Howard Schneider has an article on the Washington Post website outlining the history and controversy around Netanyahu’s unprecedented demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state or homeland before negotiations can begin. The issue has been covered more thoroughly elsewhere, but Schneider does include this interesting quote from incoming Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren:
“During Oslo, the thinking was: We don’t need recognition. We are strong. We are the winners. Give them a chance. Give them an opportunity to acclimate to peace. This was wrong.”
Wow. “Give them an opportunity to acclimate to peace.” Stripping away the p.r.-speak Oren is essentially saying – Oslo was a chance for Palestinians to accept their defeat. Which they didn’t do.
Also, are we to take from this quote that Israel no longer sees itself as strong and “the winners?” Schneider’s article shows that Netanyahu’s new demand is a stalling tactic from an Israeli government that is increasingly panicked that it will have to make real concessions. It should be treated as such.
Related posts:
- This is beginning to look like panic – Israeli Knesset considers bill making it illegal to criticize Israel as a Jewish state
- Jim Baker says Netanyahu smelled Obama’s ‘weakness’
- Netanyahu would deny Palestinians 4 rights of any sovereign state, and ‘Washington Post’ won’t tell you that
- The lobby parrots Netanyahu on the Jewish civil right to Palestinians’ homes
- the great Jewish awakening (thanks to Netanyahu)
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And contrast that with the new assertiveness of the House Arab, PM (unelected) Fayad. His desire to declare a state within 2 years will surely unleash a re-evaluation of his "moderate" credentials, don't you think? The sooner the Palestinians renounce the armed struggle and turn instead to the anti-apartheid struggle, the better they will be. And, of course, they need to use Twitter.
Ahh, Mythbuster: 6th August 1990 – The most significant point was that the ANC announced that it was "suspending all armed actions with immediate affect" – this would end almost thirty years of armed struggle against Apartheid…In February 1990 President FW de Klerk announced Nelson Mandela's release and began the slow dismantling of the Apartheid system. Note: suspending of the armed struggle came AFTER the apartheid system began to be dismantled. We should not expect a greater level of trust from the Palestinians than the ANC was willing to give the South African government.
Avigdor is saying that the Netanyahu government will not support Iranian democracy forces until street protesters begin carrying banners demanding recognitition of Israel.
you mean de Klerk & Co didn't demand recognition of S Africa as a white state, or a homeland for the white S Afrikaners as a condition precedent to commence dismantling those black pens?
Is Obama next?
apparently not.
I agtree with your analysis. But the Palestinians live in a world where Israel's friends will support Israel's apartheid to the bitter end. The RSA had no such loyal friends. Different facts, different strategy.
Gee, could that mean that white non-Jews are not as racist as AIPAC jews and Israelis?
I think Iran should apologize for the Holocaust. Hitler was acting under direct orders from Tehran. Man, I have got to stop reading Charles Krauthammer.
That the Arabs/Palestines recongize Israel as a "Jewish state" and the constant refrain that "we defeated them", "we are the victor" screams the zionst obsession with 'power'….the attitude tangled with the jewish victim psychosis , of being historicaly powerless. They know very well that "honor" is the dominating concept in Arab culture. The Arabs are never going to bend to that. So far Israel hasn't actually defeated them or won anything, just confiscated land from people with no army with an army provided to them courtesy of the USA.. They aren't victors, it's a stand off so far. They aren't l.e.a.r.n.i.n.g.
Migrants boost Jewish settler numbers in West Bank MAALEH ADUMIM, West Bank – Israelis moving to the West Bank accounted for more than a third of settler population growth in recent years, government statistics show, undercutting Israel's argument that it is continuing settlement construction only to accommodate growing families already living there. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090624/ap_on_re_mi_e...
It has nothing to do with power and everything to do with peace. You say "Oslo was a chance for Palestinians to accept their defeat". For once I agree with you. It was an opportunity for them to surrender. Instead they chose to keep fighting to destroy Israel. The consequences are on their heads. Honor may be a dominating concept in Arab culture, but "we're not giving you squat while you are trying to exterminate us" is a pretty strong concept in Jewish culture. The Israelis are willing to make peace, they are not willing to make hudna. If the Palestinians are unwilling to accept that Israel is the Jewish state, then that shows that they intend to keep trying to destroy Israel. Basically, you are saying that because of their "honor" there is no way to make peace with the Palestinians. That the only thing they will accept is Israel's destruction or their own. I hope that isn't the case.
