This is a landmark piece in the Washington Post, in which Israeli ambassador Michael Oren argues that If Israel stands alone, well, it ain't so bad to be standing alone. It is a landmark because it reflects the news conventional wisdom even in the American mainstream that Israel has isolated itself (and isolated America with it). Note the defensive tone:
Isolation, of course, is not automatically symptomatic of bad policies.... Israel is not alone. And we have a great many friends, especially in the United States
Significant too, because Oren's string of hasbara lies is now so tiresome that it reads like chewed over Soviet propaganda:
The settlements are not the core of the conflict. Arabs attacked us for 50 years before the first settlements were built. Netanyahu froze new construction in the settlements for an unprecedented 10 months, and still the Palestinians refused to negotiate. Settlements are not the reason that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a unity pact with Hamas in May, or why, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month, Abbas denied the Jews’ 4,000-year connection to our homeland. As Abbas wrote in the New York Times in May, the Palestinian attempt to declare a state without making peace with Israel was about “internationalization of the conflict . . . to pursue claims against Israel” in the United Nations, not about settlements.
Desperate stuff. These people are scraping a barrel which has already been stripped bare. Deaf to reason or intelligence, immune to genuine offers of peace, nothing matters to them more than completing the Greater Israel project, whilst lying about their intentions, as they have done for 50 years. Nini reminded me of a Soviet era leader at the UN, now comes Oren with the same propaganda broadcast. It is so tired, so empty of reality, that it sounds like they go through the motions without believing it themselves, knowing, as they do, they have to keep the threadbare, fake narrative alive whilst they complete the agenda.
“it sounds like they go through the motions without believing it themselves”
Justice, most zionists in the public arena are well educated and intelligent enough to know that everything their job requires them to do and say is a lie. They all sound like pre programmed robots. Mono-toned and un-enthusiastic
Murder in NYC is not the reason the so-called “peace-process” has been all process and no peace. BUT EVEN SO it is right and proper for the NYPD to arrest murderers and the prosecutors to prosecute those accused. Why? Because murder is a BAD THING and ALSO ILLEGAL (in NYC).
SETTLERS residing in occupied territories is a BAD THING and also ILLEGAL. Confiscating land in occupied territories to build settlements (unless for reason of a suitably urgent military necessity) is also ILLEGAL and another BAD THING.
Therefore (irrespective of progress in the “peace-process” or of the price of coffee or the phases of the moon), the settlers should be removed and the settlements dismantled (see UNGA-465 (1980)). Many people praise the “RULE OF LAW”, and it is a good rule which should be enforced.
It goes from 2,000, to 3,000, and now to 4,000?!
Pick a mythological number and stick with it! At least it will make the lie more believable !
minus those commas!
2000 for the Fall of Jerusalem, 3000 for King David, 4000 for Abraham – conventional chronologies. If you’re in the business of believing what we read in the Scriptures you should note that Abraham found the Palestinians already there. Palestine is the historic homeland of many peoples – obviously so for Bible-believers and Bible-sceptics alike.
2000, 3000, or 4000 year old claims don’t fly in my book.
Not to mention, last time I checked, Israelis claim the land based on the Kingdom’s of David and Solomon, which last about 75 years.
So a 2/3/4 thousand year claim on a kindom that lasted several decades huh….boy that makes real sense. Thanks bible!
It’s almost as bad as people saying the Palestinians have no rights to the land simply because throughout history land changes hands and it doesn’t belong to anyone ever.
A convenient argument for people who currently own the land in question with pointier sticks.
There are many strange things in the human mind but the belief that these claims could fly high as kites is one of the very strangest.
RE: “Settlements are not the reason that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas…in his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month, Abbas denied the Jews’ 4,000-year connection to our homeland.” ~ Oren
MY COMMENT: Yes, Oren & Co. desperately want the Palestinians to acknowledge “the Jews’ 4,000-year connection” to Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the occupied West Bank) so that it will legitimate Israel’s continued colonization and ultimate annexation of the West Bank.
Avigdor Lieberman & Co. were very upset by Obama’s having referred to the Holocaust, etc. as justifying Israel’s existence in his June 2009 Cairo speech. For instance, check out this whiny ‘hissy fit’ by Melanie Phillips on 6/04/09.
While the Holocaust, etc. might well justify the existence of Israel, the Eretz Israel crowd fears that it does not necessarily justify Israel’s absorption of “Judea and Samaria” [a/k/a the "disputed" West Bank (f/k/a the occupied West Bank)] . Consequently, they want the “Biblical narrative” used to justify Israel’s existence because they see it as being more specific to “Judea and Samaria”.
