarely ends conflicts. Hardly a single major international conflict has been concluded due to someone's clever schema. The idea that a "peace process" can take the place of the dirty work of war is a conceit. Again, to quote Ledeen, "Peace cannot be accomplished simply because some visiting envoy, with or without an advanced degree in negotiating from the Harvard Business School, sits everyone down around a table so they can all reason together."
…"Specialists in terrorism have been surprised – some of us are even amazed," admits Ely Karmon of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, "by the endurance, the patience, the relative calm of the Israeli public to what has happened in the last year and a half." Contrarily, the Palestinians' morale is plummeting, and despair is setting in as Palestinian authority chairman Yasser Arafat's ruinous leadership locks them in a conflict they realize they are losing.
History teaches that what appears to be endless carnage does come to an end when one side gives up. It appears increasingly likely that the Palestinians are approaching that point, suggesting that if Israel persists in its present policies it will get closer to victory.
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Peace NOW!