Nice analysis, Heinrich. This is a howler: "Instead they chose to keep fighting to destroy Israel. " Yeah, those Palestinian farmers who get beaten while trying to work their fields are really asking for it. Put down your Children's Bible, acknowledge that "Creation Science" is not science, and remember this: 30 years from now, you children might actually read one of your old posts. Do you really want them to say, "Man, Daddy sounded like Bull Connor."
tire necklace – how do you figure? It is as if you said that Nazi Germany shows that AIPAC jews and Israelis are not as racist as Germans. I don't see the point in producing lists of whom is more extremely racist than whom. It tends to provide justifications or excuses for racists who are "not as bad" as other racists.
Thom: how about a democratic secular state like all other reasonable states?
Excellent point. It's just narcisscism. Did we have to be worse than Saddam before we could condemn the illegal invasion of Iraq?
Mooser will be along shortly to tell Thom to lay off the ziocain.
Welcome to the downside of being part of a group with national aspirations (or a nation). You're an innocent resident of Dresden and boom-fwooosh, you are a crispy critter because the Nazis bombed London and the Allies retaliated. Worst part is, you didn't even vote for them. If that analogy was too tough for you, let me say it right out. The Palestinians are suffering the depredations of war because their leaders choose to make war instead of surrendering. I'm not sure why the Palestinians and their supporters have a hard time grasping this. The Israelis aren't doing the blockade and attacking the terrorists salted through the Palestinian population for fun. They are doing it because the Palestinians as a group refuse to stop attacking Israel. Do you think the Allies should have stopped in WWII without the Axis powers surrendering? Oh, wait, you personally would think that. I mean do you think someone who sees the Axis powers as the bad guys would think that the Allies should have stopped before the Axis powers surrendered. As for creation "science", I'm not sure what your point is. In any case you are preaching to the choir (pun intended). I have a thorough understanding of the theory of evolution and I think it is an accurate description of how complex life formed. Creationism is unscientific, regardless of what they choose to call it. As for my children, Hamas wants to exterminate them as well as every other Jew on Earth. It's not like they are subtle about it, it is right there in their charter (which they refuse to change).
Jewish State is the common mistranslation of Judenstaat as conceived by Herzl. From Palestinian Dream, Zionist Hasbarah, America. Judenstaat has two possible meanings: 1. a state in which Jews are privileged over non-Jews, or 2. a state from which the non-Jews have been ethnically cleansed.
"As for my children, Hamas wants to exterminate them as well as every other Jew on Earth. It's not like they are subtle about it, it is right there in their charter (which they refuse to change). " Despite whatever Hamas has in their "charter" they have made statements to the contrary in discussions of a settlements. But most of all I have seen no indications that Hamas is that Stupid or thinks they can "physically eliminate" Israel. What they can do if they gain a viable state is reclaim their water and other resources that Israel confiscates because Israel needs those resources to survive…much less to expand. That resource theft would end if a 'fair' settlement was reached. Hamas doesn't need to destroy Israel..all they need is a Palestine state in control of it's own land and resources to marginlize and weaken Israel where Israel has to scramble and actually expend economic capital to buy what it so far has been able to steal without paying for anything.
The main problem is that you can't have a successful democracy when 51% of the people want to exterminate the other 49%. The Palestinians refuse to make peace if the terms do not include flooding Israel with enough Palestinians to vote in a pro-genocide government. If you think the rest of the world would do anything to stop it, then you obviously haven't been paying attention to the large number of genocides the world ignores. Real ones, not "a few hundred of our people got killed in the crossfire". As for secular like all other reasonable states, you mean like England? With the Church of England and the Queen whose official titles include "Defender of the Faith"? Or about half of Europe with various national religions? Wikipedia lists about 45 countries that don't have a state religion. Maybe that list is incomplete. There are over 190 countries on Earth. That would make the secular nations a minority. Oh, and not all those secular states are democratic or reasonable. They include North Korea and China. Funny how you have no complaints about non-Muslims being forbidden to even set foot in Mecca. No complaints about the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries (death penalty for converting to Christianity in some of them).
I can't resist Thom…he's too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. "The Palestinians are suffering the depredations of war because their leaders choose to make war instead of surrendering""….. You mean the Palestines should surrender to the jews like the jews surrendered to the Nazis Thom? As I have said many times, the twisted psyche of the zionist….revenge!,revenge!, victim!,victor!…ozzes from every pore of the zionist meme.
