Redefining "What it means to be pro-Israel"
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By Ted Belman

The strategy of J Street was to revisit what it means to be pro-Israel and
to convince the public that its stance is really a pro-Israel one. To this
end, Washington Post published 5 Myths About Being 'Pro-Israel' by Joseph
Ben-Ami, J Street's Executive Director, which included this statement "And
forging a healthy friendship with Israel requires bursting some myths about
what it means to be pro-Israel.". I challenged its position in
<http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=990> J-Street is setting up strawmen and
speaks for a small minority

Having taken that position, it proceeded to call its friends to make the
case that Israel's true friends must save it from itself.

Thomas Friedman, in the NYT, put his shoulder wheel in
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/opinion/18friedman.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&
oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin> Obama and the Jews and argued "But
given the simmering controversy over whether Mr. Obama is "good for Israel,"
it's worth exploring this question: What really makes a pro-Israel
president?". I discussed this article in
<http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=1078#more-1078> Thomas Friedman misses
the mark.

Most recently Jeffrey Goldberg writing in the International Herald Tribune
under the title
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/18/opinion/edgoldberg.php> Israel's
"America Problem" writes "But what's needed now is a radical rethinking of
what it means to be pro-Israel." Hmmm. Let me think, Washington Post, NYT
and International Herald Tribune.

This is the same Jeffery Goldberg who recently interviewed Obama and
published details of the interview in Atlantic Monthly under the title,
<http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/obama_on_zionism_an
d_hamas.php> Obama on Zionism and Hamas.

In much of the interview, Obama was at pains to indicate how much he loved
the Jews and how some of his best friends were Jewish.

Goldberg asked the key question.

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this
constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a
resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant
jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a
national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel
has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status
quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the
tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements
in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that
I'm not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is
just because that's the safest ground politically.

I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is
partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building
settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace
process, then we're going to be stuck in the same status quo that we've been
stuck in for decades now, and that won't lift that existential dread that
David Grossman described in your article.

Is it really important that the unresolved conflict provides "an excuse for
anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions". They
don't need an excuse. The absence of such an excuse would do nothing to
ameliorate the insurgency in Iraq or slow the progress of Iran to achieve ME
hegemony. I note that he characterizes Arab war crimes and terrorist
killings as "inexcusable actions". How delicate.

But back to Goldberg's article in the IHT. Essentially he attacks the
mainstream Jewish organizations for not being Israel's "friend" and argued a
friend would reverse the settlements. Atlas Shrugs does a great job of
breaking down this article in
<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/05/goldberg-jewici.htm
l> JEFFREY GOLDBERG: JEWICIDAL JIHADI BENDS OVER, SUBMITS DEMANDS ISRAEL

But just a few points of my own, Goldberg writes, I kid you not,

"But after speaking with him it struck me that, by the standards of
rhetorical correctness maintained by such groups as the Conference of
Presidents and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, Obama
is actually more pro-Israel than either Ehud Olmert or Ehud Barak."

He supports this by the following,

But he, [Olmert] was expansive, and persuasive, on the Zionist need for a
Palestinian state. Without a Palestine - a viable, territorially contiguous
Palestine - Arabs under Israeli control will outnumber the country's Jews.

"We now have the Palestinians running an Algeria-style campaign against
Israel, but what I fear is that they will try to run a South Africa-type
campaign against us," he said. If this happens, and worldwide sanctions are
imposed as they were against the white-minority government, "the state of
Israel is finished," Olmert said in an earlier interview. This is why he,
and his mentor, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, turned so fiercely
against the Jewish settlement movement, which has entangled Israel
unnecessarily in the lives of West Bank Palestinians. Once, men like Sharon
and Olmert saw the settlers as the vanguards of Zionism; today, the
settlements are seen, properly, as the forerunner of a binational state. In
other words, as the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy.

The former prime minister, Ehud Barak, told The Jerusalem Post in 1999:
"Every attempt to keep hold of this area as one political entity leads,
necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the
Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don't vote it
is an apartheid state that might then become another Belfast or Bosnia."

No friend of Israel wants an apartheid state or a bi-national state, so this
concern must be taken seriously. We must look at the premise upon which it
is based, namely, that "Arabs under Israeli control will outnumber the
country's Jews.". They wont. Detailed demographic studies prove that if
Israel were to annex all the territories, Jews would have a 60% majority and
if only the Judea and Samaria were annexed, there would be 66% majority. No
one is suggesting that Gaza be annexed. Now if the money that would have to
be spend to ethnically cleanse the new Palestinian state of Jews (100,000
plus) were instead spend to induce Palestinians to leave, perhaps 500,000
would do so, thereby increasing the Jewish majority to over 70%. Thus Israel
would remain a democratic Jewish state. So the idea that Israel would either
be a Bi-national state or an apartheid state is unfounded.

Goldberg ends by joining the chorus, "But what's needed now, is a radical
rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel."

For my part, what it means to be pro-Jewish is to favour the abrogation of
the peace process and the annexing of Judea and Samaria.





Ted Belman

Israpundit

416-256 7597





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