By referring to Israel as the ‘historic homeland’ of ‘the Jewish people’ in his recent speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama has – for the settlers in the West Bank and their supporters – acknowledged that “Judea and Samaria” is/are a legitimate part of Israel. That was probably the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. Of course, the two-state solution had long been in an advanced state of Rigor mortis, so a proper Christian burial was probably in order. Obama is a Christian, right? I can never keep that straight.
“… Obama is a Christian, right?”
Obama is a puppet, on a string…
“the Jews’ 4,000-year connection to our homeland”
Look at the pale bastard Michael Oren. He has no biological connection to ancient Palestine, or has he? Ancient Hebrews were light brown, like all people of the Levante. Oren’s family probably is from Eastern Europe and converted to Judaism.
He probably has not one percent of the connection to Jerusalem compared to an Arab Palestinian.
“To paraphrase one of George Washington’s contemporaries — if that be isolation, make the most of it.”
Washington had access to half a continent and didn’t need anything or anyone else. The US only joined the world the century after.
Israel is a basket case without foreign trade. There is no hinterland with loam soils one meter deep.The Indians there are Palestinians and they won’t be bought with alcohol and blankets.
4000 years of Jewish homeland my ass. The property was foreclosed.
Seafoid, the Canaanites had already settled the land long before the Jews discovered it and therefore have a more legitimate claim to it. And we all know that the Palestinians and the ancestors of the Lebanese of today that were nicknamed “Phoenicians” by the Greeks are rooted in the Canaanites.
‘Canaanites’ by Jonathan Tubb of the British Museum reminds us that the Phoenicians were a subset of the Canaanites and that it was they who gave alphabetic writing to the western world.
He gives two etymologies for ‘Canaan’, one connecting it with an Indo-E word meaning ‘blue cloth’ and the other with a Semitic word meaning ‘be subdued’, in which case ‘Canaan’ would mean something like ‘occupied territories’.
According to archaeologist Finkelstein, ca. 1200 BC the settled life in non-coastal Canaan almost vanished, probably as a result of a long period of drought. Then climate improved again and population with no distinguishing characteristics from other inhabitants of the area made a few innovations that can be discerned by archaeologists and started to settle, initially in what they call now Samaria, then also further south and north. Over 200 years the settled population increased from ca. 10,000 to 200,00.
Survivors of the severe demographic crisis of 1250-1200 BC had scant memories of what happened before and invented appropriately prestigious mythology, hence connections to Ur and Egypt and a tale of conquest and slaughter, culminating with an Arthurian figure of King David whose conquests of the entire Syria can be compared to Arthur conquering France.
Moreover, the climate improvement was not instantaneous and Judah became open to agriculture after the area of the central tribes and as a junior, but ultimately largest tribe has the most dire need to know that they are superior to the tribes to the north. Thus hitherto provincial Jerusalem became the center of the universe — students of mythology can cite a large number of such centers.
In short, Jews were not conquerors but a group of Canaanites who started as hill settlers despising “kings” from the coastal planes and who invented reasons to deem themselves superior. For example, neither pigs nor shellfish were available as the food in the hills, so dietary habits of lowlanders were declared unclean and sinful.
Ok, so let Palestine be a “homeland” for Jews – homeland does not equal “state”
And not for nothin – THIS MOFO IS EUROPEAN!!!
He’s as white as me!! Oren, YOUR PEOPLE CONVERTED CHIEF! Get over yourself
“in his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month, Abbas denied the Jews’ 4,000-year connection to our homeland.”
As I recall, he didn’t deny it. He just didn’t mention it.
I would have said that, as a human being, I have a 200,000 year connection to my East African “homeland”, until I read this.
“Archeologists from Tel Aviv University say eight human-like teeth found in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha’Ayin – 10 miles from Israel’s international airport – are 400,000 years old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, making them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered anywhere in the world”
link to dailymail.co.uk
So maybe all human beings have a 400,000 year connection to Israel. That makes it a bit less exclusive.
So why didn’t the Palestinians negotiate while Israel had stopped settlement activities for however many months. Or did they really stop? Or were there other issues that never get mentioned when someone who supports the occupation brings up this supposed settlement freeze? Why is it not rebutted, or at least rebutted more often? Is the strategic thing to do just to ignore the charge and assume everyone knows the reality?