I was thinking exactly the same thing
I thought that was Palestine's air force bombing Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006. And it was Palestine that invaded 4 countries, expanding into their territory and only pulling out of the aborted gains (Sinai and south Lebanon) when faced with military and guerilla resistance. Yeah, occupied Palestine.
My you're scraping the bottom of that barrel hard. And if that is not enough, you go into personal attacks based on lies. I would not have placed North Korea and China in the realm of reasonable states, but then again I am not a Zionist.
actually, that analogy was pretty lame
"Netanyahu's new demand is a stalling tactic from an Israeli government that is increasingly panicked" Aluf Benn wrote in Ha'aretz yesterday about the difference between Benny Begin and his terrorist Prime Minister father. The former is demanding that Israel be recognised as a Jewish state. The latter said Israel didn't need recognition from anyone. Zionism is in the process of being destroyed by the great Likud revolution that started in 1977. You can't hand over a barely viable country that depends on international goodwill and trade to a bunch of thugs for 32 years and expect things to be tickety boo when they behave as expected. This is what the end of the Yesha project and Zionist supremacy will look like : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d7fa0ea4-57b1-11de-8c47... The day the Arabs take over.
Hey Thom, remember that old Jewish lady, at the demo, with a star-spangled cat o' nine tails in one hand and a blue and white buzzsaw in the other? When she and her section go Israel is getting cut off. Then truly you'll be banging your head against the holy stones for deliverance.
Yeah those Palestinians as a collective invaded lands far away the equal to Poland and Russia, France, Belgium, etc. They sent their Stukas, or is it F-16s–diving down on foreigners so they could occupy those foreign lands. And all the while all those who opposed them had to do was to surrender, like France did. The Germans, which unfortunately included Dresden innocents, were not doing what they did and attacking terrorists who rose up from the Polish underground, the French underground, the Warsaw Ghetto etc (and the Brits in Palestine Mandate who called e.g., Irgun terrorists?) simply to survive? Those resistance fighters of WW2 just insanely refused as a group to stop attacking the Germans. They actually demanded the Germans leave their homeland simply because they themselves had lived there for so many generations. How naive can you be? They actually wanted to exterminate all the Germans and always said so. After the war they killed and dispossessed millions of ethnic Germans and nobody blinked an eye. Ike, a German American helped all he could at a time when the largest ethic group in the USA–was German. As to how man emerged, was it from the slime over millions of human years, or in a few G-D days as the old Jewish belief holds? Where's the inconsistency? Nobody knows how long one day is measured by G-D, nor how G-D did it. Check out time lapse photography or film. Is G-D's measure the same as yours? If you think so, you are the very definition of egotistical.
I think Bibi and co despite all the newly minted Hasbara and the sabra bravado and 2 fingers to the world are coming to the realisation that they have built themselves into an impossible corner with the settlers and a peace process they have procrastinated to death. The world has changed significantly since January where Israel felt it could launch an unprovoked attack on the people of Gaza that left 1300 people dead. That would simply not be possible today. I wonder if the Israeli Government has a plan B to relocate its ministries if Israel goes the way of French Algeria. If not, why not ? Is everything contingent on Yesha working out? That strikes me as particularly naive.
And to remind Ed and Citizen they are anti-semites. Mooser needs to write a new script for Borak–it takes place in the great nation state of Israel; I bet he could get that banned YouTube video clip of drunk American Jewish college students in Jerusalem for free to serve as inspiration. Cohen is as Cohen does. Slavs are always slavs–remember how the term slave originated? Borak could get that in there too; he could set up settlers for how many hilarious Hollywood moments? Better than Borak sweeping down from the sky to thrust his ass in the white n*****'s face on E Channel.
Easy, American. It's merely biblical: Eye for an eyelash. Joshua didn't even need that excuse as he had G-D's will to rape and murder the innocent locals. Hitler was predated by Hebrew ideology and philosophy by many centuries.
Who is more suicidal than the Jews? Look at the historic events they celebrate. OK. It's true either they are celebrating killing themselves off so as not to be ruled by Romans, or killing innocents to take over land. It is the Samson Option in the end, when events they triggered catch up to them. Americans are just pawns in their game, which is to find immorality via blood line on this earth; the goy Zionists are useful tools, with their eyes in the imaginary sky, as are the goy whores pretending they represent the American people. So, what's new?
I especially like how he jumps from "The Palestinians, like Non-Nazi Germans, suffer because of their leaders" to "They ALL want to EXTERMINATE us" without even blinking. Thom doubleplusgood doublethinker.
Who Me? I'm just an American accountant, living in my gated community; I pay taxes to hire those goys to protect me from their own family, same as I pay taxes to support Israel right or wrong. I only want my son to be a Jewish racist, so he does not end up like my childhood pal, Phil. You have to always think about how the goys are killing us by kindness, you know the silent holocaust? Nothing is worse than lack of anti-semitism because without anti-semitism, we jews would not be able to persist in our collective priestly mission. We might actually have to face what it is to be fully human. G-D forbid.
Have you read that book "The Evolution of God"? Some people really fear that God is no longer a racist.
The whites didn't leave South Africa en masse. Neither will the Israelis. They will just fight to preserve their dominence for as long as possible. And when they can't, they will cut a deal–just like F.W. de Klerk. And they will be called "peacemakers."
At least he didn't include the obligatory "Munich" and "appeasement" references.
Did you know that Palestinians were born with a genetic trait of anti-Semitism? Total bulls*t, of course. But Thom just keeps channeling the lie that every Palestinian wants to kill "the Joos" so that he can justify the IDF killing a lot of innocent Palestinians. I think its called projection.
It won't work in parallel to South Africa. In Israel/Palestine, that is a formula for continuing or worsening the status quo.
Very lame.
It all depends on the secular ashkenazis who pay their taxes and keep the whole show on the road so that the Orthodox and the settlers can pretend that they are living the Torah in Erez Israel. At the end of the day, nobody with a choice is forced to live in Israel. If you take away the Yank subsidies and the freebies that come with the occupation and Israel has to pay its way like everyone else, what is that going to mean for the economy? The whole economy and society of Israel is based around eternal war. It's no coincidence that Masada is one of the top tourist sites in Israel. The South Africa situation would be a positive scenario for Israel. The Afrikaners have nowhere to go. the Ashkenazis have choices. I feel sorry for the Sephardim. In a crisis situation I'm sure the Ashkenazis will dump them.
Brilliant book, explains Jewish and Christian psyche better than anything else I read.
Like so many things that are untrue which appear on this site, the claim that Netanyahu was the one who thought up the idea that the Palestinians should recognize Israel as a Jewish state is wrong. Olmert was the first and Tzippi Livni repeated it.
This issue is really interesting given the importance it seems to be gaining and all its different facets. E.g., what's its motivation? What does it mean? What might it come to mean? And etc., etc. Difficult to say for sure but what's got me to wondering in addition is whether it's really smart from Israel's perspective. That is, I have no doubt it is from Netanyahu's in that I think it has the dual design of "rallying the troops" so to speak by having jews (justifiably) feel they deserve that recognition, and, secondarily, Netanyahu putting up yet another roadblock up in the peace process. But from the wider or longer term perspective it seems to me it might have the unintended effect of calling into question the continued basic legitimacy of Israel. Above all Israel has tried to identify itself as part of "the West," and yet what is this demand other than Israel saying it wants an exemption from what can seem the ever-more important insistence by the West of racial/ethnic/tribal blindness, right? Sort of like how Israel's occupation of the West Bank and etc. has over time drawn attention to not only to that occupation but the circumstances surrounding Israel's very founding with the Nakba and etc. Might backfire pretty badly, especially since it can seem that this new demand isn't even getting much respect from the West now and might not even prove to be very good dynamite. And if it fails in that *short/narrow* run even….
I believe Judea Pearl was babbling about the demand before either Olmert or Livni, and I think David Makovsky was talking about it before Pearl. I do not know the ancestry before Makovsky, but he is close to Dennis Ross and during the Oslo Process, Ross acted as Israel's lawyer instead of serving US interests.
Actually, they haven't made statements to the contrary. What they have said is that they are willing to graciously accept a Palestinian State including all of the West Bank. They have not said that they are willing to stop trying to destroy Israel in exchange for their state. Hey, I am willing to accept a million dollars, that doesn't mean I am willing to do anything you want in exchange. When the Palestinian leadership says that they are willing to live in peace, permanently, with an Israel that they are not allowed to attack, or enter (i.e., no right of return), then there will be something to talk about. If it is Hamas, they can change their charter. Until then it is just empty words. Even after that they would probably be lying, but let's face it, if someone wants peace, the least they can do is make a good effort to pretend they don't plan to kill you later.
I mean the Palestinians should surrender to the Jews like the Japanese surrendered to the Americans. The Nazis clearly wanted to exterminate the Jews, while the Jews clearly do not want to exterminate the Palestinians. I'm not sure how much more obvious it could be given that the Palestinian population of Gaza increased during the biggest military operation Israel has done there in decades. The Israelis had the fire power and soldiers to kill everyone in Gaza in the 27 days of the attack. Instead, fewer than 1 person killed per hundred soldiers per day, including the more than 700 identified terrorists killed. That should demonstrate to any sane person that the Israelis are not interested in wiping the Palestinians out. As I said, any sane person, so most of the Jew-haters here, not so much.
Then you are as stupid as he is.
You'd better hope not. The Palestinians hate America as much or more than Israel. You want them to take over and start smuggling nukes into American cities?
Don't you get tired of using the same arguments over and over again, most of which don't make any sense whatsoever? Seeing as the Japanese were at fault and were the aggressors, there is a slight difference between them and the Palestinians. 1300 people killed in 27 days is nothing short of a massacre. And how exactly do you identify a person as a terrorist – being Arab and a male I suspect?
Here's an excerpt from Israel's declaration of independence. ***** …Accordingly we, members of the People's Council, representatives of the Jewish Community of Eretz-Israel and the Zionist movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British mandate over Eretz-Israel and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel..
Hey, you guys keep making the same faulty arguments, my responses change when your arguments change. When you say 2+2=7, I say, "no 2+2=4". If you get it wrong again, then my response is still "2+2=4". The question is the same so the answer is the same. But you are getting the analogy. The analogy works just fine. The Japanese were at fault and were the aggressors, the Arabs are at fault and are the aggressors. When I said "identified terrorists" I didn't mean merely "determined that he was a terrorist" I mean people whose names and identities have been confirmed and who are known members of terrorist organizations. There are also about 300 confirmed civilian dead (89 of whom were children and 49 of whom were women). There were 162 who were "Arab and male" and not children who have not been identified as to whether they were civilians or terrorists. And no, when 10,000 soldiers with tanks, fully automatic weapons, fighter jets, attack helicopters, artillery pieces, etc. go into a heavily populated area to commit a massacre over 27 days, the casualties are in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Figure a 12 hour fighting day, each soldier killing one person every two hours (sounds pretty conservative actually) and you are looking at over 1.5 million dead. So no, what happened in Gaza was an extremely well targeted attack against terrorists who surround themselves with human shields to maximize civilian casualties. Sorry, but even the Geneva Conventions are clear that you are allowed to attack an enemy's military targets even if the enemy puts civilians around them.
Us make faulty arguments? Nice Joke. And no, the Arabs weren't at fault seeing as it was the Israelis who started the 1967 war, not the Arabs. Every story has been one act of Israeli aggression after another. And when you say identified as terrorists, I suppose the IDF carried out a full independent investigation with experts going through all the data and they allowed the UN to verify it? No? The figures you give are so different from the ones we got from Palestinian doctors (the people that actually witnessed seeing dead people) that it's laughable. And killing 1,300 people out of a population of 1.5 million would be the equivalent of killing 260,000 US citizens in a 27 day period if this happened to the US. And it was the IDF who invented the use of Human Shields, something that is well-documented unlike the baseless accusations against Hamas. I suppose most of the allegations you make are just you looking in the mirror.
If the Lebanese didn't want to be invaded by Israel, then they shouldn't have sent terrorists to attack Israel.
I didn't say the Palestinians were doing an impressive job of making war on Israel, just that they choose to do so. And by your analogy, it would be more like the "resistance fighters" were demaning that the Germans leave Germany. Plus I don't remember any official groups declaring their intention to exterminate the Germans. Hamas's charter doesn't just say that they want to beat Israel, it says that they want to exterminate the Jews. Oh, please, the old "was it a literal day?" guff? Let me guess, you are a creationist, as well as all your other irrational beliefs. All living things on Earth bear the types of imperfections, differences, and similarities that you'd expect from systems that evolved through mutation and natural selection. Imperfections, differences, and similarities that you wouldn't expect from even the most incompetent designer.
The non-terrorist supporting Palestinians suffer because of their leaders along with the pro-terrorist Palestinians. I never said they all want to exterminate us, just that they would vote in a pro-genocide government, just like they elected the pro-genocide government of Hamas.
Israel is dancing on world stage without clothes. Because world know Israel better than before. Killed their prim minster Poisson Yaser Arafat. Make big wall around Gaza,bl aim Iran for everything make million and million Palestine in refuges UNO will take care and Zionist will make money providing food and shelter and medicine for UNO. Switzerland is laughing and people are suffering this time to true story.
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